The Watch

THE WATCH STAFF President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador inaugurated the 2021 Feria Aerospacial Mexico (FAMEX) at the new Felipe Angeles International Airport with a speech that embraced modernization. “This fair is an example that … Mexico will continue to prosper, our country will continue to modernize,” Lopez Obrador said in his address at the aerospace fair, according to the Spanish EFE news agency. The United States was the guest country of honor at FAMEX, which was held September 22-25 in Santa Lucía. The airport, which is about 30 miles north of Mexico City, will serve the sprawling metropolis and is scheduled…

THE WATCH STAFF If a reminder is needed of Alaska’s strategic importance for the security of the Arctic and North America, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Krumm offers two helpful axioms: “It’s all about location, location, location.” “Tracers work both ways.” One applies to business and real estate; the other references luminescent military ammunition — “tracers.” Of the first axiom, Krumm, commander of the Alaska Region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Alaskan Command, said he can get to anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere from Alaska in less than nine hours. And just 55 miles of…

THE WATCH STAFF The leadership of the United States Air Force is delivering a unified message: The U.S. can maintain air superiority over its potential adversaries through modernization — especially when it comes to the next generation of combat aircraft. Senior leaders also agree on their top challenger: China. U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., speaking at the National Press Club on August 6, 2021, warned that Beijing could overcome U.S. air superiority by 2035. Brown, whose remarks were broadcast by the U.S. television network C-SPAN, said the Air Force can hold on to its…

PÁL DUNAY/GEORGE C. MARSHALL EUROPEAN CENTER FOR SECURITY STUDIES The Russian Federation is one of six states that border the Arctic Ocean. It has the longest Arctic coastline — more than 24,000 kilometers (14,913 miles). More than 2 million Russians (3% of the country’s population) live above the Arctic Circle, the largest population in any Arctic state. Russia’s Arctic region accounts for 11% of the country’s gross domestic product. The exploitation of energy — including 80% of its known natural gas reserves — and other natural resources in its High North bears an outsized importance for Russia. These factors alone…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The general who leads U.S. efforts to thwart foreign-based cyberattacks and punish those responsible says he’s mounting a “surge” to fight incursions that have debilitated government agencies and companies responsible for critical infrastructure. U.S. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone broadly described “an intense focus” by government specialists to better find and share information about cyberattacks and “impose costs when necessary.” Those costs include publicly linking adversarial countries to high-profile attacks and exposing the means by which those attacks were carried out, he said. “Even six months ago, we probably would have said, ‘Ransomware, that’s criminal activity,’” Nakasone said.…

THE WATCH STAFF When the Air Force deployed its first Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the United States was fighting the Vietnam War and an Army nurse had recently become the military’s first female general. More than 50 years later, 400 Minuteman IIIs still stand guard in their silos. “Minuteman III was a 10-year weapon system that was asked to last 60 years,” Maj. Gen. Anthony W. Genatempo, commander of the U.S. Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center (AFNWC), said of the 1970 introduction of the ballistic missile. Genatempo spoke about the Minuteman III’s proposed replacement — the Ground-Based Strategic…

THE WATCH STAFF In 2015, a 61-year-old Florida mail carrier lifted off in a gyrocopter from Pennsylvania bound for Washington, D.C. He flew through protected airspace before landing the aircraft on the U.S. Capitol lawn. U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, in a September 14 online conversation called “Homeland Defense is a Global Endeavor,” used the incident to illustrate how artificial intelligence (AI) is now detecting threats that may have once been missed. “If it flies, we need to identify it. … Either friendly or foe. It could be a military threat, it could be a civilian threat,” said…

Indo-Pacific Defense FORUM Staff When it comes to engagement in the Arctic, China’s approach is much softer than its aggressive tactics in the South China Sea, where it remains in constant disagreement with nations about maritime rights and often instigates spats over freedom of navigation, according to some Arctic experts. The reasons behind the contrasting approaches are many. Two scholars agreed that China faces an increasingly complex atmosphere in its attempts to contribute to the intergovernmental Arctic Council, collaborate with Arctic states and make the case that the future of the Arctic region is a matter of Chinese national security.…

Professor Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen and Dr. Mariia Kobzeva/UiT-The Arctic University of Norway There are two misleading narratives circulating about the Arctic in international politics that cloud the view of the region today. First, that the Arctic is removed from or exceptional from international politics. This narrative became prevalent after the Ukraine crisis in 2014, when some observers expressed surprise at the continuing circumpolar cooperation in many fields between Russia and the seven other Arctic states while relations involving Russia, the European Union, NATO and their member states sharply deteriorated. The second is that the Arctic became part of international politics nearly…

Indo-Pacific Defense Forum Majority-Muslim governments in Central Asia have avoided condemning the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang not only because the PRC’s influence has been growing in the region but also because they want Chinese investment. The Taliban, in its return to power in Afghanistan, has made the same political and economic calculation. In a July 2021 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, high-level Taliban representatives pledged that in exchange for economic support, they would not allow Afghanistan, which stands at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, to become…