The U.S. Army will remove photographs from their process of selecting and promoting officers, as part of an initiative to combat racial biases.

The Army announced the launch of Project Inclusion on Thursday, a “holistic effort” aimed at promoting diversity and tackling racial disparities in the service. As part of the initiative, official photographs will no longer be part of officer selection boards beginning in August, while other personnel decisions will be reviewed under similar “evidence-based standards.”

“The Army must continue to put People First by fostering a culture of trust that accepts the experiences and backgrounds of every Soldier and civilian,” Gen. James C. McConville, Army Chief of Staff, said in a press release. “Our diverse workforce is a competitive advantage and the Army must continue to offer fair treatment, access and opportunity across the force.”

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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, called on President Donald Trump on Monday to invoke the Insurrection Act, then deploy active-duty combat units to “show no quarter” in putting down violence and looting in major cities, which he charged have been instigated by left-wing extremists.

State governors thus far have not asked for the help of active-duty troops. But Cotton said a massive show of force by the 101st Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne Division, 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Infantry Division — “whatever it takes to restore order” — might be necessary.

“We always respect the rights of peaceful protesters,” said Cotton, a former Army captain and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, but “we have zero tolerance for anarchy, rioting and looting.”

In a series of tweets and an appearance on the “Fox & Friends” program, Cotton echoed others in the Trump administration, including Attorney General William Barr, in blaming the violence on leftist extremists such as the antifa movement. He appeared to challenge antifa, the far-left militant group, to a fight.

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WEST POINT, NY — After Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, announced March 19 that the Corps of Cadets would not be returning from spring break as planned, academy leadership immediately began planning how and when cadets would arrive back at West Point.

That plan will go into effect Tuesday as the first members of the Class of 2020 return to West Point to begin outprocessing prior to their graduation ceremony June 13.

The cadets are currently spread throughout the country but they have to return to the academy before beginning their Army careers. At the bare-minimum, cadets need to move out of their rooms in the barracks and pickup their cars if they didn’t take them home for spring break. The future second lieutenants are also required to outprocess from the academy before moving on to the Army. Many of the outprocessing steps require cadets to be in person at West Point such as medical screenings, closing accounts and returning ID cards.

Because the return of the cadets was necessary, a planning group quickly began working out the details of how it would be accomplished in the middle of a pandemic. Lt. Col. George Mitroka, who oversaw the planning process, said the development of the plan to bring back the Class of 2020 began with representatives from throughout the academy coming together before a whiteboard. They then began brainstorming each step of the process that would be required for the cadets to return to the academy safely.

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Microelectronics are in nearly everything, including the complex weapons systems the Defense Department buys, such as the F-35 joint strike fighter, the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineering for modernization said.

“It is so ubiquitous and because it is … so fundamental to everything we do,” Mark J. Lewis said via video conference today as part of a forum sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

Because of the importance of microelectronics, he said, the department is shifting the way it goes about buying microelectronics and ensuring they are secure to use.

“We want the Department of Defense to have access to state-of-the-art capabilities, which we do not have today,” he said. That’s because the department is not buying on the commercial curve, he explained.

In the mid-1990s, DOD adopted a “trusted foundry” model for procuring microelectronics, Lewis said.

“The idea [was] that in order to deliver parts that we could trust, we would enable foundries that would manufacture our microelectronics where we had control over every step of the process — or so we thought,” he said. “That model, we think, has failed.”

The department isn’t a large purchaser of microelectronics, Lewis said, so companies that adhered to the department’s “trusted foundry” model were unable to make a business case for following it.

“As a result, they haven’t been investing,” he said. “The chips that we buy, the microelectronic components that we buy from those trusted foundries, are in some cases two generations behind what’s available on commercial state-of-the-art.”

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