The Defense Department showcased more than 80 technical projects from 63 defense laboratories and warfare and engineering centers during an event held Thursday at the Pentagon Center Courtyard, DoD News reported Thursday.

Mary Miller, acting assistant defense secretary for research and engineering, highlighted innovation efforts within the defense laboratory enterprise at the department’s second biennial Lab Day.

“The defense laboratory enterprise helps meet today’s urgent operational needs while ensuring decisive overmatch for the force of the future,” said Miller.

Miller noted that DoD scientists and engineers have developed technologies in the areas of chemical biological defense, combat fielding, active and passive protection, space robotics, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Current DoD projects include the Army Research Laboratory’s soldier weapon exoskeleton, the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Stilleto experimental all-carbon fiber craft and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s low-cost attritable aircraft technology.

James MacStravic, acting defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said that basic research and science experiments that take place in DoD laboratories help sustain the U.S. military’s technological advantage in land, sea, air, space and cyber domains.

“Our engineering centers help translate research into militarily useful technologies and provide reachback capabilities and subject matter expertise to solve problems and challenges within the existing systems,” MacStravic added.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein has said the move to separate space activities through the establishment of an independent “space corps” would impede the service branch’s efforts to address orbital threats, Space News reported Friday.

“As we make this transition from a benign to a warfighting environment… any move that actually ends up separating space as opposed to integrating space, I would argue is a move in the wrong direction,” Goldfein said in his Wednesday testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subpanel.

“Right now, to get focused on a large organizational change would actually slow us down,” he added.

The Senate subcommittee hearing came after the Government Accountability Office issued a report that says “fragmented responsibilities” within the Defense Department have posed a challenge to the way DoD oversees the acquisition of satellites and other military space platforms.

Goldfein, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2017, noted the acquisition process should be streamlined and that the military branch needs a single individual to manage and implement space-related acquisitions and contracts, the report added.

The U.S. Army uses a full-simulation platform to augment live flight training for unmanned aircraft system crews and help reduce costs and risks at the service branch’s aviation and missile research, development and engineering center.

The Universal Mission Simulator is designed to train flight crews on how to operate Gray Eagle and Shadow functions such as launch, preflight, taxi, flight route, target area exploitation, airfield returns, post flight and weapons employment, the Army said Thursday.

“The Joint Technology Center and Systems Integration Lab, commonly referred to as JSIL, sustains all UMS systems to keep software current with the Gray Eagle and Shadow tactical systems configurations,” said Will Bishop, UAS crew training simulation systems branch chief.

Jim Jones, technical chief at the JSIL, noted the lab has used the government-funded Multiple Unified Simulation Environment software suite to provide training systems for the UAS project management office.

Jones added that MUSE offers intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance simulation capacity for combatant commanders who participate in command and staff training exercises such as the Auster Challenge, Pacific Sentry, Talisman Sabre, Ulchi Freedom Guardian and Yama Sakura.

The Army has implemented 84 UMS systems, including four used for Shadow UAS training, as of April.

The service branch plans to implement a total of 99 UMS unit by fiscal year 2019 to support drone operator training.

Vayl Oxford, a national security executive policy adviser at the Energy Department‘s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will assume the director role at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The Defense Department said Thursday Secretary James Mattis also appointed Oxford to the Senior Executive Service in line with the assignment to head DTRA.

Oxford most recently provided strategic advice regarding relevant policies on national security to the staff and leadership team at PNNL.

He joined the Battelle-operated DOE national laboratory in 2012 after work as a senior policy adviser to The Tauri Group for more than two years.

He also led the program on countermeasures for weapons of mass destruction at Northrop Grumman in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security‘s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office from 2004 to early 2009 and the White House’s counterproliferation efforts from 2002 to 2003.

Oxford will take over the DTRA director duties from Michael Bruhn, who has served as acting director alongside his current role of executive director at the agency.