The Watch

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has regained control over the research and development of lasers to defend against ballistic and hypersonic threats. U.S. President Joe Biden on December 27, 2021, signed into law the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gave the authority back to the MDA and reversed a decision by the previous U.S. administration to halt the agency’s laser-interceptor research. The NDAA sets funding levels and provides policy guidance for the Department of Defense. The secretary of defense is now required to delegate to the MDA director the authority to “budget…

THE WATCH STAFF The challenges facing the Arctic have come into greater focus as the region becomes an arena of strategic competition over its natural resources. A number of conferences addressed Arctic issues in 2021 — from perspectives ranging from those of the U.S. military and its partners to the scholarly and diplomatic. Here, in a first installment, The Watch presents excerpts of some of those insights. (Pictured: U.S. Army Soldiers train north of the Arctic Circle.) James P. DeHart | Coordinator for the Arctic Region, U.S. Department of State DeHart spoke on “Managing Security Through Diplomacy” during a November…

REUTERS U.S. President Joe Biden signed two new executive orders intended to fight drug trafficking and criminal networks in December 2021, allowing for new sanctions on Chinese companies trading ingredients of the opioid drug fentanyl and on criminal gangs in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. The Biden administration is trying to stem a worsening U.S. opioid crisis that has fueled more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths in the year to April 2021, a 28% increase from the same period a year earlier, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The U.S. Treasury said it imposed sanctions on 25 entities…

REUTERS Russia and the United States will engage in high-level security talks in January 2022 amid heightened tensions over Moscow’s military presence at its border with Ukraine. The planned talks were established following a late December 2021 call between U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, pictured, and Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov to discuss “regional security-related issue of concern,” according to a readout of the call. “The phone call is a continuation of communication between both leaders to ensure risk reduction and operational deconfliction. In accordance with past practice, both have agreed to keep…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Army is poised to deliver “tactical cloud” capability in 2022 as the service modernizes its information networks — part of a digital strategy to dominate the information battlespace in future conflicts. The tactical cloud would allow the Army to get data to Soldiers quickly and more effectively. Rather than sending it from the field to a centralized data center for processing — a time-consuming process — the Army would leverage the cloud to process the data where it is generated, according to a July 29, 2019, story by defense technology website C4ISRNET. The cloud would be…

THE WATCH STAFF Anyone considering buying an electric vehicle has heard of “range anxiety” — the fear of running out of power on a trip and not being able to find a charging station. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is taking a step to avoid such worries. The startup Electric Sky Inc. announced in a news release December 7, 2021, that it is building the world’s first “Whisper Beam” transmitter for the wireless charging of in-flight unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, with an initial funding of U.S. $225,000 from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Space Force, which marked its second birthday December 20, 2021, has unveiled a website with the dual purpose of recruiting the next generation of Guardians and explaining its military mission. The Space Force is an independent service under the Department of the Air Force that was signed into law in 2019. Since then, its ranks have grown to more than 6,500 uniformed Guardians and about an equal number of civilian employees, according to a December 18 SpaceNews story. (Pictured: Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, Space Operations Command commander; U.S. Space Force Spc. 3 Justin Blount, Missile Warning Center…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Space Force launched an Atlas V rocket into orbit on December 7, 2021, to test capabilities ranging from space domain awareness to the quick detection of nuclear explosions. United Launch Alliance sent the Space Test Program-3 (STP-3) mission into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, United Press International (UPI) reported. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Test Program was created to fly experimental payloads to test technologies for potential future military missions, according to UPI. The STP-3 mission is made up of a primary spacecraft and a ride-share spacecraft, which are mostly classified.…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Dozens of tanks and Soldiers fired explosives and machine guns while participating in drills on December 6, 2021, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, a main stronghold for a nation that is perhaps the world’s least-known military powerhouse. Just across the sea from rival Russia, Japan opened its humbly named Self-Defense Force’s firing exercises to the media in a display of firepower that coincides with a recent escalation of Chinese and Russian military moves around Japanese territory. The drills, which foreign journalists rarely have a chance to witness, continued for nine days and included 1,300 Ground Self-Defense…

THE WATCH STAFF The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) offshore patrol vessel HMCS Harry DeWolf returned December 16, 2021, to its home port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, after completing a circumnavigation of North America. The DeWolf is Canada’s first new warship in 25 years and the first in a fleet of Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) built under the country’s National Shipbuilding Strategy. In addition to the circumnavigation, the ice-capable DeWolf’s four-month deployment was groundbreaking for other accomplishments: The ship sailed the Arctic’s Northwest Passage, becoming only the second RCN vessel to do so since 1954. The DeWolf demonstrated its interoperability with U.S.…