The U.S. Army wants to establish a facility in San Antonio, Texas, that will offer housing, healthcare and employment assistance to military veterans as they transition back into civilian life, Fox San Antonio reported Wednesday.

Emily Baucum writes the service branch aims to open the military transition support center near Fort Sam Houston next year.

Kevin Wolff, Bexar County commissioner, said the local government will be in contact with active-duty military units before they transition out of service in an effort to help them identify housing, physical and mental healthcare and job opportunities, according to the report.

The report noted that the service branch might apply the concept nationwide if the San Antonio facility produces positive results.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has said that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is responsible for the April 4 chemical weapons attack on its citizens and called the U.S.-led missile strike on April 6 against the Middle Eastern country’s Shayrat air base a “measured military response,” DoD News reported Tuesday.

Terri Moon Cronk and Lisa Ferdinando write Mattis said Tuesday during a joint press conference at the Pentagon with Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, that the regime’s attack is a violation of the international law.

“In response to the attack, our government began a deliberate process, led by the National Security Council, to recommend diplomatic and military options to the president,” Mattis told reporters.

Mattis said in a statement released Monday that the measured response seeks to deter Assad’s regime from using chemical weapons in future attacks.

He added that the missile strike at Shayrat airfield led to the destruction of 20 percent of Syria’s aircraft, air defense systems as well as ammunition and fuel sites.

The U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency will deploy a new portable digital radiography system developed for deployed medical, special operations and mortuary affairs units of the service branch.

The Army said Tuesday the PDRS is built to replace the branch’s legacy X-ray generator and accompanying computerized reader system.

The Aberdeen Test and Evaluation Center, Information Security and Engineering Command and Army Medical Center Department Center and School respectively conducted environmental, cybersecurity and operational tests on the system.

The PDRS integrated product team consists of the USAMMA National Maintenance Program, Marine Corps, Navy, Defense Logistics Agency‘s troop support division and AMCDCS’ Capabilities Development Integration Directorate.

PDRS is the Army’s first medical technology to obtain an authority to operate via a new process that integrates risk management and security activities into the system development life cycle.

Diego Gomez-Morales, a USAMMA equipment specialist, said the platform will be fielded with a training support package that includes a guide for operators and maintenance teams.

He added the Navy and Marine Corps will also implement the system as part of efforts to standardize military health systems.

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Defense Department to establish performance goals and associated measures necessary to evaluate the Pilot Mentor-Protege Program.

GAO said in a report published Tuesday that DoD’s office of small business programs should perform periodic reviews of the processes that service branches and agency components implement to approve agreements under the program.

The agency found that DoD failed to include in its annual reports on the program information on how mentors assist proteges to build up their capabilities.

GAO performed a random review of 44 of the 78 mentor-protege transactions as of June 2016 and predicted that 27 percent of those agreements lacked industry code, signature, date and other elements required by the program’s policies and regulations.

The Pilot Mentor-Protege Program is designed to provide incentives to defense contractors that act as mentors and offer assistance to their proteges – small disadvantaged firms – in order to help the latter compete for commercial and federal contracts.

The program received $28.3 million in fiscal 2016 funds and was renewed as a pilot initiative through Sept. 30, 2018, according to the report.