Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said he has received concerns from foreign intelligence agencies about the “disparagement of the U.S. Intelligence Community” by President-elect Donald Trump, CNN reported Thursday.

Nicole Gaouette writes Clapper told Senate Armed Services Committee members at a Thursday hearing on international cyber threats that he believes public confidence and trust in the IC is “crucial” and that there is a distinction between disparagement and scepticism on intelligence.

He also discussed Russia’s cyber hacking activities during the 2016 presidential elections, Gaouette reports.

“We assess that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets,” Clapper said in a joint testimony with Marcel Lettre, defense undersecretary for intelligence; and Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.

Clapper, who will step down as DNI on Jan. 20, was scheduled Friday to brief Trump on Russia’s cyber intrusion in a private meeting, the report added.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has said the service branch has started to establish a new digital service that will work to build up software capability into new programs, Federal News Radio reported Friday.

James told attendees of an Air Force Association event in Virginia the Air Force Digital Service will also troubleshoot the military branch’s current programs that have software-related difficulties.

Scott Maucione writes the service branch’s digital service will operate under the Defense Digital Service, a Defense Department component that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter created in order to recruit technology professionals for short-term assignments to address information technology problems at DoD.

The Air Force will recruit a team of approximately 10 employees in the next few months for the digital service unit that will initially focus on the OCX program, the service branch’s next-generation operational control platform for GPS satellites, according to a report by Sean D. Carberry for FCW.

James noted that the military branch will add an additional 3,000 personnel to the Air National Guard by 2019 as part of efforts to increase the cyber workforce, the report added.

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientists have discovered opposite spin polarization in the Dirac surface state of bismuth selenide, a topological insulator, and the two-dimensional electron gas surface state of a common semiconductor known as indium arsenide.

The scientists detected spin polarization that was produced by an unpolarized bias current through the use of a ferromagnetic tunnel barrier contact, NRL said Thursday.

“Detecting this spin polarization directly as a voltage, and differentiating the contributions from these two fundamentally different systems, is key to understanding the basic properties of TI materials and interfacing them to electronic circuitry for future device applications,” said Connie Li, the study’s lead author.

The research team also used spin-dependent electrochemical potentials to create a model designed to obtain the sign of the spin voltage for surface states of topological insulator materials.

The study was published in the Nov. 16, 2016 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

Engineers at the Army Research Laboratory have conducted flight tests of a 3D-printed unmanned aerial vehicle developed through an on-demand system, the Army reported Thursday.

ARL performed the flight demonstration as part of the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments in December at Fort Benning in Georgia, David McNally writes.

The on-demand system works to help soldiers encode their drone requirements into a mission planning software platform and facilitate the deployment of 3D-printed UAVs to warfighters within 24 hours.

Eric Spero, team leader and project manager at ARL, said his team plans to increase the unmanned vehicle’s payload capacity, agility and standoff distance as well as reduce the drone’s noise.

ARL engineers noted they will continue to work with partners from Georgia Tech’s aerospace systems design lab to refine technology platforms for service personnel, the report added.