U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Brian Lein has been assigned to the roles of chief of the force’s Medical Corps organization plus commanding general for the Medical Department Center and School.

The Army chief of staff announced on Friday Lein’s appointment and other general officer assignments.

Lein previously served as deputy surgeon general and deputy commanding general for operations of the Army Medical Command, command of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and Evans Army Community Hospital and command surgeon of ISAF Joint Command, US Army Forces Command, Coalition Forces Land Component Command/Third Army and 4th Infantry Division.

He currently serves as the commanding general of the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick.

The Army Medical Department Center and School forms the service’s medical organization, tactics, doctrine and equipment, and provides training to the Army’s medical personnel.

Army Medical Corps is one of six corps of medical specialists that constitute the U.S. Army Medical Department.

The Defense Manpower Data Center has released new figures that show the U.S. Army’s number of active duty soldiers declined by 16,548 last year in a size roughly equivalent to three brigades, Army Times reported Saturday.

Jim Tice writes about 2,600 soldiers who left active service in March have yet to be replaced and active force end-strength hit an all-time low since before World War II.

The demographics indicate there are 479,172 soldiers on active duty and 548,024 reserve forces as of April 1, according to the report.

The Army is targeting an end-strength of 475,000 active-duty soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2016 and could go down to 460,000 in 2017 and 450,000 in 2018 without congressional or Pentagon action, according to the report.

John Hale, chief of the Defense Information Systems Agency‘s cloud portfolio, has said commercial providers will maintain and operate DISA’s future milCloud 2.0 private cloud platform on Defense Department property with access only available to DoD data and users.

Hale told an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association symposium audience that DISA plans to continue hosting in traditional data centers despite cloud computing enhancements, according to a DISA release published Wednesday.

“There is always going to be the need for traditional hosting in a DoD data center,” said Hale.

“There are certain workloads that just do not fit well in a virtualized or cloud model.”

DISA added milCloud 2.0 will also differ from milCloud 1.0 in how industry partners will be paid as providers will receive payment for consumption of service instead of on a monthly basis.

The first of two phases of milCloud 2.0’s deployment will occur later this year with the placement of a commercial provider into a few data centers under phase one.

Phase two includes delivery of services on classified and unclassified networks and will involve more data centers and workload, DISA added.

MilCloud 2.0 will also work to feature a proposed Secure Cloud Computing Architecture to enhance access security previously offered by cloud access points, DISA noted.

The agency published a draft functional requirements document for the proposed SCCA framework which will be open for industry and DoD comments through May 31.