Ardent Sentry-Northern Edge 2007 has a big agenda, encompassing responses to everything from major natural disaster to a terrorist nuclear detonation and other assorted terrorists events. The US Northern Command sponsored exercise, running now through May 17, has scenarios that range from a hurricane in the New England area, to an improvised nuclear device explosion involving Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, and multiple homeland defense events throughout Alaska. NORTHCOM has engaged local, state, and federal agencies and non-governmental organizations to participate.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.