The Watch

THE WATCH STAFF Mexican drug cartels are increasingly weaponizing commercial drones, using asymmetric warfare tactics similar to those of terrorists and other nonstate actors. The Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel, has waged a campaign against many of the country’s other cartels, as well as government authorities and civilian self-defense groups. The CJNG and other Mexican cartels have used explosive-armed drones since at least 2017, according to The War Zone military news blog and Forbes magazine. “Mexican cartels, among other criminal groups, have already been using them to carry drugs over walls and past other…

THE WATCH STAFF The U.S. Navy recently announced the installation of a field hospital in a unique setting — a Norwegian cave. Naval Forces Europe (NAVEUR) and U.S. Navy Expeditionary Medical Support Command (NEMSCOM) set up the facility in the purpose-built caves in the Bogen Bay area of northern Norway, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, according to an October 29, 2021, Navy news release and the Insider website. While the location may seem out of the ordinary, it was the just the latest U.S. military deployment to Norway’s underground system, which includes Marine Corps combat equipment ranging from amphibious vehicles…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Naval forces from the United States, Israel and two Gulf Arab states are taking part in a joint security drill in the Red Sea, a vital shipping route that feeds into the Suez Canal. The U.S. 5th Fleet said November 11, 2021, that the five-day multilateral maritime exercise with Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain began the previous day and included at-sea training focused on search and seizure tactics aboard the USS Portland transport dock ship. The drill comes a little more than a year after the UAE and subsequently Bahrain normalized ties with Israel…

REUTERS A missile Russia fired into one of its own satellites in a weapons test on November 15, 2021, generated an orbital debris field that endangered the International Space Station and will pose an ongoing hazard to space activities for years to come, U.S. officials said. The seven-member space station crew — four U.S. astronauts, a German astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts — took shelter in their docked spaceship capsules for two hours after the test to allow for a quick getaway had it been necessary, NASA said. The research lab, pictured, orbiting about 402 kilometers (about 250…

THE WATCH STAFF U.S. Air Force bombers joined British warplanes for recent exercises over the North Sea. The venerable B-52 Stratofortress planes from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing in South Dakota joined the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron’s B-1B Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on November 10, 2021, to support the Bomber Task Force Europe mission series, according to a news release from U.S. European Command (USEUCOM). Aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford station in England included Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4s, F-15D Eagles and F-15E Strike Eagles. (Pictured: Airmen from the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron…

THE WATCH STAFF The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is building targets in the shape of U.S. warships — focusing on aircraft carriers — at two new desert missile sites. The outlines of the ships were seen in recent photographs provided to the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) News website by the satellite imagery company Maxar. At the first suspected site in the Taklamakan Desert in central China, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has built a full-scale outline of a carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, according to a USNI News analysis by H I Sutton on November…

THE WATCH STAFF The Royal Norwegian Navy frigate Thor Heyerdahl affirmed the nation’s territorial sovereignty on a recent Arctic voyage. The HNoMS Heyerdahl sailed October 23 to the Svalbard archipelago, about 400 miles north of the Norwegian mainland. The ship visited the waters around Spitsbergen, the largest island in the archipelago, and docked at Longyearbyen, which is one of the world’s northernmost settlements. (Pictured: The HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl is underway in the Norwegian Sea during a 2019 NATO deployment) Although Norway was granted “full and absolute sovereignty” over the archipelago in the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, some of the agreement’s provisions…

THE WATCH STAFF The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is issuing an early warning. Air Force Col. Kristopher Struve, NORAD’s vice director of operations, said the capability of potential adversaries to strike the United States with conventional weapons has increased to the point that the homeland is “not a sanctuary any longer,” reported The War Zone, a defense news website. NORAD is a joint United States and Canada organization charged with aerospace warning and aerospace control. Struve discussed the defense of domestic infrastructure during a virtual roundtable hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Association (MDAA). Struve said that NORAD…

THE WATCH STAFF In the words of an experienced U.S. Marine Corps. pilot, landing on a carrier in an F-35B Lightning II is “surprisingly easy.” “It’s simply pushing the stick forward to go down,” Lt. Col. Robert Guyette told the Stars and Stripes newspaper of the historic landing that “felt identical” to others he had carried out in the short-takeoff, vertical-landing F-35B. What wasn’t identical: The October 3, 2021, touchdown was the first aboard a Japanese carrier, the JS Izumo, by a fixed-wing aircraft since World War II. (Pictured: A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II conducts a vertical landing…

REUTERS The Pentagon sharply increased its estimate of China’s projected nuclear arsenal, saying that Beijing could have 700 warheads by 2027 and possibly 1,000 by 2030. While the numbers would still be significantly smaller than the current United States nuclear stockpile, they represent a significant change from 2020, when the Pentagon warned the Chinese arsenal would top 400 by the end of the decade. Washington has repeatedly called on China to join it and Russia in a new arms-control treaty. In its annual report to Congress on China’s military, the Pentagon on November 3, 2021, reiterated concern about increasing pressure…