The Space Force Association is creating a new think tank and research center — the National Spacepower Center — aimed at better educating government officials, military planners, defense industry firms and the public about the importance of space in everyday American life and the crucial role being played by the nation’s youngest branch of the armed forces.

Bill Woolf, president and CEO of the Space Force Association and a retired Air Force officer, made the announcement at the Spacepower 2025 conference in Orlando, Florida. “The future is not waiting, and neither can we,” Mr. Woolf told a packed ballroom at the conference Thursday morning. “We must ignite a new era of integration between commercial and space capabilities. The pace of the threat is accelerated and if you move at yesterday’s speed, we fall behind. That is not an option.”

National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang is reporting for Threat Status from the conference, one of the country’s largest gatherings of Space Force officials and top defense companies from around the world. The creation of the new National Spacepower Center comes as U.S. adversaries — most notably China and Russia — make major strides in the fielding of both commercial and military space assets.

Russia is believed to be racing ahead to field nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapons, while China has invested heavily in building space weapons that can destroy or disrupt satellites in a way that could incapacitate U.S. communications, intelligence and missile warning systems.

Mr. Trump this week allowed California-based Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 microchips to China — a decision that came on the same day the U.S. Justice Department announced arrests in connection with a criminal ring smuggling the same chips to China, where the Chinese military was to use the high-end contraband.

Mr. Trump said on social media that he has informed Chinese President Xi Jinping the Nvidia AI chips will be sold only to “approved customers” in China under conditions that will “allow for continued strong” national security. “President Xi responded positively!” Mr. Trump said, noting that Nvidia will pay the government 25% of the sales. He added that his decision to allow the legal export of the chips will support American jobs, strengthen U.S. manufacturing and benefit taxpayers.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, called the smuggling ring arrests a victory in preventing China from building up its military through the use of advanced American AI chips. Two Chinese nationals in custody in the case are accused of smuggling cutting-edge Nvidia H200 and H100 chips to China in violation of U.S. export controls and smuggling laws, the department said in a statement.

Michigan-based General Dynamics Land Systems is partnering with AeroVironment, the California-based defense tech company, to turn the M1 Abrams main battle tank into a rolling launcher of kamikaze drones.

The two companies announced a successful test this week of the new Precision Effects and Reconnaissance, Canister-Housed system — a modular kit that integrates AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munitions into General Dynamics’ top-of-the-line M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 main battle tanks and Stryker infantry vehicles. The system will provide armored troops with beyond line-of-sight surveillance capabilities and enhanced lethality, officials from the companies said.

Mounting a PERCH system on a tank won’t require welding or cutting of the hull. It would replace an external storage container mounted on the turret known as a sponson box and would be bolted into place using existing attachment points.

Navy Secretary John C. Phelan says the service branch still needs frigates despite having cancelled most of the years-behind-schedule Constellation-class frigate program due to cost overruns. Mr. Phelan told the Reagan National Defense Forum in California last weekend that the White House has approved adding frigates to Mr. Trump’s Golden Fleet initiative.

Frigates are fast and maneuverable warships, slightly smaller than destroyers, that often escort convoys and anti-submarine operations. “We will be building a frigate, [and] it will be based on an American design,” Mr. Phelan said. “It is something we can build that we think, actually, will be done before the Constellation.” Only the first two frigates, the USS Constellation and the USS Congress, will be constructed under the new agreement. Orders for four additional ships of the same model were canceled in November, along with plans for an eventual 20-frigate fleet.

“The Constellation-class frigate was canceled because, candidly, it didn’t make sense anymore to build it,” Mr. Phelan said. “It was 80% of the cost of a destroyer and 60% of the capability. You might as well build destroyers.” He added that the Navy has settled on a design for the new frigate and, unlike the Constellation program, it won’t be redesigned on the fly.

The 1963 Cuban missile crisis “brought us close to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union” and “was the basis for President Kennedy’s concern that more countries with nuclear weapons would create an unstable world with nuclear war more likely,” writes Joseph R. DeTrani, a former associate director of national intelligence and opinion contributor to Threat Status.

“Kennedy’s concerns are the same as those we have today, with the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and in East Asia,” Mr. DeTrani writes in a Washington Times op-ed. He notes that “Russian leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened that Russia might use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or territory is threatened, as it enters the fourth year in its war of aggression in Ukraine.”

At the same time, in East Asia, North Korea has “increased its stockpile of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons of mass destruction,” writes Mr. DeTrani, who also points out that “if Iran produces or acquires nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt would rush to create their own nuclear weapons programs.”

• Dec. 11 — Indo-Pacific Conference 2025, Gold Institute For International Strategy

• Dec. 11 — NATO and the Cloud: A Conversation with Assistant Secretary-General Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, Royal United Services Institute

• Dec. 11 — Building U.S.-Taiwan Defense Supply Chain Collaboration: Opportunities for Codevelopment and Coproduction, Hudson Institute

• Dec. 11-12 — Spacepower Conference 2025, Space Force Association

• Dec. 12 — The Energy Challenges of Taiwan and Asia’s Artificial Intelligence Ambitions, Brookings Institution