Maj. Gen. Carl Mundy III, former deputy commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, has taken a new role as commander of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, Military Times reported Wednesday.

Charlsy Panzino writes Mundy took over the post from Maj. Gen. Joseph Osterman, who will serve as deputy commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, during a ceremony held Tuesday at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Mundy, a 33-year Marine Corps veteran and an infantry officer, served as a battalion commander and chief of a Marine expeditionary unit during his deployment to Iraq.

The Defense Superior Service Medal recipient previously worked as deputy commanding general of I Marine expeditionary force in California and commander of the 5th Marine expeditionary brigade at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

He also served in other staff assignments with the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, Marine Corps office of legislative affairs and the Marine Corps recruit depot in South Carolina.

The U.S. Air Force has established its first remotely piloted aircraft course for electronic combat officers through a collaboration between the 57th Wing, 432nd Wing, 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing and the 26th Weapons Squadron.

The Air Force said Wednesday the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper course works to address a demand to have a certified ECO instruction program for both types of squadrons brought by regulations that dictated every wing or squadron weapons and tactics office have graduated and certified electronic combat pilots.

The 15-day three-phase course covers threat jamming preparation and planning functions, RPA integration into satellite communications during simulated flights and a hands-on tactic, technique and procedure execution in support of airborne RPA flight operations.

Creech and Nellis Air Force Bases have graduated a beta class of five airmen that learned RPA’s use of the electromagnetic spectrum including area of operation non-kinetic threats, radio communications, GPS, remote-split operations and Link 16.

The U.S. Navy and its counterpart in South Korea will continue to jointly conduct oceanographic activities under an extended memorandum of agreement between the two services.

U.S. Navy Oceanographer Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet signed the agreement’s extension to let both countries collaborate on military surveys and oceanographic analysis work, process hydrographic and geo-acoustic data and share information, the Navy said Wednesday.

“The data we collect and share will not only allow us to continue to support multiple naval assets in the region and support our anti-submarine warfare mission, but will help to ensure safety of navigation for our assets operating in the Republic of Korea’s coastal waters,” Gallaudet said.

The Navy Oceanographer advises the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations on oceanography, meteorology, hydrography, precise time, climate change, the Arctic, maritime domain and geospatial and celestial referencing issues.

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.