Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation at the U.S. Marine Corps, said in his speech at the Defense Unmanned Systems conference that the service branch’s newest unmanned aerial vehicle has performed its first combat mission, Seapower Magazine reported Wednesday.

Otto Kreisher writes an anonymous source from the Defense Department told Seapower Magazine that the MQ-21A Blackjack combat mission occurred in the Middle East.

Davis noted that Blackjack UAVs have been deployed in two locations including the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit that sails with the USS Wasp-led amphibious ready group.

He added the drone is built to support multiple missions, unlike most of the Marine UAVs that only perform ISR operations, and that the service branch wants its future unmanned aircraft to have the capacity to operate from ships and expeditionary land bases.

The RQ-21A UAV, manufactured by Boeing‘s Insitu subsidiary, is designed to offer persistent maritime and land-based tactical reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition data collection and dissemination capacity to warfighters.

Congress appropriated $53 billion in total funds to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence‘s National Intelligence Program during fiscal year 2016.

ODNI said Friday it will not disclose any “subsidiary information” on the NIP budget in order to protect national security.

The 2016 appropriated figure is higher than the $50.4 billion the agency requested for fiscal 2016 NIP-related activities.

NIP was established to support intelligence operations by various federal departments and the Central Intelligence Agency in efforts to protect the U.S. against outside threats.

The U.S. Army has appointed Brig. Gen. Robert Marion, head of the program executive office for aviation at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama since January 2014, as the military service’s deputy for acquisition and systems management.

Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley announced Marion’s new assignment in a Defense Department release published Friday.

Marion has led the procurement of aircraft weapon systems and equipment across the Army as well as supervised more than 3,000 military, government civilian and contractor employees during his tenure as aviation program executive officer.

He started his military career as an assignment officer within the acquisition management branch of the Army Personnel Command.

After that, he was assigned to the roles of assistant project manager for UH-60 Black Hawk A/L production and fielding at the Aviation and Missile Command, product manager for Black Hawk modernization and Comanche interoperability and chief of the acquisition management branch at the Army Human Resources Command.

Marion also worked in the theater high-altitude air defense battle management and weapons systems engineering, integration and test offices at Lockheed Martin‘s space systems segment as part of the Army’s Training With Industry program as well as held the position of joint commander at the Defense Contract Management Agency–Boeing Mesa.

The U.S. Navy has begun to draft a research and development plan that seeks to build up technology capabilities that the service branch would use in the 2045 battlespace, USNI News reported Wednesday.

Sam LaGrone writes Vice Adm. David Johnson, principal military deputy to the Navy’s chief weapons buyer, said at the AUVSI Unmanned System Defense conference Tuesday the R&D plan is part of the military’s branch efforts to maintain and increase maritime superiority and technological edge over potential adversaries.

He told event attendees that the plan seeks to expedite development of novel technology platforms in six areas that include electromagnetic naval warfare, autonomous systems and materials, LaGrone reports.

The R&D strategy seeks to explore basic principles “like providing stealth and ensuring resilient high bandwidth communications and describing a number critical and specific long-term battlespace capabilities like autonomous, cognitive exploitation and decision support, all-domain energy harvesting, decoys and confusion generation technologies,” Johnson added.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California) has said the U.S. Air Force should accelerate the development and acquisition of unmanned aerial systems to counter threats posed by hostile actors that use commercial UAS, Air Force Times reported Thursday.

Matthew Schehl writes Hunter asked Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James to provide details on the service branch’s efforts to deploy counter-UAS technology following the explosion of a drone that was launched by the Islamic State militant group and killed two coalition troops.

“Given this threat, it is important that we continue prioritizing the development and deployment of counter UAS technology, including directed energy, to supplement advances on kinetic targeting,” Hunter told James in a letter.

“This is especially necessary given the accessibility and affordability of UAS in the commercial marketplace and the relative ease of configuring explosives to unmanned platforms,” he added.

Air Force officials said they will respond directly to Hunter once they officially receive his letter, the report stated.