The Watch

THE WATCH STAFF Norway’s recent announcement that it plans to deploy P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft to the Arctic in 2022 is the latest step in the country’s effort to strengthen its defense capabilities in a region of strategic competition. Norway signed a Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA) with the United States, a NATO ally, on April 16, 2021. The deal allows the U.S. to build facilities at three Norwegian airfields and one naval base but will not amount to separate bases. The Ministry of Defence has already approved Evenes Air Station in northern Norway as the main base for its…

THE WATCH STAFF The Department of the Air Force has chosen an Ohio base as the preferred home for the first Air National Guard (ANG) cyberwarfare wing in the United States. With the August 25, 2021, selection of Mansfield-Lahm ANG Base, the cyberwarfare wing will further elevate the National Guard’s capability to be — as U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, former chief of the National Guard Bureau, once called it — the “Swiss Army knife” of the U.S. military. In this mission, the tool used is the expertise in cybersecurity and information technology that citizen Soldiers and Airmen…

THE WATCH STAFF The William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies held a recent Maritime Security and Gender Integration Workshop that emphasized, in the words of Dr. Veronica De Allende of the Center for Naval Analyses, an important truth: “No nation can afford to ignore half of its population.” The September 8-9 online dialogue was held in conjunction with U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command. Both commands incorporate the principles of women, peace and security (WPS) into their strategies and operations. The workshop focused on WPS, which emphasizes the importance of female participation and decision-making in peace and…

LT. COL. RYAN B. LEY/U.S. AIR FORCE Historically, the Arctic has been considered “high north, low tension.” While the immediate prospect of conflict remains low, a number of indicators point to how the Arctic may be heating up, literally and figuratively. In a literal sense, climate change is causing the Arctic to heat up at a rate twice as fast as the global average. The resulting loss of sea ice allows increasingly open access to navigation and natural resources. Russia seeks to exploit these resources — oil and natural gas, in particular — forecasting a growth in the Arctic share…

FORUM Staff The United States said it dealt a blow against forced labor and illegal fishing in the Pacific islands in August 2021 when it blocked a Fijian-flagged vessel from importing tuna into the U.S. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an order to stop imports from Hangton No. 112, a longline fishing boat operated by a Chinese national, The Associated Press (AP) reported. “Companies that exploit their workers have no place doing business in the United States,” U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a news release. “Products made from forced labor not only exploit workers, but…

THE WATCH staff A sensor that can help satellites detect hypersonic missiles is one of the experiments aboard an uncrewed spacecraft that recently docked at the International Space Station (ISS). The payload aboard the Cygnus NG-16 supply vessel included the Prototype Infrared Payload (PIRPL), which was developed jointly by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Space Development Agency (SDA) and Missile Defense Agency in partnership with the Northrop Grumman Corp. Cygnus, pictured, was captured by astronauts wielding the space station’s robotic arm on August 12, 2021. PIRPL is designed to study the Earth’s infrared background. It would be used in the “tracking layer” of…

THE WATCH staff When the U.S. military conducts a missile test, it generates so much data that there’s more information to be processed than there are people to process it. “When you look at the amount of data we pull from a test, let’s just pick a [ground-based anti-ballistic missile] test — terabytes of data,” U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said recently. Analyzing those terabytes might best be undertaken by using artificial intelligence (AI), Hill said at the 2021 Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, according to an August…

THE WATCH staff A newly commissioned Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) ship — the HMCS Harry DeWolf — is on a maritime odyssey to circumnavigate North America. The Arctic and offshore patrol ship, pictured, left Halifax, Nova Scotia, on August 3, 2021, for its first operational mission that will take it through the Northwest Passage and eventually into the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, where it will support U.S.-led counter-narcotics operations while on its four-month deployment. “This is a mission that fully demonstrates the capabilities of our ship and the new capabilities of the RCN. This goes far beyond just focusing on…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration announced new sanctions in July 2021 against Cuba’s national revolutionary police and its top two officials to increase pressure on the communist government following protests on the island. The Police Nacional Revolcionaria (PNR) and the agency’s director and deputy director, Oscar Callejas Valcarce and Eddie Sierra Arias, were targeted in the latest sanctions announced by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The police are part of Cuba’s Interior Ministry, which was already the subject of a blanket designation by Donald Trump’s administration in January 2021. “We hear the cries…

REUTERS Two senior U.S. senators introduced legislation in August 2021 that would fight ransomware attacks on U.S. infrastructure by strengthening protections against the attacks and by sanctioning countries that harbor cybercriminals. Senators Marco Rubio, the Republican vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, a senior member of the intelligence and judiciary committees, introduced the Sanction and Stop Ransomware Act. The bill would require development of cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure, tighten regulation of cryptocurrency, which is often demanded as ransom, and direct the U.S. State Department and intelligence community to designate as a “state sponsor of ransomware” any country deemed to provide support…