U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has said that military service will meet with several companies to obtain insights into how the private sector responds to disasters as part of a strategic readiness review on the branch’s operational safety procedures, Defense News reported Wednesday.

Spencer added the Navy wants to work with B.P., Crowley Maritime and other ship operators that had dealt with disasters at sea in efforts to avoid fatal collisions.

The service branch started to review its disaster response procedures following separate USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain collisions that happened in the summer.

DoD Buzz reported Wednesday that Spencer and other Navy officials also want to gather input from Boeing, Maersk and the Sandia National Laboratories on how to rebuild after a major disaster and safety crisis.

“We’re going to [look at] this as best practices for people who have come out the other side,” said Spencer.

“We really do expect this to be a learning experience as we’re set to go forward.”

Dawn Meyerriecks, CIA deputy director for science and technology, has said she aims to increase government leaders’ confidence in artificial intelligence-aided analysis, Defense One reported Wednesday.

Meyerriecks told the audience at the Intelligence and National Security Summit that there is a need to convince leaders, including the president, to accept intelligence gathered through AI platforms.

“One of the things that’s a challenge for the current AI community, one of the things I’m positive will get addressed, is… you can’t go to leadership and make a recommendation based on a process that no one understands,” she noted.

Meyerriecks added that CIA currently has 137 artificial intelligence-related pilot projects, including tools that automatically tag objects in videos as well as platforms that predict events using big data and correlational evidence.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has said the service branch completed the initial round of test flights for light-attack aircraft on Aug. 30 at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Defense News reported Tuesday.

Wilson told the publication in a Thursday interview the military branch plans to wrap up reports on each aircraft’s performance and cost by the end of 2017.

“I would expect this fall, or certainly by December or January, that we would make a decision on whether to do a follow-on experiment — it would be a combat experiment — and which aircraft might participate in that,” Wilson said.

“I’m not sure exactly what missions they would run, but one of the things we can do is see how it connects up with command-and-control systems, those kinds of things,” she added.

The report said the Air Force’s OA-X demonstration commenced in late July and saw the participation of several industry teams that include L3 Technologies and Air Tractor; Sierra Nevada Corp. and Embraer; and Textron.

The L3-Air Tractor team demonstrated the AT-802L Longsword aircraft, while Sierra Nevada and Embraer flew their A-29 Super Tucano plane.

Textron showcased its AT-6 Wolverine and Scorpion jet at the OA-X experiment that seeks to help the Air Force determine whether to advance the procurement of light-attack planes, the report added.

President Donald Trump intends to nominate Robert Behler, chief operating officer and deputy director of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, as director of operational test and evaluation at the Defense Department.

Behler has led SEI’s software engineering and security initiatives that aimed to help address national cyber challenges, the White House said in a release published Saturday.

He previously served as president and chief operations officer at SRC, senior vice president and general manager at Mitre and business area executive for precision engagement at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The retired U.S. Air Force major general also held the roles of commanding general at the Air Force Command and Control & Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center and deputy commander at NATO’s Joint Headquarters North.

Behler was also an experimental test pilot who flew more than 65 aircraft variants during his 31-year military career.

He is currently a fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauts and a member of both the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and Air Force Association.

Lucian Niemeyer, newly appointed assistant defense secretary for installations, has said the Defense Department backs a Senate bill that would push for a new round of base realignment and closures, Washington Examiner reported Tuesday.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), SASC ranking member, drafted the measure as a possible amendment to the upper chamber’s fiscal 2018 defense policy bill that is scheduled for debate this month.

Niemeyer said Tuesday at a Heritage Foundation event the BRAC authorization that seeks to shut down underutilized military facilities could help DoD generate savings and focus on the development of new military platforms.

“For us, it’s not just a matter of finding efficiencies, it’s a matter of improving the military value and the effectiveness and lethality of our military forces,” he said.

“That’s why we continue to push hard, and we support the Senate’s attempt to try to get a BRAC authorization inserted into the [2018] defense authorization act.”

The Hill also reported the draft proposal from McCain and Reed would require DoD to compile and submit a list of potential military base closures to the Government Accountability Office for review.

The White House-certified BRAC list should be submitted to Congress by the fall of 2019 under the proposed bill.

The Senate measure would also impose a $5 billion cap on military base closures and would direct DoD to begin BRAC by 2021, the report added.