The Pentagon plans to request $104B in funding for research and development in fiscal year 2020, $9B higher than what Congress appropriated for 2019, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The latest request would be the largest amount for research and development in the department’s history, officials said.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the department’s latest budget request would provide increased funding for military projects devoted to hypersonic weapons and space. The request will be part of President Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal scheduled for release on March 11.

Shanahan said he expects the next budget to reflect the priorities and initiatives set in the latest National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture and Missile Defense reviews.

FBI Director Christopher Wray wants to increase the agency’s partnerships with the private sector to improve security and deter threats by foreign adversaries such as China, Fifth Domain reported Tuesday.

Wray said any operation to defend the U.S. now requires partnerships between law enforcement and industry, particularly in protecting critical infrastructures, 90 percent of which is privately owned. He spoke during the 2019 RSA Cybersecurity Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.

Companies can approach any FBI office in the U.S. and abroad to discuss how they can help the government deter threats and mitigate the impacts of any attack. The FBI is  focused on countering foreign influence campaigns and  espionage from China targeting multiple sectors such as industry and academia.

“We’re seeing an uptick in the threats from various foreign adversaries, and the blended threat, where foreign power enlists criminal hackers, essentially as mercenaries,” Wray said.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on Tuesday stating that the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management must develop a method of classifying nuclear waste cleanup to mitigate cost and schedule risks. GAO stated that EM’s 2017 cleanup policy did not comply with program management practices such as facilitating risk management throughout the project and requiring independent reviews of cleanup activities.

The government watchdog noted that the failure to involve DOE’s senior leadership and independent experts leaves cleanup operations “at risk of uncontrolled changes to scope, exceeding initial budget and schedule, and failing to meet their original goals.”

Experts operating under EM have expressed concerns regarding how the office should classify activities such as the cleanup of tanks containing radioactive liquid waste as capital asset projects. The experts said that subjecting such activities to less stringent requirements poses cost and schedule risks.

EM is responsible for waste cleanup at 16 DOE nuclear sites as well as the implementation of project-related regulations. In 2018, DOE reported that it may require around $494 billion to manage future environmental cleanup operations.

Pat Flanders, chief information officer of the Defense Health Agency, said he is looking forward to the adoption of a commercial electronic health record, according to a report in Government CIO Media on Monday.

He is seeking to implement best practices to support the agency’s efforts to deploy new technologies in tandem with industry.

Flanders added that a consolidated network and a system of standardizing medical devices would potentially help DHA personnel who work on cybersecurity risk management. Speaking about other cybersecurity issues, he said he is interested in using artificial intelligence for micro-segmentation, or isolating workloads in the cloud to protect data.

The U.S. Air Force released a two-year plan to improve the service branch’s business practices and internal operations, the branch said Monday.

The first business operations plan will cover fiscal years 2019 through 2021 and provide a framework for synchronizing functions and organizational activities while also establishing lines of accountability. Objectives to be addressed include improving aviator retention, increasing family support programs, fostering data access efforts and launching conditions-based aircraft maintenance initiatives.

“Sharpening the Air Force’s competitive edge means building a more lethal, ready force for the high-end fight,” said Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Donovan.

The undersecretary will supervise the plan’s progress and provide updates biannually as the service’s chief management officer. Leaders of business operations will provide a quarterly report to the Air Force Productivity Council with details on the plan’s implementation.

The service seeks to align its business strategy with the National Defense Strategy as well as focus areas such as improving Air Force readiness and lethality, establishing alliances and relationships and reforming business procedures to address performance and cost issues.