The Department of Homeland Security science and technology directorate has collaborated with Canadian organizations to test emergency response technologies and protocols along the Michigan and Ontario border.

DHS said Tuesday the fourth leg of the Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiments at the Blue Water Bridge crossing will work to test cross-border broadband and wireless networks, electrocardiogram tracing, information sharing and live video during a simulated emergency scenario.

The department noted that its partners in CAUSE IV are Defense Research and Development Canada’s Center for Security Science, Public Safety Canada and several provincial, municipal and non-government organizations.

The exercise began Tuesday and will continue through April 28.

CAUSE builds on the U.S.-Canadian Beyond the Border Action Plan that seeks to to connect, test and demonstrate the two countries’ technologies, DHS said.

The House Armed Services Committee’s defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2017 would hold back 50 percent of funds allocated for the Patriot missile defense system until the U.S. Army comes up with a plan to replace the system’s radar, Defense News reported Monday.

Jen Judson writes HASC would also require the service branch’s chief and secretary to assess whether the acquisition of a new radar would be feasible through the Army Rapid Capabilities office as well as prepare the terms of the competition for the procurement of the new radar.

According to Defense News, the military branch is set to conduct a competition for the new radar that would be integrated with its Integrated Air and Missile Defense platform.

Raytheon‘s gallium nitride active electronically scanned array radar and Lockheed Martin‘s Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System radar are potential options for the new radar, Judson writes.

Sydney Freedberg Jr. also reported for Breaking Defense that the HASC tactical air-land forces subcommittee’s markup of the 2017 defense policy bill would also allocate $5 million in additional funding for the evaluation of the Army’s ground-based anti-ship missiles.

The proposed legislation would also require a study designed to assess the installation of the Mark 41 Vertical Launch System onboard the U.S. Navy’s amphibious ships and request for $10 million in additional funding to support research and development work on land- and sea-based electromagnetic railguns, Freedberg reports.

Rear Adm. David Lane, former U.S. Marine Corps medical officer and director of health services, has been appointed as the director for the Defense Health Agency‘s national capital region medical directorate.

NCR MD works to exercise authority, direction and control over the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, Joint Pathology Center and their subordinate clinics.

Lane currently serves as the director of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

Lane enlisted with the U.S. Navy in 1975 and has since remained on active duty and served on the medical staff at clinics including Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, Naval Hospital Bremerton, Naval Health Clinic Groton, Naval Medical Center San Diego, Naval Health Clinic Newport and the U.S. Naval Hospitals in Rota, Spain, and Okinawa, Japan.

He has been deployed to the field as a surgeon or medical adviser for the Marines and has participated in disaster relief missions in Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Indian Ocean, Indonesia and the Philippines.

He also joined the Order of Military Medical Merit, is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and is certified by the American Board of Family Medicine.

The four-decade veteran received numerous awards during his stint with the military including the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Henry Christian Award and several other personal awards.

Air Force Gen. David Goldfein, currently the service branch’s vice chief of staff, has been nominated to succeed the retiring Gen. Mark Welsh as chief of staff upon the scheduled completion of the latter’s four-year tenure July 1, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Goldfein became the Air Force’s second-ranked uniform officer in August 2015 after two years as director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Prior to Joint Staff, he led U.S. Air Forces Central Command in Southwest Asia for nearly two years and served in a two-year stint as director of operations for Air Combat Command before AFCENT.

Goldfein holds more than 4,200 flying hours as a command pilot.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said the availability of commercial encryption software “had and is having major, profound effects on our ability” to gather intelligence on the Islamic State organization, the Christian Science Monitor reported Monday.

Anne Mulrine writes Clapper made the remarks at a Monitor-hosted breakfast Monday in Washington.

Leaks of classified data from the National Security Agency by former contractor Edward Snowden have expedited the launch of advanced encryption tools by approximately seven years, he told reporters.

Clapper, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016, said the development of unbreakable encryption tools could impede law enforcement authorities’ search efforts against terrorist groups and could “give the terrorists a pass.”

Clapper also mentioned the need to identify the balance between how to “ensure privacy and security on an individual basis, as well as security in the context of what’s best for the collective good.”

The U.S. Army and members of a General Atomics team displayed prototypes of anti-drone weapons that look to meet what the service branch calls “unlimited-ammunition” goals at the Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment event.

Two types of weaponry — one using lasers and the other using electricity-propelled projectiles — were displayed throughout the event that lasted from April 11 to 22 at Fort Sill, Army said Friday.

Lt. Col. Jeff Erts, experiment and war games chief at the Fort Sill Fires Battle Lab, said the Army looks to address drone threats that report locations of friendly troops and call in large barrages of enemy fire.

“We don’t currently have anything to take those down. So we’re really working to put something in the field that can destroy these before they have a chance to report on our soldiers’ locations,” Erts added.

The Army said the first weapon demonstrated was a compact laser weapons system — mountable on a Stryker armored vehicle or on an independent vehicle — that melts plastic and burns through metal that can render drones flightless or damage its reconnaissance features.

General Atomics also displayed a railgun that uses bus bars, where electricity flows through to generate propelling force for a round built to travel at six times the speed of sound.