U.S. Army Secretary Eric Fanning has discussed his priorities for the service branch with soldiers, staff members and civilian employees at his inaugural town hall meeting, the Army reported Thursday.

Fanning told event attendees on Tuesday at the Pentagon that he expects the newly established “rapid capability office” to help advance Army readiness in the areas of electronic and cyber warfare, survivability and position navigation timing as well as give the service branch a technological edge over potential adversaries.

“We’re not going to use this office to build a new helicopter,” Fanning said.

“We’re going to use this office because some technology on the helicopter isn’t giving us the edge over the adversary we thought it was going to be.”

He said he also aims for the military branch to address behavioral health and sexual assault issues among uniformed personnel.

Fanning also mentioned the Keris Strike joint exercise in Malaysia and his plans to work with Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark Milley to streamline communications in order to facilitate the decision-making process within the Army headquarters.

Fanning was inducted into office in May six months after he was nominated by President Barack Obama for the post.

The U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence has hosted the 2016 edition of the Cyber Quest event to host experiments designed to address a warfighting challenge to conduct space, cyber electromagnetic operations and maintain communications.

The Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center said Aug. 16 the experiment held throughout June to July brought together industry, academia and other Army organizations that worked to help provide CEMA situational understanding to commanders.

“As the Army has looked at this space, they have identified cyber electromagnetic requirements and expeditionary mission command requirements as two of the eight top priorities,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, CCoE commanding general.

CERDEC noted that each of the different battle staff elements have visualized respective particular warfighting function under a “User Defined Operational Picture” to provide commanders a holistic view of the CEMA environment.

Col. Timothy Presby, training and doctrine command capability manager, added cyber situational understanding was revealed by a capability-based assessment as the number one gap of the Army’s mission command and cyberspace operational needs.

The Defense Science Board has conducted a 2016 summer study on autonomy that suggests autonomous technology can provide various operational advantages to a wide array of Defense Department missions.

DSB outlined in a June 2016 report three sets of recommendations to help DoD expand the use of self-operating platforms for the military, increase the operational pull for such technology and mature underlying systems for autonomy.

DoD should work to identify methods to address autonomous system engineering, design, acquisition and security challenges as well as establish an autonomy-literate workforce and create new test, modeling and simulation frameworks, according to the board.

The board also recommended that DoD consider deployment of autonomous agents to gather cyber threat intelligence, unmanned undersea vehicles that can function as sea mine countermeasures and organic tactical unmanned aircraft designed to support ground forces.

The department should also adopt an early warning system to study global social movements, intrusion detection tools to secure Internet of Things and autonomous cyber resilience technology for integration into military vehicle systems, the report added.

DSB identified two potential key benefits of autonomy for DoD.

“First, autonomy can increase decision speed, enabling the U.S. to act inside an adversary’s operations cycle.”

“Secondly, ongoing rapid transition of autonomy into warfighting capabilities is vital if the U.S. is to sustain military advantage.”

The U.S. Army has started to explore the potential role of cyber teams in support of maneuver commanders’ efforts to gain situational data within an information environment.

The 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team incorporated cyber effects during a recent rotation at Fort Irwin’s National Training Center in late July and August as part of the Cyber Support to Corps and Below pilot program, the Army said Wednesday.

NTC maintains mock cities and villages across mountains and deserts in an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.

Lt. Col. Jon Burnett Burnett, chief of Army Cyber Command’s CSCB, said the CSCB experiments demonstrated that maneuver commanders could gain an advantage in cyberspace.

Maj. Deonand Singh, operations officer for the 781st Military Intelligence Battalion, added that the cyber team carried out activities against an opposing force during this rotation.

The expeditionary team first surveyed the training scenario’s information environment to view the adversary’s activities and transmitted data to an analytical cell for actionable intelligence.

The U.S. has reached an agreement with Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to increase defense cooperation in order to ensure security in the Baltic region amid the evolving security environment there.

The U.S. and the three Baltic States plan to hold regular meetings to discuss national resilience, border security, maritime, ground and aerial defense, transnational threats and law enforcement issues under the joint declaration, the White House said in a news release published Tuesday.

The Baltic States also agreed to set aside budget for defense spending and align the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative and other U.S.-backed deterrence and security measures in support of NATO’s efforts to build up its defense posture and promote regional and national security.

The four countries also plan to expand their cooperation in the areas of cyber defense, critical infrastructure and energy security under the declaration.

The countries reaffirmed their strategic alliance during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Latvia.