Maj. Gen. Scott West, deputy chief of staff for operations at the U.S. Air Force, has said the service branch wants to prioritize the assessment and retention of more airmen in an effort to build up military readiness, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

West told members of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness subpanel Wednesday that the Air Force needs Congress to support the proposed appropriations for fiscal year 2017 and an amendment that seeks to speed up “readiness recovery,” David Thornton wrote.

“Repeal of the Budget Control Act and predictable future funding are critical to rebuilding military readiness,” West added.

He cited the shortage of maintainers and aging fleet of aircraft as other factors that affect the Air Force’s readiness and that the military branch now operates with only 5,500 aircraft that have been running for 27 years.

He told lawmakers that the service branch spends more on maintenance of excess infrastructure that represents approximately 25 percent of the service branch’s total infrastructure.

West testified with Lt. Gen. Maryanne Miller, chief of the Air Force Reserves; and Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, director of the Air National Guard; at the House subcommittee hearing, the report added.

U.S. Army officials have said the military service should decide soon if the branch will procure additional Joint Light Tactical Vehicles or update its current Humvee fleet as part of modernization efforts, DoD Buzz reported Wednesday.

Matthew Cox writes Lt. Gen. John Murray, deputy chief of staff for financial management at the Army, told  members of Senate Armed Services Committee’s airland subcommittee during a Wednesday hearing he expects the service branch to make a decision on the Humvee fleet in fiscal 2018.

Murray added that Humvees have an average age of approximately 9.5 years and the vehicles “are in good shape for another couple of years,” according to the report.

Oshkosh won a $6.7 billion contract in August 2015 to manufacture 17,000 JLTVs for the Army and the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Army looks to buy more than 49,000 copies of the Humvee replacement, Cox reported.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has urged Congress to approve President Donald Trump’s request for an additional $30 billion to fund defense programs, DoD News reported Wednesday.

Lisa Ferdinando writes Mattis told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee at a meeting held Wednesday the budget request is the first step in a three-part, multi-year effort to increase defense readiness.

Trump requested for $24.9 billion in supplementary military spending and another $5 billion to finance overseas contingency operations for the remainder of fiscal 2017.

“We base this request on a realistic appreciation of the capacity we need to fight and win on the battlefield,” said Mattis, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2017.

He added that Congress can help the Defense Department build a “more lethal” force through the approval of additional funds and regular budgets.

Mattis told the subcommittee that global security challenges require DoD to maintain a secure nuclear deterrent and a force that can counter all threats, DoD News stated.

He testified at the defense budget and readiness hearing with Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Office for Public Safety Research within the Department of Homeland Security‘s Science and Technology Directorate has built a training system designed to help Transportation Security Administration personnel conduct airport screening tasks.

DHS said Wednesday the ScreenADAPT X-ray image analysis training system uses visual search research and eye-tracking technology to assess TSA officers’ visual search performance.

ScreenADAPT is built with an eye-tracking tool that works to help TSA trainers and trainees analyze if potential errors were made during bag screening as well as record trainees’ performance metrics and compare results with their peers.

DHS added the system offers diagnostic metrics on TSO performance to evaluate trainers’ and trainees’ needs.

“The different types of training address the corresponding root causes of the errors and assist in building each TSO’s mental threat image library,” said Darren Wilson, ScreenADAPT program manager at OPS-R.

TSA deployed fifty ScreenADAPT systems at airports located in Houston, Las Vegas, New York, Pittsburgh, Portland and Raleigh in an effort to assess the effectiveness of the training support tool.

Preliminary data from the assessment showed that ScreenADAPT helped increase efficiency at the research airports by approximately 45 percent, DHS noted.