Gen. David Goldfein, the U.S. Air Force‘s chief of staff, spoke before an audience at a Military Strategy Forum event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington to discuss topics such as staff readiness priorities, 21st century warfare approaches and the nuclear enterprise.

The Air Force said Friday Goldfein told attendees the budget is the first priority for the service branch because of a need to increase the size of Air Force units for current and future requirements.

“The number one readiness priority is people… People run the Air Force – whether enlisted, officer, active duty, Guard or Reserve—people operate the equipment, pilot aircraft, collect information and get the mission done,” said Goldfein.

Goldfein also gave his perspective on the impact of airpower in combat and also discussed the potential utilization of the nuclear enterprise and its effect on air superiority.

Goldfein seeks for the Air Force to build up its cyber, nuclear enterprise and space capacities as well as increase the size of the service branch’s forces to meet requirements for future missions.

Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of the Air Combat Command, has said Lockheed Martin-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft will be deployed to the Middle East to support the fight against the Islamic State militant group in a few years, Military.com reported Friday.

Oriana Pawlyk writes Carlisle told reporters that F-35 planes will not join counter-Islamic State operations this year and that the aircraft’s F-35A variant will be deployed to Europe and the Pacific throughout spring and summer.

“We have plans to send [F-35] to the Middle East in the not-too-distant future,” Carlisle said.

“It would deploy as an asset for the [Combined Forces Air Component commander] at Al Udeid [Qatar], so he would use it as he would see fit, and I would certainly expect it to participate in operations just like the F-22 is today,” he added.

The commander also noted that the U.S. Air Force could keep one squadron of F-35s in the current 3i configuration in efforts to maintain combat capability, FlightGlobal reported.

F-35As reached initial operational capability in 2016 but did not meet its planned Block 3F configuration that is intended to boost the aircraft’s weapons capacity and targeting function, Leigh Giangreco wrote.

The Air Force expects Blocks 3F and 4 configurations to be available by 2018 and 2021, the report stated.

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget will increase defense-related spending by 10 percent and cut the budget of some federal agencies, The Washington Post reported Monday.

A White House official said that Trump plans to boost defense spending by $54 billion and request $30 billion in supplementary military budget for fiscal 2017, Abby Phillip and Kelsey Snell wrote.

An unnamed official from the Office of Management and Budget told reporters that budgets for most federal agencies would decrease “substantially,” Phillip and Snell reported.

The report said Trump’s budget proposal will grow national security-related spending and impose reductions on other areas especially foreign aid.

According to Bloomberg, the proposed cuts would not impact entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare which constitute approximately 66.7 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget.

Shannon Pettypiece and Jennifer Dlouhy wrote the White House also looks to reassign the State Department‘s staff and eliminate a deputy secretary position.

Trump also told governors Monday at the White House that he plans to boost infrastructure spending, the report noted.

The White House is scheduled to submit budget targets to federal agencies one day ahead of the president’s Tuesday  speech to a joint session of Congress.

The U.S. Air Force prepares to transition to the General Atomics-built MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft this year as the service branch plans to retire its MQ-1 Predator RPAs in 2018 in an effort to build up readiness and keep pace with the changing combat environment.

The 20th attack squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri has begun the transition phase for MQ-9 drones, the Air Force reported Thursday.

Col. James, commander of the 20th attack squadron, said the squadron plans to cease operations of its MQ-1s by July 1 in order to exclusively fly Reapers by the end of this year.

“Having a single aircraft buys more flexibility, simplifies training and logistics and gives our people more [career progression] opportunities,” said Col. Joseph, commander of the 432nd operations group.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone is equipped with high-definition sensors and designed to carry up to 4,000 pounds of missiles, bombs and other weapon payloads.

The RPA also works to support missions such as close air support, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, combat search and rescue and precision strike operations.

Lt. Gen. William Bender, chief of information dominance and chief information officer of the U.S. Air Force, has signed a memorandum that mandates the service branch to implement an endpoint visibility platform across the service branch’s information technology programs.

The Automated Remediation and Asset Discovery platform will work to help the service branch’s cyber professionals gain real-time visibility into all levels of computing and address threats to network reliant tools such as weapons systems, the Air Force said Friday.

The memo gives authorizing officials until May 31 to validate that IT investments in their portfolio have installed ARAD.

The mandate applies to Air Force systems that connect to the Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router NETwork and will be applied to all systems that connect to networks such as the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network in the future.

Bender said IT systems that connect to the branch’s networks without ARAD will be considered high-risk.

ARAD is designed to also provide vulnerability status for Information Assurance Vulnerability Management compliance at the enterprise level as well as help mission leaders monitor systems and implement change management and configuration control measures.

Forty-five airmen from the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing will support a joint effort of NASA and the Defense Department to demonstrate techniques and systems that will be used to recover NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

The guardsmen will work with NASA, the U.S. Air Force and DoD’s Human Spaceflight Support Office to develop techniques for air-dropping gear that will work to recover astronauts from Orion and fit the spacecraft with special equipment, DoD said Friday.

The New York airmen will perform airdrops and practice assisting astronauts out of the spacecraft in Hawaii to help NASA and DoD test systems and procedures for future launches.

DoD noted the 106th airmen will only test recovery equipment and will not work with an actual or simulated Orion capsule.

The 45 members include pararescuemen; combat rescue officers; survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialists; and other support airmen of the 106th Rescue Wing’s 103rd Rescue Squadron.

Orion is designed to transport American astronauts to deep space locations and scheduled to be launched in September 2018 for a three-week mission to the moon.