The U.S. Navy and naval forces from seven other NATO member countries have engaged in an integrated air and missile defense scenario Saturday as part of the Formidable Shield 2017 exercise.

Warships from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, UK and U.S. defended against a ballistic missile and three anti-ship cruise missiles during the live-fire IAMD test, the U.S. 6th Fleet said Saturday.

The exercise brings together more than 14 ships, approximately 3,300 personnel and 10 aircraft platforms from the aforementioned countries, as well as Belgium, Denmark and France to participate in exercises on the U.K. defense ministry’s Hebrides Range in Scotland.

The U.S. ships taking part in the event include Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Donald Cook, USS Mitscher and USS Winston S. Churchill, as well as Louis and Clark-class dry cargo ship USNS Medger Evers.

USS Donald Cook fired a Standard Missile-3 Block IB to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target.

At the same time, Spanish Frigate SPS Alvaro de Bazan launched an Evolved SeaSparrow Missile to defend against an anti-ship cruise missile, as Netherlands Frigate HNLMS Tromp also fired an ESSM towards anti-ship cruise missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency and Navy also test-fired a Standard Missile-6 from USS McFaul guided-missile destroyer as part of the missile technology’s flight certification process.

The Defense Department has called on Congress to reinstate DoD’s oversight over security clearance processing work and cited the availability of information technology systems that can be used to manage new background checks for its own personnel, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

Garry Reid, director of defense intelligence, told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s government operations subpanel members Wednesday that DoD could resume responsibility over its own security clearances as early as January.

“Our plan is to alleviate the burden on the backlog in the near-term by shifting that work into an alternative process focusing on the secret-level investigations,” Reid said at the congressional hearing.

Reid added that DoD hands over approximately 700,000 investigative cases to the National Background Investigations Bureau on an annual basis in which two-thirds of those cases are at the secret level, preliminary and periodic reinvestigation.

Established in January 2016, NBIB oversees 95 percent of all security clearance work in the federal government.

DoD said it plans to manage new investigative cases through the adoption of IT platforms the Pentagon currently uses to monitor employee performance and behavior and continue to develop and operate IT systems for NBIB.

House lawmakers have proposed a bipartisan bill that would authorize the U.S. president to use military force against the Islamic State militant group, Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations for five years.

The proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force legislation aims to update previous AUMFs that Congress enacted in response to the 9/11 attacks and Iraq War, Rep. Mike Coffman’s (R-Colorado) office said Wednesday.

The new measure would direct the president to regularly submit reports on ongoing conflicts to Congress and prohibit the use of armed forces against countries without congressional approval.

Coffman introduced the bill with Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) and Jimmy Panetta (D-California).

Panetta said the proposed measure seeks to meet the country’s national security interests through an updated authorization that aims to address threats posed by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

John Rood, a corporate officer and senior vice president of Lockheed Martin‘s international business since March 2016, will be nominated as Defense Department undersecretary for policy.

The White House said Wednesday Rood also has more than 20 years of federal service that included positions at the State Department, CIA, National Security Council and DoD.

He joined Lockheed in 2014 and has led the company’s international expansion strategies, industrial partnerships and customer relations.

Before that, he served as VP of U.S. business development at Raytheon.

He previously worked as the State Department’s acting undersecretary for arms control and international security as well as assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation.

At NSA, Rood held the roles of special assistant to the president; senior director of counterproliferation; and director of proliferation strategy for counterproliferation in homeland defense.

He was also a deputy assistant secretary for forces policy at DoD and an analyst for foreign missile programs at the CIA.