The North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Northern Command and Mexico’s air force have jointly monitored a simulated illegal flight as part of the Amalgam Eagle 16 exercise, DoD News reported Wednesday.

Lisa Ferdinando writes the aircraft flew from the U.S. to Mexico and back while U.S. government officials tracked its movement over Texas then turned the monitoring over to Mexico when the aircraft entered Mexican airspace and vice versa.

“Mexico shares a border with the U.S., a very critical border, so it is important to us to keep up good relations with our partners to the south,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Power, deputy division chief of NORAD operations support.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration also participated in the event, Ferdinando reported.

Amalgam Eagle is an annual exercise that seeks to build on the information sharing and response cooperation between U.S. and Mexico.

U.S. Army Africa has facilitated the demonstration of a language translation technology as part of the Central Accord 2016 exercise that included 1,000 military personnel from 14 countries.

The Army said July 21 the exercise in Libreville, Gabon tested seven language-translation devices which worked to collect nine hours of speech from 130 civilians and soldiers that spoke 16 dialects.

“This data set will be used for adapting existing speech recognition software and for testing results,” said Stephen LaRocca, team chief of the Army Research Laboratory’s multilingual computing and analysis branch.

“My ARL group expects to identify a method to be used repeatedly for adapting technologies for world languages, like French, Arabic and Spanish, for better performance when used by communities with their own language variations and their own accents,” LaRocca added.

LaRocca and Maj. Eddie Strimel, USARAF Field Assistance in Science and Technology adviser, led efforts to develop the technology which involves collection and analysis of speech from African soldiers.

The translation technology is one of two S&T prototypes from the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command that were demonstrated at the Central Accord exercise which ran from June 10 to June 24.

The Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center also tested a field-deployable solar panel system for power generation.

CERDEC has worked to develop the Rucksack Enhanced Portable Power System since 2010 to serve as a power source for soldiers’ electronic devices in remote locations.

FBI Director James Comey has selected John Adams, special agent in charge of the Norfolk division, and Robert Jones, the counterintelligence division’s deputy assistant director, to serve under new roles within the bureau beginning August.

FBI said Tuesday Adams has been appointed as assistant director of the directorate of intelligence and Jones will serve as assistant director of the weapons of mass destruction directorate.

Adams began his career as a special agent within the bureau in 1997 and has since held roles with the counterterrorism division, the national security branch of the Richmond division, the intelligence program of the Knoxville division and the strategic operations and intelligence analysis branch at FBI headquarters.

He was part of the investigations on the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya, the 2000 bombing of USS Cole in Yemen and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.

Jones has previously held several leadership positions with CTD, the Buffalo division’s Rochester Resident Agency and the Cleveland and Indianapolis divisions.

He also served as a member of the SWAT team with the Detroit division’s Kalamazoo Resident Agency and the legal attache to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Air Force Gen. Stephen Wilson, formerly lieutenant general and deputy commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, has taken on the role of vice chief of staff of the service branch and has been promoted to the rank of general.

The Air Force reported Monday Wilson also received his fourth star and succeeded Gen. David Goldfein, who was nominated in April as the service branch’s chief of staff, during a ceremony held Friday at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

Goldfein and Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, STRATCOM commander, respectively presided and hosted the ceremony.

Wilson became the 39th Air Force vice chief of staff a month after the Defense Department announced his nomination.

He is former chief of the Air Force Global Strike Command and has logged at least 4,500 flying hours and 680 combat hours as a command pilot.

The 35-year Air Force veteran has led intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, aerial command-and control, bomber and aeromedical evacuation missions in support of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa as well as Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom operations.