The U.S. Air Force broke ground on a new 98-acre solar farm project by Starwood Energy Group and Energy Management at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as part of the military’s Enhanced Use Lease program.

The military solar installation will include more than 50,000 solar panels that will work to produce more than 21,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy annually, the Air Force said Wednesday.

True Green Capital and Conti Group will partner to construct, own and operate the solar farm.

“This project demonstrates the innovative pathways our Airmen and civilians are taking to strengthen mission assurance through energy assurance,” said Miranda Ballentine, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy.

“We are pleased to contribute to the renewable energy objectives of the United States military, and appreciate all of the support for this project from the Pentagon, Air Force Civil Engineer Center and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst,” said Brad Nordholm, the senior managing director and co-head of Starwood Energy.

Ballentine and Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff, the adjutant general of New Jersey, were in attendance during the ceremony.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country’s efforts to modernize nuclear forces conform with existing arms control agreements including a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the U.S., NBC News reported Friday.

Alexey Eremenko and Eoghan MacGuire write the Russian president also claims that the country continues to develop nuclear warheads in a push to possess a capacity to overcome existing missile defense systems.

According to a CNN report published Wednesday Russia has also tested an alleged anti-satellite weapon which was tracked by the U.S. to discover if any targets have been destroyed.

U.S. officials also believe Russia has deployed kamikaze satellites called the Kosmos 2499 which possess the capacity to sidle up, destroy or disable American satellites.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a guide on cybersecurity events designed to help organizations establish a plan for cyber attacker containment and incident recovery.

NIST said Thursday its computer researchers published the Guide for Cybersecurity Event Recovery in a push to consolidate current recovery guidance on incident handling and contingency planning as well as offers a process that can help organizations create recovery plans for cyber attack incidents.

The agency noted that the publication offers strategic and tactical guidance on the development, testing and updates of recovery plans and it also urges organizations to establish a playbook for each potential cybersecurity incidents such as data breaches and ransomware.

“To be successful, each organization needs to develop its own plan and playbooks in advance,” said Murugiah Souppaya, one of the authors of the guide.

“Then they should run the plays with tabletop exercises, work within their team to understand its level of preparation and repeat.”

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has said the U.S. Air Force could deploy Lockheed Martin-built F-35A Lighting II aircraft to Europe as early as next summer, Defense News reported Thursday.

Valerie Insinna writes James said at an Atlantic Council event that Europe could receive F-35As “in the not too distant future” since the Air Force’s fighter jet variant has been declared “combat ready.”

Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of the Air Combat Command, announced in August that the F-35A model achieved initial operational capability after meeting certain requirements.

James called on her successor to push through with deployments to Europe to support U.S. air dominance and deter Russia’s hostile military action, Insinna reported.

The Air Force secretary added her successor should maintain a steady amount of funds to increase the size of active-duty airmen in the coming fiscal year, the report stated.

Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division researchers have developed a new method to update unmanned underwater vehicle mission information in a push to simplify and reduce lead time required to program a UUV mission.

Autonomy in a Box was created as a deployable software system that can provide basic autonomy capacity to unmanned systems as well as support configuration management of an autonomy framework to manage experimentation and characterize autonomy software development, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

“Autonomy in a Box is designed to make installing configurations of autonomy software on a vehicle as easy as installing an application from an app store,” said Matthew Bays , NSWC PD engineer.

The service branch noted that the use of Docker software pre-deployed containers that can help users package an applications into a standardized unit for software development to aid the deployment, installation, reconfiguration and testing of an autonomy system within an unmanned platform.

The U.S. military has returned 10,000 acres of land in Okinawa to the Japanese government in a ceremony held at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office in Tokyo, DoD News reported Wednesday.

Jim Garamone writes the transfer of land on Okinawa’s Northern Training Area will work to reduce U.S. military footprint in the island by 20 percent.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the two governments aim to demonstrate their commitment to realign U.S. forces through the return of property slated earlier this week.

“[The land transfer] is an important step in the Okinawa consolidation plan, which will eventually result in the transfer of 60 acres of land south of Kadena Air Base,” said U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy.

Officials said U.S. and Japanese forces will continue to train on the remainder of the 19,300-acre Northern Training Area, Garamone reported.

The U.S. military also plans to give back a majority of American facilities near Kadena Air Base and relocate Marine Corps Air Station Futenma as part of efforts to consolidate U.S. installations in Okinawa, DoD News stated.