President Barack Obama has said the U.S. will maintain its support of defense and security initiatives in Europe as well as transatlantic relationship and common efforts with allies amid threats facing NATO member countries, DoD News reported Saturday.

Obama told a group of reporters at the NATO summit in Warsaw that the U.S. will deploy a battalion of soldiers in Poland as the area’s lead nation to support NATO’s defense and deterrence posture, Cheryl Pellerin reported.

He added U.K. will lead in Estonia, Germany in Lithuania and Canada in Latvia — a strategy that will add 4,000 NATO troops in the region on a rotational basis, Pellerin quoted.

Obama further said the additional U.S. armored brigade will be stationed through Europe with 4,000 more U.S. troops, DoD News stated.

A team of the Transportation Security Agency and American Airlines will install new screening technology at select facilities nationwide in the fall.

TSA said Tuesday the team will establish new automated security screening lanes and computed tomography scanners in an effort to meet security efficiency targets at the Chicago O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Miami international airports.

“Our foremost priority is the security of the traveling public … to ensure that we remain up-to-date in an evolving threat environment, TSA continues to test and deploy state-of-the-art technologies,” said Peter Neffenger, TSA administrator.

“Our responsibility is to keep passengers safe but also moving through security,” he added.

TSA noted the team will install automated belts to drag bags into the X-ray scanners, property bins larger than ones found at regular screening lanes, Radio Frequency Identification tags attached to each bin and cameras to capture photos of the outside of the bag.

The agency added the CT technology was designed to help address wait time at screening lanes and potentially provide passengers an option to have liquids, gels, aerosols and laptops in carry-on bags at all times.

TSA will also collaborate with vendors, airlines, airports and the counter-terrorism community to roll out additional automated checkpoint lanes as part of its mission to incorporate automated security checkpoint lanes at all U.S. airports.

Robert Brock, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, has joined the Kansas Transportation Department as that agency’s first unmanned aircraft systems director, The Wichita Eagle reported Tuesday.

Jerry Siebenmark writes the 22-year Air Force veteran previously held responsibilities for intelligence and special operations units that use drones.

Brock will work to educate individuals and companies on the safe operation of UAS and on the privacy implications of drone use as well as help drive the growth of drone-related businesses in the state, the report said.

Siebenmark reports that Brock will be based in KDOT’s headquarters in Topeka and at Kansas State University Polytechnic in Salina and report to Merrill Atwater, Kansas’ director of aviation.

Prior to his role at the state of Kansas, Brock served as a business-to-business promoter, platform instructor and mentor at Global Leadership Summit.

He previously served as a personnel and program manager at the Air Force and has worked with the 3rd Special Operations Squadron and National Reconnaissance Office.

The U.S. Air Force could determine an approval for initial operating capability of the service branch’s Lockheed Martin-built F-35A aircraft within the August-to-December window, Breaking Defense reported Thursday.

Colin Clark writes Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, has said he does not see a yellow flag or red flag in the program and noted that the F-35A had a “really exceptional” mission-capable rate during a Mountain Home Air Force Base engagement in June.

Defense News reported Friday Lockheed officials have also confirmed the 2.0.2 version of the Autonomic Logistics Information System will be ready in October or November.

“We’ve deployed with the current software we had and it worked,” said Carlisle.

Carlisle added Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, can approve an IOC prior to delivery of Lockheed’s ALIS logistics system.

The U.S. Navy plans to build the second Virginia-class nuclear submarine in 2021 in order to meet operational demand by 2020s, Breaking Defense reported Friday.

Studies done by the Navy indicate General Dynamics’ Electric Boat subsidiary and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division can continue to build two Virginia-class submarines per year even if construction work on the first Ohio Replacement Program submarine kicks off in 2021, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. writes.

Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley, program executive officer for submarines at the service branch, said at a Center for Strategic & International Studies event, that the military branch believes that after 2021, shipbuilders would be provided with additional facilities to build two Virginias on an annual basis and that the plan on the Virginia program “won’t detract from the construction of that first Ohio Replacement hull.”

The report said the service branch is projected to operate below the requirement of 48 attack submarines as some of that vessels approach retirement by 2029.

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Scott Jerabek, director of theater engagement (J7) at the U.S. Southern Command, has been appointed to succeed Maj. Gen. John Horner as deputy director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, announced Jerabek’s new assignment in a Defense Department release published Friday.

Jerabek will be responsible for the agency that works with military service branches and combatant commanders to lock down, monitor and destroy weapons of mass destruction.

He has directed Southcom’s J7 operations and theater security cooperation portfolio since July 2014 after one year as commander of the Navy Warfare Development Command.

The more than 37-year Navy veteran also previously served as the branch’s senior representative at the Air Tactical Operation Center of the Joint Task Force-Southwest Asia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during Operation Southern Watch, commodore of the Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 1 in San Diego and director of the Navy Element at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

He also worked as commanding officer of the U.S. Forces Japan Detachment as well as chief of staff of U.S. Forces Japan during Operation Tomodachi.

His sea assignments include roles as gunnery officer, legal officer and damage control assistant aboard the USS Gray and as turret II officer and nuclear weapons security officer on the USS Missouri.