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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Family planning, lack of dependent care, sexism and sexual assault were among the top reasons more women leave the military than their male counterparts, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

While the percentage of females serving in the military increased slightly between 2004 and 2018, during the same period, female enlisted and officers were 28 percent more likely to leave the service than men, according to a May Government Accountability Office report about female active-duty personnel.

The Department of Defense has recognized for years that increasing the gender diversity of its force relies first on bringing more female recruits into the service. The GAO report states that efforts to retain women need to be treated as equally critical to maintaining a diverse force.

“DoD has identified that female recruitment and retention is important to diversity in the military, but the services do not have plans that include goals, performance measures, or timeframes to guide and monitor current or future efforts to recruit and retain female active-duty service members,” the report states.

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The Pentagon has issued new guidance for local commanders in states where stay-at-home orders are beginning to relax, according to a memo released Wednesday.

Since late March, all military installations globally have been in partial lockdown after Defense Secretary Mark Esper raised the Defense Department’s (DOD) global health protection level to its second-highest setting. The freeze — which prohibited nonessential travel for DOD personnel and families and limited access to bases — was intended to stem increasing coronavirus cases among service members.

A May 19 memo now lays out a guideline for local commanders to relax certain restrictions as COVID-19 cases decline in their areas.

“Commanders, in consultation with their medical leadership, shall exercise their authority by making deliberate, risk-based decisions to change [health protection] levels as conditions allow,” according to the memo signed by Esper.

Installations must still follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force guidance and regulations.

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The best easy-to-find material for a homemade face covering to protect against coronavirus transmission is four-ply microfiber cloth, according to Army researchers at the service’s Combat Capabilities Development Command.

Researchers with the command’s Chemical Biological Center said in a Wednesday news release that the four-ply microfiber cloth, which can be found in the cleaning section of most big box stores, filters out more than 75 percent of particles.

An N-95 mask, the protective covering in short supply among hospital workers who need it most, is able to filter out 90 percent of particles, they said.

Layering a polyester bandanna can filter out about 40 percent of suspended particles, the release added. Officials from the command did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking how well the neck gaiters perform, which are commonly worn by soldiers.

The team made the determinations after testing more than 50 materials — with more tests ongoing — by spraying a salt aerosol at a piece of the chosen material.

The salt particles used to test the filter were 0.2-0.3 microns in size. Coronavirus is roughly 0.1 microns in size, but the virus floats around in droplets expelled by infected persons that are anywhere from 0.2 to a several microns in size or larger.

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