The Air Force Research Laboratory has developed an environmentally controlled enclosure that can heat up an entire aircraft at temperatures upwards of 180 degrees Fahrenheit to eliminate approximately 99.9 percent of biological contaminants.

Wendy Goodson, AFRL biological materials team lead, supported the test and validation of the Joint Biological Agent Decontamination System designed to mitigate personnel exposure risks of aircraft surface contaminant, the U.S. Air Force said Sunday.

“Microorganisms can eat away at surface materials, and some of the worst areas affected are tight, hard-to-reach areas that maintainers have difficulty disinfecting,” noted Goodson.

The service branch added JBADS offers full decontamination of an aircraft in hours which reduces manpower and work hours spent using traditional systems that could take up to a few days.

Air Force also said it uses an estimated $1.2 billion on microbiologically influenced corrosion along with the biofuel fouling, storage tank, structure cleaning and other preventative and maintenance costs of warfighters.

The Department of Homeland Security‘s office of the inspector general has said the Transportation Security Administration lacks oversight and guidance over the Transportation Worker Identification Credentials program’s background check process.

A DHS OIG report published Sept. 1 stated the TWIC program office focuses more on customer service than the program’s effectiveness and the program office lacks authority over other TSA offices that support the TWIC program.

The report noted TSA has issued more than 3.5 million biometric credentials to give individuals unescorted access to secure areas of U.S. maritime facilities and vessels.

Auditors said TWIC program’s security threat assessment does not use fraud detection techniques to complete the background check and adjudicators may grant credentials despite “questionable circumstances.”

The background check and terrorism vetting processes also lack quality assurance and internal control procedures, the report stated.

DHS OIG called on TSA’s assistant administrator of the office of intelligence and analysis to identify a coordinating body that will provide guidance and leadership across all security threat assessment processes and supporting offices.

The TSA assistant administrator should also develop and implement internal controls and quality assurance procedures that will address risks within security threat assessment processes, DHS OIG said.

The report also recommended for TSA to align TWIC performance metrics with program objectives; review TWIC security threat assessment guidance; and establish measurable and comparable criteria to help select the best criminal and immigration recurrent vetting option.

Gen. David Goldfein, the new U.S. Air Force chief of staff, has highlighted command and control, joint leaders development and squadron composition review as his top three objectives at the military’s air component, Air Force Times reported Monday.

Valerie Insinna writes the Air Force’s new top general is also set to announce three generals who will be responsible for each of those goals at the upcoming Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

Goldfein told a conference of the National Guard Association of the United States that he intends to release short papers to shed light on those priorities based on insights from the Air Force’s strategic master plan and Air Superiority 2030 flight plan, according to the report.

“My intent is to pull these forward, and to focus on them the next four years,” he told the event, Air Force Times reports.

Goldfein suggested that the use of open-architecture systems could aid in the improvement of command and control platforms, Insinna reports.

He also said the service will review the composition of its squadron units and allow civilians or contractors a larger role in the new squadron, the report says.

The Air Force also needs to change the way it builds up joint leaders in order to help counter the threats from other nations and extremist groups, according to the report.

The Justice Department has initiated efforts to evaluate the risks posed by the adoption of internet-connected devices to national security, Defense One reported Thursday.

Patrick Tucker writes John Carlin, U.S. assistant attorney general for national security at DOJ, said that his division has formed a new group that aims to understand how threat actors could exploit the Internet of Things in terrorism and other nefarious activities.

“We made that mistake once when we moved all of our data, when we digitally connected it, and didn’t focus on how… terrorists and spies could exploit it,” Carlin told attendees of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s annual summit.

“We can’t do that again when it comes to the Internet of Things, actual missiles, trucks and cars,” he added, according to the report.