MIL-SPEC Watch Design: How Military Needs Shaped the Modern Wristwatch World

Nearly everything we regard as a modern luxury was once a military necessity. Okay, maybe that’s too broad a statement. But when you consider the impact of inventions like the Internet (set up as a Department of Defense communications network in 1969) and GPS navigation (which still uses military satellites from the 1970s) — not to mention the rise of the Jeep from humble troop conveyance to luxury SUV; the ubiquity of microwave ovens (which emerged from NATO radar experiments); and the enduring civilian stylishness of accessories like cargo pants and aviator sunglasses — a substantial case can be made that goods made to military specifications, or MIL-SPEC, have made an inestimable impact on everyday life. Nowhere is this influence seen more strongly than in the world of wristwatches — not only those intentionally designed for a military or tactical look, but in many styles and genres throughout the industry. 

From Waistcoat to War: Origin of the Wristwatch

While it’s unlikely that a distinctly elegant timepiece, like a Patek Philippe Calatrava or a Vacheron Constantin Patrimony, will put you in the mind of battlefields and trenches, the truth is that wristwatches themselves are essentially a military invention — at least, the ones designed for men. Women had been wearing timepieces on pendants and bracelets for decades, since the middle of the 19th Century, but it was the utilitarian needs of soldiers in World War I that ushered them into general usage for men. While pocket watches were still in vogue for gentlemen in social settings, they proved impractical for troops on the battlefield, who needed the use of both hands in combat situations, such as for loading one’s rifle while simultaneously checking his watch to determine the distance of incoming artillery fire. 

World War I soldiers wearing wristwatches

Watchmakers at the time responded to the demands of warfare in a rather makeshift way at first, re-engineering pocket watch cases with soldered strips of wire to connect them to straps of leather or canvas for wrist wear. While these “trench watches” were effective at the time, advances in military equipment, technology, and strategies in subsequent years necessitated a more purposeful approach to watchmaking as a Second World War erupted in Europe, barely two decades after the end of the first one. It was this war, and this era, that gave rise to the earliest applications of military-specific watch designs. Let's examine the evolution of these designs, and their impact on watchmaking overall, through the three major theaters of war: land, sea, and air. 

LAND:

The Dirty Dozen: Forerunners of the Field Watch

The 12 WWII-era military watches that make up the "Dirty Dozen"

Among the earliest and most legendary examples of MIL-SPEC watches are the so-called Dirty Dozen, consisting of 12 watches from 12 different watchmaking firms, issued to British servicemen during the last two years of World War II and made in extraordinarily limited numbers. The idea behind these watches and their internally consistent, streamlined aesthetic, was to build the “perfect soldiers’ watch,” a tougher, more reliable replacement for the repurposed civilian timepieces that had preceded them on battlefields in the past. Often credited to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, a high-ranking British officer and advisor to Winston Churchill, the guidelines for the manufacturers contracted to make these watches were as follows: a black dial with Arabic numerals; small seconds at 6 o’clock;  railroad-style minute track; luminous hour and minute hands and indexes; a proven precise, hand-wound, 15-jewel movement, preferably regulated to chronometer standards; a shock-resistant, water-resistant case with shatterproof plexiglass crystal; and a waterproof, easy-grip crown for use with gloves. Great Britain’s watchmakers, of which there were still many at the time, had been largely conscripted to shift production to goods more directly beneficial to the country’s war efforts, so the British Ministry of Defense reached out to neutral Switzerland to make the watches.

Jaeger-LeCoultre's "Dirty Dozen" watch (photo via Bonhams)

The 12 companies that took up the gauntlet are a combination of famous names and mostly forgotten ones: Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor, and Vertex. In addition to their dial designs, all the watches’ casebacks carried a “W.W.W.” stamp — for “Watch, Wrist, Waterproof” — and the Broad Arrow emblem that marked them as property of the U.K. government. The end of World War II in 1945 eliminated the demand for these models — later dubbed the “Dirty Dozen” by collectors of militaria, after the 1967 war movie starring Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson — and they were discontinued shortly thereafter, But their impact on watch design, military and otherwise, would prove to be profound and sustained.

American Innovation: Hamilton & Bulova

Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical

Over in the United States, watchmakers like Lancaster, PA-based Hamilton and New York-based Bulova were also making watches for the war effort that adhered to military specifications. Hamilton in particular got into the game early, during World War I, supplying re-engineered pocket watches (which had previously been used by railroad conductors to keep trains on schedule) to armed forces. During World War II, the company ceased all civilian production for a time to focus on mass production of timekeepers for American military units, including marine chronometers for the Navy and wristwatches for Army troops. These watches were made of chrome-plated base metals, measured around 34 mm in diameter, used luminous radium paint on their dials for nighttime legibility, and housed Hamilton’s manually wound, 17-jewel Caliber 987 movements. Their consistent level of quality inspired other Allied nations, such as Canada and Russia, to also equip their forces with Hamilton watches. 

Bulova Hack Watch

Bulova, which apparently had a very patriotic culture as one of America’s oldest and most pre-eminent watch companies, not only devoted much of its advertising budget during the World War II era to the promotion of war bonds; it also made, under contract with the U.S. government, numerous instruments in support of the war effort in addition to watches — like altimeters, variometers, range-finding telescopes for artillery, and time fuses for explosives. Of course, Bulova also made wristwatches that were issued as official gear to American troops, and these timepieces were equipped with a now-common technical feature that was a breakthrough at the time: a lock-down mechanism for the movement’s running seconds, which allowed for perfect synchronization, or “hacking,” of multiple watches in the planning of a mission. This feature gave the Bulova Hack Watch its name, and a hacking seconds function can now be found in many watch movements whether they are intended for military use or not.

Modern Hamilton Khaki Field watches

In 1962, with the U.S. ramping up its involvement in the Vietnam War, its Department of Defense established an official set of criteria, called MIL-W-3818B, for what were now being referred to as “general purpose” watches for the military. Contracts were awarded to watchmakers that could meet these criteria, which included an accuracy between +/- 30 seconds per day, a hacking seconds function, a steel case that was sufficiently resistant to water and magnetism, and a hand-wound mechanical movement with no less than 17 jewels. Just two years later came the new, superseding MIL-W-43674 specs, which allowed for other case materials, and movements that didn’t include hacking seconds, a consolation that enabled quicker production of more disposable servicemen’s watches as the war and the nation’s commitment to it escalated. Hamilton was among the few companies to manufacture military watches under these criteria, along with Benrus, Timex, Westclox, and a handful of others. The watches of this era, particularly Hamilton’s, established what we today regard as the quintessential “field watch” look: black dials with 12 white Arabic hour numerals, an inner ring of smaller numerals marking 24-hour time (i.e., military time), and a minute track with triangular markers at each hour. (This dial layout actually debuted during the Korean War years on the Type A-17 watches released by Hamilton, Waltham, Bulova, and others under the previous MIL-W-6433 specs set in the 1950s.)

Longines Heritage Military Marine Nationale

Hamilton has produced the modern, commercial version of its 1960s DOD-contracted watch, the Hamilton Khaki Field, since the 1980s and has since expanded it into a far-reaching collection. Bulova makes a modern version of its 1940s Hack Watch as part of its vintage-inspired Archive collection. Longines has released several Heritage Military models, the first based on a 1918 watch made for World War I troops, the second a re-issue of a watch worn by Britain’s RAF officers during World War II. In the 21st Century, the “field watch” style has attained a level of cachet among civilian customers that few could have envisioned back in the war years. As far as what actual service members are wearing these days, it’s worth noting that Montreal, Canada-based Marathon Watch Company, which started devoting its production primarily to military-use wristwatches as early as 1939, originally for the Royal Canadian Air Force, is today the sole official supplier of the U.S. Armed Forces, with all its watches still adhering to the Vietnam-era MIL-PRF-46374 specs.

SEA:

Lighting the Way: Panerai Radiomir

Military operations at sea have been a part of warfare since nations developed the know-how to put weapons on ships and other floating conveyances. Furthermore, the rise of submersible crafts and equipment that enabled divers to conduct missions deep underwater created additional needs not only for timekeeping devices but ones that could operate safely and efficiently while submerged. Once again, World War II provided the stage for early innovations, perhaps the most impactful coming from Italy’s Guido Panerai, a Florentine watch retailer who also made equipment for the Italian Navy. Back in 1916, Panerai had invented a self-sustaining illumination agent that rendered vital equipment visible in the dark during nighttime missions. The compound, which combined zinc sulfide, radium bromide, and mesothorium, was called Radiomir and it was initially applied to the dials and sights of the equipment it supplied to the navy. In 1935, with World War II on the horizon, the Royal Italian Navy assembled an elite team of commandos called Gamma Group, underwater demolition specialists trained to conduct sabotage missions against the powerful British Navy, with which they’d soon be at war. With no existing watch suitable for these “frogmen,” i.e., one that could both withstand the rigors of combat diving as well as offer legibility in the murky depths, the Naval Command approached Panerai for a solution.

Panerai Luminor Marina (left) and Radiomir 

The result was Panerai’s very first wristwatch, the now-legendary Ref. 2533, which used a waterproof Oyster case from Rolex (an invention that had been perfected in 1926) and a two-layered "sandwich” dial with a generous helping of the Radiomir luminous material applied to its big, cutout Arabic numerals, which made the dial legible in the depths. The watch took its name, Radiomir, from this signature and groundbreaking feature; initially assembled by case-supplier Rolex, Panerai Radiomir watches became standard issue for Italian Naval Commandos throughout World War II and its aftermath, until they were superseded by the Luminor (also named after a proprietary luminous substance), which introduced Panerai’s now-familiar, patented crown-locking bridge device. Panerai watches were exclusively sold to military clients for many years, but their bold, bulky military design was instrumental in ushering in, it’s fair to say, a retro MIL-SPEC trend in watch aesthetics that continues to this day. (The only reason that Panerai’s crown-locking device hasn’t become a larger part of this conversation is that the company had the foresight to patent it in 1956, ensuring that it would never become a signature element of other brands’ dive watches.) Of course, the most significant watch-design innovation that Panerai can claim is the now-ubiquitous use of self-sustaining luminous paint on watch dials both sporty and elegant — though the mildly radioactive Radiomir has long since been replaced by safer options like Super-LumiNova.

By the 1950s, Panerai had become a supplier of diving watches to the maritime military units of several nations, including the Egyptian Navy, which commissioned a watch in 1953 that would presage another modern collection. The so-called L’Egiziano had a massive, 60mm-diameter steel case with an early version of the crown-protecting bridge, a Swiss Angelus movement with an eight-day power reserve, and a 200-meter water resistance that was rarely achieved at the time. Its signature feature was a four-studded rotating bezel with a graduated dive scale, which was designed for easier gripping than its predecessors. The L’Egiziano would provide the template for the Luminor Submersible — later called just the Submersible — which is the only Panerai model today that passes muster as a divers’ watch, as it’s the only one with a rotating bezel. With its three main product pillars — Radiomir, Luminor, and Submersible — all descended from the same, original Italian Navy frogmen’s watch, Panerai is noteworthy as the only major luxury watchmaker whose entire portfolio can claim MIL-SPEC origins.

The Modern Diving Pioneer: Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

Innovations in water-resistant timepieces for divers didn’t stop after World War II, and even though many of the most iconic dive watches are associated more with the rise of diving as a recreational pursuit in the 1950s and beyond, their most essential elements arose directly from military specifications. Most of them can be traced to 1953 and the first Fifty Fathoms watch from Blancpain, a heritage Swiss watch house founded in 1735. At the time, its CEO was Jean-Jacques Fiechter, an avid recreational diving enthusiast who’d longed to develop the perfect watch for his hobby. He began pursuing the idea in earnest after a French Naval officer, Captain Robert Malubier, approached Blancpain about making mission-ready watches for the elite unit of military divers (nageurs de combat) he’d assembled for the French Ministry of Defense. Devoting resources to make such a timepiece, for which Maloubier and several other Naval officers contributed ideas, was not an easy sell in those days. Dress watches and sports watches dominated the market and purpose-built tool watches were not popular with consumers; the first watchmaker that Maloubier approached with his concept, France’s Lip, had passed on making it. But Fiechter leapt at the challenge, and the timepiece that emerged from the collaboration proved to be both historic and influential. The watch took its name from the water resistance of its 42mm steel case, which was exceptionally large for the time: 91.45 meters, or 50 fathoms, the maximum depth recommended for scuba divers. Its dial was black and its numerals were luminescent for greater legibility underwater. It was the first purpose-built divers’ watch with a self-winding movement, the first with an antimagnetic case, and the first to employ the patented, double-sealed crown that Fiechter had developed.

Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe

Most notably, the Fifty Fathoms was the first watch to include the now-ubiquitous, lockable bezel with a dive-time scale that rotated in only one direction. This practical and potentially life-saving innovation prevented a diver from accidentally jarring the bezel in the wrong direction for an inaccurate reading of how much time he’d spent underwater and thus miscalculating how much oxygen he had left in the tank. The unidirectional diving bezel would be adopted by numerous watch manufacturers going forward, including Rolex, which released its famous and arguably even more influential Submariner shortly thereafter. The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms was adopted not only by the French navy divers who’d had a hand in its creation but by other military units across the world as well — including special forces teams from Spain, Germany, Norway, Israel, and even the U.S.A.’s Navy SEALs — before its more well-known association with pop-cultural figures like Jacques Cousteau (who was, let’s not forget, a French naval officer himself before becoming a world-renowned oceanographer and filmmaker). In 1957, Blancpain updated the design of its military-issue Fifty Fathoms at the behest of the U.S. Navy, adding a “water-tightness indicator” on the dial, a small round disk whose color changed from white to red, a failsafe measure to alert a wearer in the event that water had penetrated the case.

Blancpain Tribute to Fifty Fathoms MIL-SPEC

The international standard for calling a dive watch “waterproof” (ISO 6425) is not strictly based on any military unit’s criteria, but it is based on many of the benchmarks set for the first time by the Fifty Fathoms, including levels of water resistance, antimagnetism, underwater legibility, and the all-important “diving time indicator… protected against inadvertent handling,” as ideally represented in the vast majority of examples by the unidirectional ratcheting bezel. So the next time you’re absent-mindedly fiddling with the bezel of your gold Submariner or Omega Seamaster during a boring boardroom meeting, perhaps take a moment to remember that its original purpose was to keep naval divers alive underwater.

Prototypes Reborn: Tudor P01, Bulova Mil-Ships

Tudor Black Bay P01

As MIL-SPEC designs in watchmaking continue to grow in appeal to watch enthusiasts, some brands have not only resurrected historic, military-issued models from their archives but also turned for inspiration to prototypes that never made it to mass production — particularly in the area of dive watches. Tudor, founded in 1926 as a sister brand to Rolex, was another Swiss watchmaker that supplied watches to the French Navy in the 1950s and ‘60s, and the design of the brand’s modern-day leader model, the Black Bay, takes many stylistic details from the Oyster Prince watches from that era. The emblematic “snowflake” handset, for example, is said to have originated with a suggestion from a navy diver that the hour and minute hands should be distinct from each other in shape for greater legibility. But its most military-influenced watch is the Black Bay P01, released in 2017 and based on a recently unearthed prototype from 1967 that was never mass produced. Code-named the “Commando,” the original was designed to meet a set of specifications for another Tudor military client at the time, the U.S. Navy, and was distinguished by a patented, removable divers’ bezel. The P01 (for “Prototype 1”) updates that concept with a locking, bidirectional bezel with a stopping system and a mobile link at 12 o’clock. The oddball design also includes a 4 o’clock screwed crown, a domed dial with snowflake hands, and a matte finish on the 42mm steel case. A COSC chronometer-certified movement ticks inside, behind the solid caseback. The Black Bay P01 is not a watch for everyone but it does offer the most direct and obvious connection to the MIL-SPEC models of Tudor’s past.

Bulova MIL-SHIPS

Bulova made several prototype divers’ watches for the U.S. military in the 1950s that for various technical reasons never made it into serial production and were thus never actually worn by service members. (Long story short, Bulova was focusing its efforts on perfecting its Accutron movement at the time rather than working the bugs out of its dive watch, and the U.S. Navy ended up adopting the Fifty Fathoms instead.) Bulova resurrected one of these rare prototypes, called the MIL-SHIPS, in 2020 as part of its expanding vintage-inspired Archive collection. Its 41-mm sandblasted steel case is water resistant to 200 meters and houses an automatic caliber with a 41-hour power reserve. Its vintage-look dial features cathedral hands, luminous hour markers, and a period-appropriate moisture indicator, a safety mechanism rarely found on dive watches today. The MIL-SHIPS settles nicely alongside the Hack Watch as the seaworthy member of Bulova’s vintage-military offerings today.

AIR:

Observation to Aviation: Fliegers and B-Uhren

The first wristwatch developed for aviation, technically, was Cartier’s Santos-Dumont in 1904, which, while still around today, doesn’t resemble anything most of us think of when we picture a pilot’s watch and certainly doesn’t evoke anything military. However, as airplanes and other flying machines were increasingly put to wartime missions — from reconnaissance to aerial assault to rescues — the timepieces issued to military pilots evolved into a much more utilitarian and streamlined aesthetic, and the field watches already in use by ground troops provided the template. 

A "Type B" flieger watch from Laco

The first military-issue pilot watches, often called “flieger watches” after the German word for “flier,” were derived from a type of timekeeper developed in the 1930s for Germany’s military aviators called “B-Uhr” — short for Beobachtungs-Uhren, which translates to “observation watches.” B-Uhr watches, the first of which were property of the German government rather than the Luftwaffe pilots who wore them, adhered to strict specifications. Their cases were enormous for a wrist-borne watch at the time, at 55mm in diameter, and they accordingly housed movements that were originally made for pocket watches. These movements all incorporated the mission-critical hacking seconds function and were protected from magnetism by soft iron inner cages to ensure their functionality in an airplane cockpit. The dials were designed to be ultra-readable, with large white Arabic numerals on a black background and flame-blued, luminous-treated sword hands. The bulbous “onion” crowns were intended for easy gripping by hands wearing heavy flight gloves and the watches were secured by rivets to thick leather straps that were long enough and sturdy enough to be worn over those gloves.

IWC Big Pilot's Watch

As with the Dirty Dozen watches commissioned by the British government, the contracts to make the B-Uhren were granted to only a handful of companies — five to be exact, four German and one Swiss. The German manufacturers were Laco, Stowa, Wempe, and a watchmaker now known much more for high-luxury timepieces than tool watches, A. Lange & Söhne. The single Swiss maker was the International Watch Company, or IWC, which supplied watches to both the Axis and Allies as per Switzerland’s neutral status during the war, and which contributed perhaps the most influential and recognizable flieger timepiece, the famed Big Pilot’s Watch (above). The original B-Uhren were built to what were dubbed “Type A” specifications, with an orientation triangle surrounded by two dots at the 12 o’clock position and a single chapter ring on the outside edge. The “Type B” models that followed in 1941 added a layer of utility with an outer scale (0-60 graduated into five-minute increments) for minutes and seconds and an inner 1-12 ring for hours. Regardless of which of the five producers made them, the cases all had engraved identification numbers beginning with “FL” for “Flieger,” hence the term that came to define these pilots’ watches as a genre.

IWC Mark XX, descendant of the Mark 11

Flieger watches ebbed and flowed in mainstream popularity in the postwar years, but the style came roaring back around the turn of the 20th Century, and at the head of the revival was IWC, which had continued its collaborations with military clients during the Cold War era that followed World War II. In 1948, the United Kingdom, one of the victorious Allied nations, reached out to IWC for a wristwatch that its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots could wear in their aerial patrols for the newly constituted NATO alliance. The watch that IWC developed was an evolution of its “Dirty Dozen” field watch, the Mark X, and was appropriately dubbed the Mark XI or Mark 11. It was substantially smaller than the 1940s’ Big Pilot’s Watch (just 36mm, more suited to modest postwar tastes) but retained the matte black dial and bold Arabic hour numerals and orientation triangle of its predecessor. Most significantly, it contained a movement enveloped within a soft-iron inner cage that protected its mechanisms from the magnetic fields in a modern cockpit — a strict requirement of the RAF and now a staple of IWC Pilot Watches, and many other watches, to this day. British pilots wore the Mark 11 for the ensuing three decades, and the watch ultimately found its way to the wrists of military aviators in other Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The return of the Mark 11 to IWC’s commercial lineup in the 1990s not only redefined the brand for a new era but also helped usher in the vintage-military pilot watch as a go-to style that watchmakers large and small, young and old, continue to embrace.

Chronographs in the Cockpit

Longines Heritage Avigation BigEye

In addition to the latter-day flieger styles, several retro-style pilots' chronographs influenced by military specifications can also be found on the contemporary market. Among the most noteworthy are the “Avigation” models in Longines’ extensive Heritage collection, which owe their design heritage to WWI and WWII-era watches that the Swiss maker produced for military pilots. The first “Avigation” release (the term is a portmanteau of “aviation” and “navigation”) was The Type A-7, a revival of a watch made for United States Army pilots in the 1930s and named for the Army-established A-7 specification that they were built to meet. The specs required that the watch’s dial be tilted at a 40-degree angle so that it would be aligned with an aircraft instrument panel when the wearer’s arms were operating the controls. (In non-military watches that followed, this tilted dial orientation became known as a “driver’s watch” style, because a driver could read the watch without moving their hands from an automobile’s steering wheel.) Another 1930s revival, the Avigation BigEye, is distinguished by its extra-large chronograph counter at 3 o’clock for the elapsed minutes, regarded as the most important display for a combat pilot in flight. As if to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that military-influenced designs from the early 20th century were as in vogue as they’ve ever been, the Longines Avigation BigEye won the coveted “Best Revival” award at the 2017 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève. 

Breguet Type XX 

Much better known these days for luxurious, complicated timepieces, Breguet was a longtime supplier of aviation chronographs for France’s naval air force, the Aeronavale, and in the 1950s started producing a watch that met the “Type 20” standards established by the French Ministry of War and also added a technical upgrade: a chronograph with a flyback function — one of the first to be incorporated into a wristwatch, and a desirable technical feature in many non-military chronographs today. At the request of its intended users, Breguet also redesigned the dial in its later versions, replacing the traditional 30-minute chronograph counter with a 15-minute counter, the latter representing the interval required to check an aircraft before flight. Breguet started building the Type XX into a commercial collection in the 1990s and in recent years has even released period-appropriate re-issues of the original model.

Blancpain Air Command

Blancpain, maker of the Fifty Fathoms dive watch series, has recently revived the Air Command, a 1950s pilots’ chronograph,originally developed as a prototype for the French Ministry of Defense, and later made for the U.S. Air Force in limited numbers. First re-released in a steel case in 2019, then in titanium in 2021, the modern Air Command features many of the French military-contracted elements of the original, including a black dial, luminous hands and hour markers, a flyback chronograph movement, a ratcheted bidirectional bezel that enables a pilot to keep track of his fuel reserve in flight, and a tachymeter scale for calculating air speeds. While not yet as popular as its historical dive-watch sibling, the return of the Air Command is further proof that Blancpain, and numerous other luxury-oriented watchmakers, continue to mine their archives for intriguing MIL-SPEC designs, and that those designs continue to resonate with a generation of watch enthusiasts whose only experience with their wartime origins might be documentaries on the History Channel. 

MIL-SPEC in the Modern Era — and Beyond

MicroMilSpec U.S. Space Force Watch

Despite the pervasive and ongoing influence of military-specific design from the early to mid-20th Century on today’s wristwatch universe, it would be a mistake to categorize the MIL-SPEC trend as owing solely to nostalgia and retro-style looks. Many watch companies today are actively partnering with military organizations and soliciting input on their designs. Perhaps most prominently, IWC has established a longtime relationship with the U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapons School to produce the “TOP GUN” models in its large and diverse Pilot’s collection. Great Britain’s Bremont, founded by a pair of former RAF Reserve pilot brothers, launched its Armed Forces collection, developed in cooperation with the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence, in 2019. The series consists of watches for each of the nation’s three branches, and the field-watch-style Broadsword, in particular, boasts a distinctly Dirty Dozen vibe. Luminox, a Swiss brand founded in 1989, has maintained a close relationship with the Navy SEALs for more than 25 years and makes an “official” Navy SEALs watch that is worn by not only those elite naval commandos but also land-based law enforcement officials and first responders. And now that the United States, as of 2019, has another military branch — the U.S. Space Force — even newer watch brands are getting into the act. Norway’s appropriately named MicroMilSpec, which makes special-order military watches, partnered with the USSF to create an official timepiece for its service members as well as a civilian version. Will “space” join land, sea, and air as the next go-to frontier for MIL-SPEC watchmaking to conquer? Time will tell.