The report, which was obtained by Bloomberg News, said soldiers complained of headaches, eyestrain and nausea, with 80% of those who experienced discomfort noting that their symptoms started after less than three hours of using the goggles.

Nickolas Guertin, director of DoD’s Operation Test and Evaluation, said in the report obtained by Bloomberg that those issues must be addressed, but he didn’t deem the device a failure. The Army should “prioritize improvements” before a wider fielding to reduce the “physical discomfort of users,” Guertin said, according to Bloomberg.

The report, which was not made public, was marked as “Controlled Unclassified Information.”

The exercise chronicled in the report was conducted in May and June, although service members have been testing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, for the last few years. In 2020, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston reviewed the systems as soldiers tested out the goggles in drills, such as clearing rooms.

The appeal of the goggles, Army leaders shared at the time, is that they give low-level leaders the ability to easily run new soldiers through various battle drills, building up small unit skillsets.

The goggles are supposed to provide a “heads-up display” for ground troops, similar to those utilized by fighter pilots.

Guertin noted in the report’s summary that improvements are needed with the goggle’s low-light sensors, display clarity, field of vision and other essential functions, according to Bloomberg. Guertin also noted that the latest model of the goggles — a customized-version of Microsoft’s HoloLens — allowed for “enhanced navigation and coordination of unit movements.”

The Army has proposed spending upwards of $420 million on the program this fiscal year and estimated that it may spend around $22 billion on the goggles over the next decade, citing costs including spare parts and support services, Bloomberg reported.

But while Army budgets and estimates view these goggles in a positive light, the report shows that soldiers may not be as infatuated with the goggles as planners are.

The level at which soldiers accepted the goggles “remains low,” the report showed, and both soldiers and leaders don’t think the goggles “contribute to their ability to complete their mission.”

While Microsoft was not given a copy of the Pentagon’s test results, the technology company told Bloomberg in a statement that “our close collaboration with the Army has enabled us to quickly build” and adjust the goggles “to develop a transformational platform that will deliver enhanced soldier safety and effectiveness. We are moving forward with the production and delivery of the initial set.”

The Army’s assistant secretary for acquisition, Doug Bush, said the Army “is fully aware” of concerns from the testing office and adjusting the program’s schedule “to allow time to develop solutions to the issues identified,” Bloomberg reported.

Despite these results, however, Bush gave the Army the green light to begin accepting the initial 5,000 sets of goggles produced that had been put on hold.

No U.S. or partnered troops were killed or injured in the attack, and the strike did not result in any equipment or structural damage.

“This evening at approximately 10:12 p.m. local time in Syria, a 107mm rocket attack targeting Coalition Forces near the Rumalyn Landing Zone failed,” CENTCOM officials said. “Additional rockets were found at the launch origin site.”

While CENTCOM officials did not name a group believed to be behind the attack, American troops in Syria — approximately 900 are in the country — have been heavily involved in recent months in back-and-forth strikes against the Islamic State.

U.S. forces killed three senior Islamic State leaders in two separate strikes on Oct. 6, one of which involved a rare ground raid in northeastern Syria, a region currently controlled by the Syrian regime, U.S. officials told the Associated Press.

Killed in the raid near the village of Qamishli, which U.S. officials revealed was conducted by U.S. special operations forces, was Rakkan Wahid al-Shammri, an IS official responsible for weapons smuggling.

No U.S. troops were injured in the raid, CENTCOM officials said.

In the second attack that day, the U.S. carried out an airstrike in northern Syria, killing Abu Ala, the second-in-command for the terrorist organization in Syria. Also killed was Abu Mu’ad al Qahtani, officials said, another senior IS leader.

Saturday’s attack is currently under investigation.

The Aug. 15 transfer of authority means that the U.S. military’s newest branch now has control of the Wideband Global SATCOM and Defense Satellite Communications System’s fleet of satellites, which share data across the armed services, the State Department and even serve the White House.

“This transfer will mark the first time all Department of Defense military satellite communication functions have been consolidated under a single military service,” the Space Force said in a news release.

Included in the transfer was also about $78 million moved to the Space Force’s 2022 budget to cover the cost of operating five satellite operation centers and four regional support centers that were previously under Army control.

About 500 military and civilian personnel from the Army’s Space Delta 8 unit will also transfer over to Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado.

Delta 8 is responsible for not only operating the main military communications network but also the GPS constellation and other systems, including those used to provide Secret-level global communications capabilities to the U.S. military and with allies such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The Army will, however, maintain its 1st Space Brigade, based at Fort Carson, Colorado. The brigade uses space operations to support missions across the globe.

Approved by the Pentagon last year, this move represents the DoD’s ongoing effort to consolidate space programs under the Space Force. However, the head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler said the Army will not be completely removing itself from the U.S.’s efforts in Space.

“Space is a joint team sport,” Karbler said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium this August. “Each service with their unique mission sets must leverage the space domain and apply it to service-specific execution, command and control.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Saltzman will be the second person to serve as the Space Force’s top officer since the service was created in December 2019. He would succeed Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, who is set to retire after 35 years of service in the Air Force and nearly three in the Space Force.

Raymond strongly supported Saltzman’s selection as his successor, according to SpaceNews, which first reported the pick on Thursday.

Other candidates for the position included Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, who runs the Space Force’s ops branch, and Lt. Gen. John Shaw, the second-highest officer at the Pentagon’s U.S. Space Command.

Saltzman has recently become the go-to person for high-level military planning initiatives, from the Air Force’s enterprise study of multidomain command and control in 2017 to serving as the Space Force’s first deputy chief for space, cyber and nuclear operations.

A proud Boston University graduate, he commissioned into the Air Force in 1991 as a nuclear missile operator before switching to military space jobs. Later, he took on higher-level programs and planning positions as well as a yearlong tour as deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command — the first non-flyer to hold the post.

Along the way, Saltzman has cultivated a reputation as an articulate, big-picture thinker who is leading the way in breaking down the Pentagon’s most entrenched hurdles to joint operations.

“He has reinforced all of the space and cyber functions across the different divisions in the Combined Air Operations Center by elevating their stature within the divisions to make sure those pieces are also integrated into everything we do,” Air Force Col. Byron Pompa, AFCENT’s air, space and information operations director, said in a 2020 press release.

Since becoming the Space Force ops boss in August 2020, Saltzman has tackled the broad questions behind space warfare: How should the service define its readiness, and how can it work seamlessly with other parts of the military behemoth?

The Space Force now has nearly 16,000 guardians and civilians. They either wear the service’s uniform or are assigned from other branches and handle U.S. military satellites and radars for missions like GPS, communication, missile warning and surveillance as part of the Department of the Air Force.

It was largely formed out of the former Air Force Space Command, and includes rocket launch bases in California and Florida, plus a host of other installations in Colorado and around the globe.

The service has taken on a leading role in naming and shaming foreign actors for what it sees as bad behavior on orbit, such as foreign spying on others’ systems or launching anti-satellite missiles that can spread damaging debris across the cosmos.

“Protecting and defending our space-based capabilities and defending our joint force from irresponsible or hostile use of space-based capabilities is the reason that your Space Force was established,” Saltzman said at the 2022 GEOINT Symposium.

He’s kept an eye on possible lessons learned from Russia’s war on Ukraine, in which commercial satellite constellations are playing a key role for intelligence-gathering and public transparency despite Russian cyber attacks.

“If you think the only way to dismantle space capabilities is by shooting down satellites, you’re missing the bigger picture … as these cyber attacks are on ground networks,” Saltzman told reporters in May.

Two key challenges will be to advocate for a growing military space budget to lawmakers who are wary of bureaucratic bloat, and to convince the American public of the merits of their newest military branch.

He’ll also represent the service as it tries to make its own mark on issues from troop recruitment and retention to a nontraditional approach to Guard and Reserve components.

The Space Force is working through the details of bringing the Space Development Agency under its roof to fast-track a vast constellation of commercial satellites for military use, and taking on parts of the Navy and Army’s space enterprises, among other initiatives.

Saltzman must go before the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of a confirmation vote by the full chamber. A Space Force spokesman told Air Force Times on Wednesday that a change of command could come toward the end of 2022.

U.S. Central Command’s boss, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., said last year that the proliferation of small, cheap drones is the “most concerning tactical development” since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq.

Both the Army and the Air Force have been working to bolster their counter-SUAS efforts, with the Air Force’s 386th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron developing seminars to provide guidance on how to handle threats from such drones.

“The seminars are a one-on-one opportunity for general leadership to understand what our capabilities are,” Staff Sgt. Daniel Butts, the NCO in charge of counter-SUAS for the 386th ESFS, said in an Air Force press release. “These systems provide real time video or a picture and now leadership has a better understanding of what others could use it for.”

“We call it the ‘kill chain’….detect, track, identify and defeat,” Butts said. “The main thing is detecting so we’re able to see it and track it. Once we’re able to track it, we’re going to identify it, which is key to helping us understand if it’s hostile or not and to what extent. Then we can defeat it.”

The training takes place as U.S. forces in Iraq still face threats from so-called “suicide drones,” according to the U.S.-led coalition there.

On Monday, two armed drones were shot down as they headed toward a facility housing U.S. advisors at Baghdad airport. Then on Tuesday, two explosives-laden drones targeting an Iraqi military base housing U.S. troops in western Anbar province were again downed by base air defenses.

While the U.S. military officially ended its combat mission in Iraq in December, around 2,500 troops will remain in-country in an advisory role.