The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Naval Center for Space Technology has appointed John Schaub as director and he will transition from his prior role as senior executive in charge of NCST’s spacecraft engineering department.

NRL said Monday Schaub succeeds Peter Wilhelm, who retired from the research laboratory in 2015.

“[NRL Commanding Officer Mark Bruington] and I have the utmost confidence in [John] as he undertakes the responsibilities of this new assignment,” said John Montgomery, NRL’s research director.

“He’s making strides in collaborating with industry and academia, which is a great place for NRL to be,” said Bruington.

Schaub’s three-decade career at NRL includes contributions to the development of spacecraft and space instruments that support C4ISR, terrestrial and space weather, strategic defense, space robotic servicing, and space science and technology.

He is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a voting member of the DoN Space Experiments Review Board.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report says the U.S. and other NATO member countries should adopt a “federated approach” to anti-submarine warfare capability development in order to counter the challenge posed by Russia’s undersea assets in Northern Europe.

CSIS said in the July report that such a federated approach will work to integrate “national and NATO platforms, sensors, and personnel in a coordinated manner.”

NATO and its partners should work to prepare organizational structures through the NATO-Nordic Defense Cooperation and establishment of a center of excellence that focuses on ASW in order to rebuild ASW capability in the region, according to the report.

The report also suggested capability updates through the development of a multiplatform ASW system designed to focus on payloads and operate in multiple domains.

CSIS recommended that NATO should reopen the Keflavik Naval Air Station in Iceland and ask Norway to get its Olavsvern-based submarine support facility back to operation in an effort to build up the alliance’s ASW posture in Northern Europe.

The U.S. Air Force has attributed the loss of a Lockheed Martin-built weather satellite to a power failure in the spacecraft’s command-and-control subsystem, Space News reported Monday.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flight team lost control of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight-19 satellite on Feb. 11 but has continued to receive weather and telemetry data, Mike Gruss writes.

The service branch launched the DMSP-F19 satellite in April 2014 in an effort to help forecast hurricanes, thunderstorms and other weather patterns that could affect military missions, according to the report.

“The satellite is not repairable and no further action will be taken to recover it,” the military branch said in a press release.

The Air Force decided to redesignate DMSP Flight 17 satellite from a backup status to a primary satellite in February as a result of the power failure, Gruss reports.

“We fully supported the Air Force’s efforts to review the anomaly experienced by DMSP-19 and continue to provide ongoing sustainment and operations for the constellation,” Lauren Fair, a spokeswoman for Lockheed, told Space News.

Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, assistant chief of staff for installation management at the U.S. Army, has described her plans to prioritize readiness across Army installations under her new role.

The service branch said Friday Bingham’s focus on readiness involves turning Army installations into “power projection platforms” amid outages from the civilian power grid or natural disasters that could disrupt gas, water, sewage or trash collection.

Bingham told the Army website energy security is an emerging area of focus that could serve as “a form of force protection and mission assurance.”

She also aims to support the Army’s “Reduce the Footprint” initiative that looks to remove excess infrastructure such as buildings and properties to optimize maintenance costs that reach approximately $450 to $500 million a year.

The 35-year Army veteran seeks to establish partnerships with military service organizations to maintain morale, welfare and recreation programs for soldiers and their families.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militant group has formed new plans and commitments to support counter-IS efforts during a meeting at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, DoD News reported Monday.

Terri Moon Cronk writes Carter told reporters the defense ministers’ meeting focused on missions to destroy the IS group’s “parent” operations in Iraq and Syria; address the group’s worldwide emergence and support government entities that work to secure the homeland.

“All countries represented voiced their unwavering resolve to destroy the fact and the idea of an Islamic state based on [IS]’s barbaric ideology,” Carter said.

“We made further plans and the additional commitments we’ll need to ensure our coalition delivers [Islamic State] the lasting defeat it deserves,” he added.