The U.S. Army seeks to deploy artillery along coastlines to target enemy warships as part of the military branch’s multi-domain battle concept to achieve superiority in future battles.

The goal is for military units to penetrate and destroy enemy fortresses through a combined use of land, air, sea, cyber and space domains under the Army’s windows of superiority effort, the Army said Monday.

“If the Army can provide capability to the maritime domain, that really starts to change the equation there,” Gen. David Perkins, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told an Association of the U.S. Army breakfast on Wednesday.

The U.S. Pacific Command plans to launch a multi-domain battle exercise in the spring to demonstrate Army assets in maritime missions and the U.S. Europe Command wants to conduct a multi-domain exercise in the region in 2017.

“We’re starting to put together these multi-domain battle exercises in the real domain to replicate some of these capabilities,” Perkins said.

The Army unveiled the branch’s shift to the multi-domain battle concept in October with the goal to outpace potential adversaries.

TRADOC also issued a multi-domain guide to help the Army focus on eight areas such as cross-domain fires, combat vehicles, expeditionary mission command, advanced protection, cyber electromagnetic, future vertical lift, robotics and autonomous systems and soldier team performance.

Several U.S. Marine Corps and Japanese ground self-defense force members held a four-day joint exercise at a USMC air station in Iwakuni, Japan, to test the capacity of both military organizations to work alongside each other to defend U.S. assets in the region.

USMC said Saturday that the forces shared techniques on various scenarios such as standard vehicle searches, response to suspicious packages, perimeter breaches and chemical attacks during the Active Shield exercise.

Jonathan Boron, deputy provost marshal at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, said the exercise required  coordination and bilateral communication to keep the air station safe.

“We tried to imitate and simulate what our adversaries would do in the event we go into a station defense posture,” Boron added.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said the Defense Department’s partnership with innovation and commercial technology communities helps the U.S. military to be agile and ready for future threats, DoD News reported Monday.

Terri Moon Cronk writes Carter made the remarks Monday at the Atlantic Exchange forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine and innovation company 1176 in Washington.

“Even as it is competitive in the commercial world, it is competitive in the security world, and if we relax our guard and we just assume it’s a birthright to be the best, that gap is going to close,” Carter said at the event.

He told forum attendees that innovators and DoD collaborate on various projects through the Defense Digital System, such as efforts to safeguard the department’s nuclear command-and-control platform from cyber threats.

Carter also cited that DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental initiative works to help start-ups work with the Pentagon to help the U.S. military maintain its technological edge as well as address national security issues, the report said.

The Defense Department’s Office of Strategy and Force Development has launched a crowdsourcing initiative to gather ideas in support of DoD efforts to address operational challenges, DoD News reported Monday.

Cheryl Pellerin writes Mara Karlin, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, said the initiative is “focused on what we think are key operational challenges that are animating how we think about the changing character of war.”

Karlin added DoD seeks crowdsourced approaches to areas such as counter power projection, battle networks and technology, Pellerin reported.

A team comprised of members with experience in policy, acquisition, technology, logistics and Joint Staff operations will review the submissions and select top proposers, according to Karlin.

Chosen proposers will brief Karlin’s team and the proposals will be presented to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pellerin wrote.

Karlin said her team can talk to the Strategic Capabilities Office and planners at combatant commands to discuss the potential use of crowdsourced technology proposals.

She added there are no funds allocated for the projects but DoD has several different processes to fund technology ideas and in operational concepts.

Interested participants can submit papers until Nov. 28.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has called on U.S. allied countries to join the agency’s program that works to provide unlimited access to Iridium‘s constellation of mobile communications satellites, Space News reported Friday.

Peter de Selding writes Clare Grason, DISA program manager of the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services program, said allies can pay a fixed rate to access Iridium’s constellation through a DISA-operated gateway as well as add an unlimited number of devices.

DISA awarded the five-year, $400 million EMSS contract to Iridium in 2013 to give U.S. government agencies access to Iridium’s satellite constellation at a fixed cost.

Grason said Iridium has activated 85,000 subscriber units under the contract primarily for military users and approximately 15 percent for civilian agencies.

Grason noted DISA and Iridium will begin negotiations for a new contract in 2017 and that the agency does not need to wait for the launch of the Iridium Next second-generation constellation.

The Government Accountability Office has found that Defense Department-owned utility systems experienced 4,393 instances of disruptions due to equipment failure from fiscal years 2009 through 2015.

DoD installation officials claimed the utility disruptions led to more than $29 million in financial impacts as well as operational consequences such as a week-long shutdown of operations at a U.S. Army facility, GAO said Monday.

Factors that caused equipment failures include the use of equipment beyond its intended life; lack of proper maintenance and poor equipment condition, the report stated.

GAO added 151 out of 364 surveyed officials said they did not have information on utility disruptions in fiscal years 2009-2015.

Auditors found the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps lack guidance that require installations to monitor utility disruption information while the Army’s guidance to report utility disruptions is not consistently available for some installations.

The U.S. Navy released a new guidance in 2015 which could support the collection of utility disruption information if implemented as directed, GAO noted.

DoD’s use of the Sustainment Management System software to run standardized condition assessments could result in varying facility condition index data since services can customize settings or condition standards in the SMS process, GAO said.

GAO recommended the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps to take measures or provide guidance to help collect disruption information consistently.

DoD should oversee services’ efforts to apply uniform condition standards, GAO stated.