A treaty between U.S. and Russia that limits the two countries’ nuclear arsenal has taken effect on Monday, seven years after it was signed.

The State Department said Monday the U.S. government has fully complied with the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, or New START, since August 2017.

The department added that the U.S. government will confirm Russia’s compliance with New START through a scheduled data exchange.

The two countries have shared data on their strategic nuclear arsenals twice every year over the last seven years as part of the agreement and the next data exchange is slated to occur within the next month.

U.S. officials have conducted short-notice, on-site inspections at Russian military bases and facilities through the treaty to verify data on Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal.

The State Department noted that the U.S. government will continue to implement New START in cooperation with Russia as well as support efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide.

The U.S. Air Force has created a cross-functional team that will be tasked to formulate a comprehensive strategy for the service branch to manage electronic warfare operations across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Brig. Gen. David Gaedecke — director of cyberspace operations and warfighting integration at the Air Force — will lead the enterprise capability collaboration group, the service branch said Monday.

“The spectrum is so broad, relied upon by all, and increasingly congested; so the first challenge of this effort is to scope the issue,” Gaedecke said.

“We’ll draw not only from our experts in the military, but also previous scientific advisory boards, defense science boards and industry professionals to form a cohesive and comprehensive electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum strategy,” he added.

The team aims to complete EW strategy research and development efforts within 12 to 18 months as part of a push to help maintain the service branch’s competitive edge throughout the spectrum.

Gaedecke intends to formally present the group on Wednesday at the Air Force Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation meeting at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a new program that aims to study and identify marine organisms that could help sensor systems detect and track the activities of manned underwater vehicles and drones in strategic waters.

The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors program also seeks to investigate the responses of marine life to such vehicles and build a network of hardware systems that will work to collect, interpret and relay the organisms’ signals and behaviors to end users, DARPA said Friday.

“The U.S. Navy’s current approach to detecting and monitoring underwater vehicles is hardware-centric and resource intensive,” said Lori Adornato, PALS program manager at DARPA’s biological technologies office.

“If we can tap into the innate sensing capabilities of living organisms that are ubiquitous in the oceans, we can extend our ability to track adversary activity and do so discreetly, on a persistent basis, and with enough precision to characterize the size and type of adversary vehicles.”

DARPA expects PALS to be a four-year research initiative that will incorporate insights from various areas such as biology, analytics, physics, chemistry, machine learning and electrical engineering.

The agency said it will host a proposers day on March 2 in Arlington, Virginia, to discuss the PALS program with interested vendors.