Other keynote speakers include Ellen Lord, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment; Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson; and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee.

Richardson will provide his perspective on what the Navy is doing in response to changes in U.S. defense strategy and a return to great power competition. David Larter, Defense News naval warfare reporter, will also moderate a discussion on the future of the fleet with the chairman of Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va.; and the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems, Vice Adm. William Merz among the participants.

Senior leadership from the other services are also well represented at this year’s conference. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. H. Stacy Clardy, military deputy for the office of the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness; Lt. Gen. Mark Kelly, Air Force deputy chief of staff of operations; and Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais, deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army combined arms center-training will join Defense News executive editor Jill Aitoro to discuss the challenges of maintaining mission readiness in an era of evolving threats.

For insights on Army Futures Command, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Gen. John Murray, the recently appointed head of Futures Command, will speak on the new command’s modernization priorities and strategy.

The conference will feature seven interactive panels with these and other leaders from across the defense community. These panels include:

• Mission Readiness: Adapting to the Evolving Threat: The services are rapidly modernizing and replacing old equipment. This panel will discuss how they are preparing forces to use these technologies against current and future threats.
• Army Systems Modernization: Priorities for the Futures Command: As the Army pushes ahead with rearranging its modernization priorities, what tactical efforts and platforms will fall under Futures Command?
• Multi-Domain Warfare: Defining Battlespace Operations: As modern technologies blur the boundaries between domains, effective communication and operation across services is becoming all the more important. This panel will explore the technological and operational requirements to enable multi-domain warfare. 
• International Partnership: Defense Investments in the Era of Global Instability: The U.S. and its allies are increasing their defense investments in response to the contemporary threat environment. What are the defense spending goals, and how do they respond to global and domestic security concerns. 
• Fleet 2030: The Vision of the Future Navy:  If 2017 was a year in crisis for the Navy and 2018 a year of recovery efforts, the next decade and beyond will shape a new path forward in system development and strategy. Hear from Navy leadership what needs to be done to right the proverbial ship. 
• Military Innovation: Leveraging and Countering Future Tech: What is the Pentagon doing to adopt and defend against emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonics, directed energy and cyberwarfare? Defense leaders will chime in.
• Autonomy and AI: Enabling Modern Warfare through Man and Machine:  Once only found in sci-fi, artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomy now stand as a central aspect to future warfighting capabilities and technologies. This panel will examine how services are adapting existing systems and investing in new technologies to enable smarter platforms and better situational awareness.  

More information on the agenda and how to register can be found here.

Mahlock replaces acting CIO and C4 deputy director Kenneth Bible, who held the CIO and C4 deputy director roles on an acting basis after Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall stepped down earlier this year.

Commissioned in December 1991 as an air traffic control officer, Mahlock has risen through the ranks serving as a company commander in Iraq, the J3 land operations lead and division executive officer at headquarters European Command. Most recently, she was commanding officer and the deputy director of plans, policies, and operations for Marine Air Control Group 18 in Okinawa, Japan.

Mahlock holds multiple higher degrees and certificates, including two masters degrees in Strategic Studies from the US Army War College and Naval Post Graduate School.

Mahlock was nominated for promotion to brigadier general in April, and is set to receive her first star in early August.

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Navy pilots from Carrier Air Wing One, placed aboard the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, are conducting integrated flight operations with French Naval Aviation aircraft this week.

Designed to increase readiness, demonstrate systems and mission interoperability, and strengthen NATO, the exercise tests pilots by practicing air warfare and strike techniques. Aircraft taking part in the exercise include the U.S. Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet and E-2D Hawkeye as well as France’s Dassault Rafale M fighters.

“France is our oldest ally and a vital partner in ensuring security and stability in the region and across the globe,” said Rear Adm. Gene Black, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 8. “The opportunity to integrate with French Naval Aviation helps us enhance our interoperability as we work to achieve common objectives.”

During the exercise, flight operations were conducted over France and in French and international waters in the Bay of Biscay.

“When we operate together we’re stronger than just the sum of our parts, and this training continues our investment in that cooperation,” Black said.

WASHINGTON ― Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army crossed the Atlantic Ocean to participate in the Swift Response 18 exercise to demonstrate the unit’s readiness and global response capability.

The unit took off on a 7,000-kilometer, nonstop flight from its home base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Lithuania and Latvia on June 8.

During the flight, a C-17 Globemaster aircraft completed one aerial fueling, before members of the 82nd and British Army paratroopers assigned to the 3rd Regiment Parachute Battalion descended on the drop zones in Rukla, Lithuania, and Ādaži, Latvia.

Airborne forces from nine nations participated in the exercise, including Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“By working with our NATO allies and partner nations, we are able to maintain and strengthen our interoperability,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Scott Pence, the commander in charge of the jump near Rukla. “Every time we do an exercises like this and work with the Lithuanians, the Polish or Latvians, we are able to test our communication systems, our signals, and also our battle tactics, techniques and procedures.”

After reaching the ground, the soldiers simulated securing an airfield, with Lithuanian soldiers playing the opposition force.

“This is the whole purpose of our training: to show our allies our readiness and show our command we are ready to go anytime, anywhere,” said Pvt. Daniel Guevara, a paratrooper assigned to 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

The Marine Corps has forged a contract with a start-up technology firm that makes sending snail-mail letters to soon-to-be Marines as easy as clicking “send” on an email.

Sandboxx Family Communications, based in Virginia, operates an app that allows family members to send custom letters to recruits at basic training, deployed units or any military address around the world.

Founded by Marine Corps veterans Sam Meek and retired Maj. Gen. Ray “E-Tool” Smith, Sandboxx technology aims to maintain connections among service members and their families, and to ensure that each service member is supported throughout their military career.

“Recruits perform at higher levels in boot camp when they receive encouraging letters and photos from loved ones at home. With Sandboxx web and mobile applications, users can type a message from their phone, add a photo and hit send. Sandboxx will securely print the message and deliver it to the recruit or Marine, usually on the next business day,” Smith said in a company press release.

Since its launch in November 2014, the app has been used to send more than 1 million letters to recruits and service members around the world.

Sandboxx also aims to help recruiters attract new prospects using demographic data and interest targeting through social media. And for recruits preparing to ship out to boot camp, the app comes with weekly training advice and workouts.

While at training, Sandboxx will send weekly updates to friends and family explaining what recruits are doing during boot camp. The company also helps to simplify travel for military graduation, connecting users with military travel experts to book trips.

Sandboxx currently has more than 400,000 users.

Marine Corps Sgt Adrian Willis, deployed with Combat Logistic Battalion 31, 31st Marine Expedition Unit, used the 3-D printer as part of a process otherwise known as additive manufacturing. Without a 3-D printing capability, the entire door assembly would have needed to be replaced, a more expensive and more time-consuming repair. Rather than waiting weeks for a replacement the bumper was printed, approved and installed within a few days.

The repair demonstrates the value that additive manufacturing technology brings to forward-deployed units. “I think 3-D printing is definitely the future ― it’s absolutely the direction the Marine Corps needs to be going,” Willis said.

“As a commander, my most important commodity is time,” according to Marine Corps Lt. Col. Richard Rusnok, the squadron’s commanding officer. “Although our supply personnel and logisticians do an outstanding job getting us parts, being able to rapidly make our own parts is a huge advantage.”

Building off the achievement with the F-35 part, the MEU’s explosive ordnance disposal team requested a modification part to function as a lens cap for a camera on an iRobot 310 small unmanned ground vehicle. Such a part did not exist at the time, but Willis and the 3-D printing team designed and produced the part, which is currently operational and protecting the robot’s lens.

The goal of the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N³) program is to “pursue a path to a safe, portable neural interface system capable of reading from and writing to multiple points in the brain at once,” according to Dr. Al Emondi, a program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

“We’re asking multidisciplinary teams of researchers to construct approaches that enable precise interaction with very small areas of the brain, without sacrificing signal resolution or introducing unacceptable latency into the N³ system.”

Although technologies that allow for high-quality brain system communications exist today, these invasive techniques are not a practical solution for ubiquitous man-machine communication.

Before soldiers can communicate with their R2-D2 units, DARPA scientists must overcome several significant scientific and engineering challenges.

The most significant challenge, according to a DARPA press release, will be overcoming the physics of scattering and weakening of signals as they pass through skin, skull and brain tissue. If this initial challenge is surmounted, the focus of the program will shift to developing algorithms for encoding and decoding neural signals, evaluating system safety through animal testing and ultimately asking human volunteers to test the technology.

While communication neurotechnology has a stronger foothold in science fiction than reality, Emondi believes devoting resources to the enterprise will spur breakthroughs. “Smart systems will significantly impact how our troops operate in the future, and now is the time to be thinking about what human-machine teaming will actually look like and how it might be accomplished,” he said.

“If we put the best scientists on this problem, we will disrupt current neural interface approaches and open the door to practical, high-performance interfaces.”

DARPA wants the four-year project to conclude with a demonstration of a bidirectional system being used to interface human-machine interactions with unmanned platforms, active cyber defense systems or other Department of Defense equipment.

Recognizing the potentially wide ethical, legal and social implications of such neurotechnology, DARPA is also asking independent legal and ethical experts to advise the program as N³ technologies mature.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel’s opinion on the deal is in stark contrast with President Donald Trump’s, who on the campaign trail referred to the agreement as the worst deal ever negotiated by the United States, Reuters reported.

The Iran deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, “addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran, so if the JCPOA goes away then we will have to have another way to deal with their nuclear weapons program,” Votel said.

If the U.S. was to jettison itself from the agreement, “there would be some concern, I think, about how we intended to address [the Iranian nuclear] threat if it was not being addressed through the JCPOA,” Votel said.

“Our approach is one of assuring our partners [and] maintaining deterrent capabilities in the region,” he added.

If the agreement was terminated, Votel conceded, Iran theoretically could pursue a nuclear weapon in a matter of months. “Right now I think it is in our interest” to stay in the agreement, he concluded.

Signaling that he has not changed his mind about the deal, Trump indicated Tuesday that Rex Tillerson would no longer be secretary of state, partly because he disagreed with the president on the Iran deal.

Tillerson is set to be replaced by CIA director Mike Pompeo, who is known for being hawkish on Iran.

Iranian officials have said they are not concerned about the status of the agreement.

“These changes and developments and firings in the Trump government are not new,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said. “What is important for the Islamic Republic is America’s policy in global affairs and their interaction with us, and we will adopt our own positions.”

WASHINGTON ― In a dramatic presentation Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the capabilities of Russian strategic forces, claiming the country now possesses nuclear weapons that are “invincible” and can defeat any missile defense system.

The Russian leader used part of his two-hour state of the union address to show off video and animations of Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat ICBM and its Kanyon nuclear undersea drone, as well as tease a potentially new nuclear-powered intercontinental cruise missile.

This speech comes several weeks before presidential elections in Russia, in which Putin is expected to win a fourth term in office.

During the presentation, which featured a video of weapons striking the U.S. homeland, Putin claimed these systems were pursued by Russia because the U.S. pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and developed increasingly advanced missile defense capabilities.

“You didn’t listen to our country then. Listen to us now,” Putin said, adding that these capabilities were “not a bluff.”

What was highlighted? The first weapon, which Putin claimed would render U.S. defenses “useless,” was the Sarmat, one of Russia’s largest ICBMs, which is capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads or hypersonic glide vehicles.

He also said a new hypersonic weapon, the Avangard (not to be confused with the RS-26 Rubezh ICBM sometimes referred to by the same name), would travel at 20 times the speed of sound toward “its target like a meteorite.”

Putin described the new nuclear-powered system as a “low-flying, difficult-to-spot cruise missile … with a practically unlimited range and an unpredictable flight path, which can bypass lines of interception and is invincible in the face of all existing and future systems of both missile defense and air defense.” The missile would supposedly be able to avoid missile defense and defeat systems by avoiding areas covered by U.S. radars.

An animation played during the speech showed the missile navigating past areas of radar coverage as the missile flew southbound through the Atlantic Ocean, down and around South America up into the Northern Hemisphere. The animation ended with the missile traveling over the Pacific Ocean. In theory, the nuclear-propelled weapon could have a limitless range — if it is truly capable.

U.S. Reaction

While there are many questions about Putin’s claims, Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at CSIS, told Defense News that Putin’s speech underlines why the U.S. needs to make significant changes to its current sensor architecture.

“We cannot continue to rely on terrestrial radar. We must move to elevated and overhead radar that provides consistent birth-to-death coverage of ballistic missiles, hypersonic boost glide vehicles and cruise missiles,” Karako said.

The U.S. recently released its Nuclear Posture Review, a road map for the country’s nuclear arsenal and related defensive measures. Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at CNA, told Defense News: “It is hard to read the NPR and not feel that the United States is desperately afraid of nuclear weapons. Why we would wish to communicate this so loudly is a mystery.”

He added that the document suggests the use of nuclear weapons by Russia “would strategically alter the nature of any conflict for Washington, and given that in almost all the cases, stakes for D.C. are likely to be much lower than for Moscow, reinforcing the efficacy of such capabilities will only encourage further Russian investment in dual-capable means of delivery and nonstrategic nuclear weapons.”

Russia’s alleged capabilities seem to justify the NPR’s approach toward Russia as a threat to the United States. For Karako’s part, he believes “this is also a validation of the seriousness with which the recently NPR takes the Russia nuclear problem.”

Whether or not Russia’s nuclear-powered cruise missile is something in development or a capability that will soon be fielded, Karako added this: “What we do know is that in addition to being provocative and invading small countries, they are also elevating nuclear weapons in nation security strategy. They are thinking creatively and innovatively of using nuclear weapons in a different way to coerce the United States and our allies.”

The Pentagon, for its part, played down the speech, indicating the department was aware of the equipment.

Pentagon Press Secretary Dana White said Russia’s announcement did not catch the U.S. off guard, to the extent that it was taken into account in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.

“We’ve been watching Russia for a long time. We’re not surprised. And we are prepared,” White said. “These weapons … have been in development for a very long time. Our Nuclear Posture Review takes all of this into account.”

John Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, told an audience at a Center for Strategic and International Studies that the new revelations from Russia underline the Nuclear Posture Review’s conclusions.

“Our concern about Russia’s capabilities, our concern about Russia’s direction and some of the statements we’ve made in the past about the role of nuclear weapons predated President Putin’s speech yesterday. I personally was not surprised to see a number of his comments in those speech. I think its broadly consistent” with what’s been said in the past,“ Rood said.

“That doesn’t mean I welcome it or it was necessarily the message we would have liked to have received. But I think it was broadly consistent with things that have been said in the past.”

Aaron Mehta for Defense News and Tara Copp for Military Times contributed to this story.