The Biden administration has called on Chinese company ByteDance to divest its stakes in TikTok and warned of a possible ban of the social media platform if it fails to do so, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The Department of the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. made the demand for the sale of stakes in the video-sharing app, according to sources cited by WSJ.

TikTok said a possible divestment of the platform would not address national security risks.

“The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing,” Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said in a statement.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to appear next week before House Energy and Commerce Committee members to field questions from lawmakers on security issues related to the app, according to the report.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a new rule to connect satellites with mobile devices to enable 5G communications in remote and underserved areas.

FCC said Thursday it aims to establish a framework for delivering space-based services to smartphone users to address wireless coverage gaps in internet-denied communities.

The commission proposes authorizing satellite operators to manage space stations on a licensed radio frequency spectrum allocated to terrestrial service providers. 

Non-geostationary orbit satellite operators may also apply for FCC authorization to access the terrestrial spectrum if certain requirements are met.

Rick Lober, vice president for defense programs at Hughes Network Systems, said in a Breaking Defense report that the proposed rule would help address the Department of Defense’s “terminal problem, that they’ve been living with for a lot of years, of very expensive terminals that are all proprietary systems.”

However, Lober noted that there are security concerns about enabling direct satellite-to-phone services for combat operations because the frequencies used by mobile devices are “open to jamming.”

Hughes is working with DISH Wireless to provide a cyber-protected 5G network for U.S. Navy personnel at Whidbey Island Naval Station.

The U.S. Navy has received the final unit of a Raytheon Technologies-built navigation and precision approach and landing system that guides military aircraft onto naval carriers and amphibious assault ships.

The valedictory delivery of the Joint Precision Approach and Landing Systems comes less than two years after the Navy declared initial operational capability for the platform to help F-35C units land on aircraft carriers in all weather conditions and mission environments, Naval Air Systems Command said Thursday.

“This is a significant milestone for the JPALS team, and highlights the incredible efforts of hundreds of our teammates over the past decade who developed and now have fully delivered these critical systems that our Warfighters and International Partners need,” said Capt. Kevin Watkins, program manager of Naval Air Traffic Management Systems Program Office.

Raytheon received a four-year, $234.6M contract in May 2019 to begin the low-rate initial production of the GPS-based aircraft landing system.

JPALS is installed on all U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships and is used to support the F-35 aircraft fleet of the British and Italian navies.

In February, the Japanese navy ordered JPALS for its JS Izumo aircraft carrier.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said the Department of Defense is set to kick off the first round of experiments in 2023 as part of the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, an initiative that seeks to address capability gaps and speed up the delivery of emerging technologies to warfighters, Breaking Defense reported Thursday.

The department “last year spent a lot of time planning out the details of the exercise,” Shyu, a 2023 Wash100 winner, said at a conference on Wednesday. 

“And this year, we finally got the money. We’re going to be off and running, literally demonstrating these prototypes in a contested environment. So it…can’t just work in a lab. It’s got to work in a real environment. And that’s exactly what we’re focusing on,” she added.

The Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal year 2024 includes $687 million for RDER, which Shyu introduced as an experimentation campaign in 2021. She noted that her office has carried out three sprints with a focus on joint command and control and resilient communications.

Shyu will serve as one of the keynote speakers at the Potomac Officers Club’s 9th Annual Defense Research and Development Summit. Click here to register for the in-person event on March 23 to learn more about DOD’s critical technologies, R&D priorities, mission needs and global defense concerns.