The Defense Department has delegated regional warehousing capability to Australia and the Netherlands as part of DoD’s F-35 Global Support Solution strategy.

Both countries will manage the international fighter program’s aviation inventory through warehouse and distribution facilities located across the European and Pacific regions, according to an article published Wednesday on Lockheed Martin‘s F-35 website.

“Our mission is to deliver and sustain an affordable, capable and combat-ready F-35 weapon system that provides the U.S. and International warfighters with a dominate battlefield advantage,” said Vice Adm. Mat Winter, F-35 Program Executive Officer.

“To do that successfully, the U.S. Services and our allies need to have the right parts delivered at the right time and having a solid warehousing plan helps to make it happen.”

DoD based the assignments on data the F-35 Joint Program Office collected from partner nations, foreign military sales customers and other industries.

Future assignments will cover the delivery of additional components, support equipment, full mission simulators, autonomic logistics information systems and maintenance training devices.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has said the White House is considering a proposal to boost the presence of private security contractors in Afghanistan in an effort to transition some of U.S. troops’ combat duties to such contractors, DoD Buzz reported Tuesday.

“It’s part of the options being considered,” Mattis, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2017, told reporters Monday at the Pentagon.

“And the president’s open to the advice of the secretary of state, and myself and the director of the CIA,” he added.

The proposal was suggested by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL officer and founder of private security firm Blackwater that now runs as Academi, through a May 31 opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal.

Prince also told USA Today his proposal would involve the deployment of 5,500 private contractors to Afghanistan to advise local forces and a 90-aircraft private air force to perform close air support missions.

The Government Accountability Office has found that the U.S. Air Force‘s oversight and acquisition programs for the Nuclear Command, Control and Communications system face challenges in meeting requirements in the long run.

GAO said in a report published Tuesday the Air Force expressed an awareness of NC3’s short-term sustainment needs but does not possess the resources to sustain the system’s long-term needs.

Four of the service branch’s eight NC3 acquisition programs have compressed schedules that may result in delay while two others have plans to immediately proceed with development without key systems engineering assessments that work to check feasibility and affordability, the government watchdog added.

The report noted that leaders of the NC3 program executive office indicated a commitment to review and modify acquisition strategies before they are finalized.

NC3 functions to ensure a connection between the president and the military’s nuclear forces in case of a nuclear event.

The U.S. Marine Corps has requested for an additional 50,000 automatic rifles for the service branch’s riflemen, combat engineers and light armored reconnaissance battalion scouts, Marine Corps Times reported Wednesday.

The 5.56 mm M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles, which will replace the service branch’s current M4 assault rifles, feature a 30-round magazine and can fire up to 40 rounds per minute in both semi-automatic and fully automatic firing modes.

Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, said that he plans to equip every 0311 rifleman in the service branch with the M27 IAR weapon system.

USMC began to field the 4,000 system in 2010 initially to succeed the M249 automatic rifles before the service branch decided on using both weapon systems.

Marines from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines first used the M27 IAR platform in combat at Garmser, Afghanistan in 2011.