The Watch

THE WATCH STAFF A recent conference looked at ways the U.S. Army can learn to deploy its cyber capabilities more effectively to protect the country’s critical infrastructure. The event, held February 24-25, 2022, at The Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, was part of the Jack Voltaic Conference Series (JVCS) developed by the Army Cyber Institute (ACI) think tank at the U.S. Military Academy. The project seeks to analyze weaknesses through a “bottom-up approach … focusing on cities and municipalities where critical infrastructure and populations are substantial,” according to ACI. Dr. Shankar Banik, director of The Citadel Department of Defense…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC) has awarded the defense contractor Northrop Grumman U.S. $341 million to develop a Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) in support of its mission to provide space-domain awareness. Northrop Grumman said DARC, pictured, will field more resilient ground-based radar that enhances space-domain awareness for geostationary orbit, according to a February 23, 2022, news release. “While current ground-based systems operate at night and can be impacted by weather conditions, DARC will provide an all-weather, 24-7 capability to monitor the … geosynchronous orbital environment,” according to the news release. The initial contract…

THE WATCH STAFF The ability of the U.S. military and its allies to operate in extreme conditions is again being put to the test in the biennial exercise Arctic Edge. Arctic Edge 22 (AE22) is hosted by Alaskan Command (ALCOM) and is taking place February 28 to March 17. The exercise is conducted under the authority of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), which is responsible for homeland defense. It is designed to provide realistic training using locations throughout Alaska. “Arctic operations and exercises such as Arctic Edge demonstrate the capabilities utilized to defend our homeland and our interests,” said U.S. Air…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A helicopter flew unmanned around Fort Campbell in what is the United States Army’s first automated fight of an empty Black Hawk, officials said. The 14,000-pound helicopter successfully navigated around the post on the Kentucky-Tennessee border as if it was flying through downtown Manhattan, engineers told reporters in early February 2022. The UH-60 aircraft was retrofitted with technology developed by the Defense Department’s research arm, reported WPLN-FM in Nashville, Tennessee. The flight was the first time the system, known as ALIAS, flew completely by itself. The system is being tested with 14 different military aircraft. (Pictured: A…

U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND A team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket on January 25, 1995, from the Andøya Rocket Range off the coast of Norway to study the aurora borealis. Even though information about the launch was shared with other countries, including Russia, the information never reached the appropriate authorities. As soon as the rocket launched, Russian early warning radar picked it up and followed it to an altitude of over 1,450 kilometers. The radar image resembled a U.S. Navy Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Russia’s military, suspicious of NATO intentions, sent an…

THE WATCH STAFF U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing is offering the P-8A Poseidon to the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as a candidate to replace its maritime patrol CP-140 Aurora. The turboprop CP-140, built and first flown by Lockheed Martin in the 1970s, is based on the P-3 Orion, according to a February 10, 2022, story on the military news website Breaking Defense. The RCAF recently published a request for information on candidates to replace the CP-140 with a Canadian multimission aircraft, according to a February 10 news release from Boeing. “Canada’s large size necessitates an aircraft with long range and…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Air Force recently upgraded a key link in its High Frequency Global Communications System (HFGCS). U.S. Airmen with the 673rd Communications Squadron (CS) were essential to the installation of a 120-foot-tall antenna at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) in Alaska, according to a January 24, 2022, news release from the base’s public affairs office. The work is scheduled to be completed later this year. (Airmen of the 673rd Communications Squadron pose in front of the High Frequency Global Communications System antenna at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.) The antenna is one of 13 HFGCS stations strategically located…

THE WATCH STAFF It would not be surprising if Petteri Vuorimäki, Finland’s ambassador for Arctic and Antarctic affairs, had a business card that features his quote: “Cooperation is my business.” That’s because Vuorimäki believes there is never a time to say no to diplomacy. “We diplomats, we do our jobs so that … the men and women in uniform don’t really have to then do their business in terms of a conflict,” said Vuorimäki, who spoke February 17, 2022, on “Finnish Diplomacy and Arctic Cooperation” as part of the Arctic Academic eTalks, a bimonthly virtual forum on key issues affecting…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Mexico’s Defense Department announced February 9, 2022, that Soldiers have rolled into a township dominated by the Jalisco cartel for the first time in months. The Army sent what appeared to be hundreds of troops and trucks into the township of Aguililla, in western Michoacan state, on February 8. It is an area where the Jalisco cartel is fighting a bloody turf war with the local Viagras gang. The troops broke up a civilian blockade of a small Army base in Aguililla that had blocked its entrances since last summer. The Defense Department said the government was…

U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg asserted that “politics stops at the water’s edge” as he crossed party lines and cooperated with the Truman administration to forge bipartisan support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). What became known as the Vandenberg Resolution was passed in June 1948 and led the way for the United States to join NATO. History may be echoing itself nearly 75 years later across the Atlantic as political parties in Finland and Sweden put partisan politics aside for the sake of their country’s security. In both nations, parties typically on opposite sides of domestic, social and…