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Tag: U.S. Air Force

  • 2 Air Force leaders speak about breaking barriers, inspiring positive change

    2 Air Force leaders speak about breaking barriers, inspiring positive change

    Washington — Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown, Jr., and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass, are both firsts in their roles. Brown is the first Black man to serve as chief of staff, while Bass is the first woman to earn chief master sergeant title.

    “One of the things I really believe is young people only aspire to be what they see,” Brown told CBS News this week. “You don’t decide to grow up to be something you’ve never seen.”

    “It is humbling,” Bass said of being the first woman to serve as chief master sergeant. “And it’s an honor to be able to serve alongside heroes and visionaries like these people.”

    All military branches are struggling to recruit and retain servicemembers. There are multiple factors to this, including a pervasive culture of harassment and bullying.

    “I’m very focused on developing the culture within organizations where all of our airmen can reach their full potential,” Brown said. “Where they have zero detractors, whether it’s sexual assault, discrimination, harassment, bullying. Those are the areas, and that takes leadership.”

    When asked about allegations from sexual abuse survivors who believe the Air Force is letting perpetrators get away with their crimes, Brown said that “our goal is to hold all those accountable.”

    “Can we do better? Yes. As always, room for improvement,” he added.

    Brown also explained what he believes the Air Force can do to make it easier for people to join.

    “There’s five key things that impact military families: child care, education, housing, health care and spousal employment,” Brown said. “Those are the things that really help us with the retention and support, not only our military members but more importantly, our military families.”

    May 20 marks Armed Forces Day, when the nation honors those who serve, past and present across all branches of the military.

    “We want America to know some of the caliber of the men and women who serve in the U.S. military,” Bass said. “They are probably some of the most talented, most educated people in our nation. They inspire me every single day.”

    Norah O’Donnell


    Norah O'Donnell

    Norah O’Donnell is the anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” She also contributes to “60 Minutes.”

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  • Military families struggle as spouses face obstacles to transfer professional licenses after moves

    Military families struggle as spouses face obstacles to transfer professional licenses after moves

    The frequent moves required of U.S. servicemembers can often put a strain on military spouses, especially those with occupational licenses. Earlier this year, President Biden signed a bill into law designed to cut through red tape when it comes to transferring those licenses to a new state, but many military spouses said that, so far, not much has changed.

    Michelle Wintering is a speech pathologist whose husband is in the Army. Sometimes the family stays in one place for less than a year, and she hasn’t been able to work full-time because of how difficult it is to transfer her license from state to state.

    “Some require specific coursework before you can be licensed there,” she said. “And then you have just the phone calls and the emails and the paperwork that you have to submit for proof of licensure in previous states.”

    Wintering said she loves what she does, but “what’s frustrating for me is when I have gaps in employment and I want to be working.”

    And she’s not alone. 

    Amanda James has a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate. Her husband, Will, is in the Air Force. 

    “I have five states in the last ten years on my resume,” she told CBS News.

    She said that, while she’s been able to find some work, she’s been “underemployed,” having never been able to secure a full-time teaching job.

    Some 39% of active duty spouses, more than 130,000 people, need a license for their job and face under- or unemployment each time they move, according to the Department of Defense.

    James lived in Mississippi and Illinois for less than two years each. She said she couldn’t get hired in either state because of the red tape surrounding the transfer of her license. Illinois, for example, doesn’t offer expedited transfers for military spouses.

    She ended up taking a job at a private school in Missouri, where she taught seven subjects and made just $20,000 a year. James ended up having to walk away from the job because of the amount of stress and lack of pay.

    James said that the financial impact of not being able to transfer her license has been enormous and the family has “never quite caught up.”

    These struggles can lead to qualified servicemembers — like Wintering’s husband — leaving the military early, creating a national security risk as branches struggle to recruit. 

    To address this, Mr. Biden in January signed the Military Licensing Relief Act. The law is intended to make states to accept license transfers, but there’s no deadline or plan in place yet for how to actually do that.

    Rep. Salud Carbajal, a cosponsor of the bill who represents California’s 24th congressional district, recognizes the hurdles but says “help is on the way.”

    “Let us work out the kinks, implement this legislative program and your life will be easier,” he added.

    “We’re trying to make sure that this bill puts in the framework that makes it work in a reciprocal way across the United States,” he said. “It’s still going to require states to work with our DoD to make sure that the program works effectively.”

    Rep. Mike Garcia, the bill’s other cosponsor who represents California’s 27th district, said that individual states are “struggling with how to implement” the new law.

    “For everything like this, with such a seismic change in the way they do business, there are going to be changes in the process. So we need to help them with that,” Garcia said.

    But for some, it’s already too late. 

    James said she’s given up on trying to get a job as a teacher.

    “It makes me feel like, am I not good enough?” she said. “Did I not get enough credentials? Did I not get enough certifications? It’s been difficult.”

    Norah O’Donnell


    Norah O'Donnell

    Norah O’Donnell is the anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” She also contributes to “60 Minutes.”

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  • Air Force suspends leaders of alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira’s unit

    Air Force suspends leaders of alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira’s unit

    The Air Force said Wednesday it has temporarily suspended two leaders of the unit where accused Pentagon document leaker Jack Teixeira worked. 

    The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron and the detachment commander overseeing administrative support have both been temporarily suspended from their leadership positions and have temporarily lost access to classified systems and information. 

    The commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts made the suspensions last week.

    Teixeira, the 21-year-old who allegedly posted hundreds of classified Pentagon documents online for months, worked as a systems administrator in the 102nd Intelligence Wing in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.  

    The two commanders are suspended pending further investigation by the Air Force inspector general. As more information becomes available, more members of Teixeira’s unit could face suspension or removal. 

    The Air Force reassigned the unit’s intelligence mission to other units earlier this month and ordered the inspector general to probe the unit’s policies and procedures related to the handling of national security information. 

    Investigators with the IG’s office arrived at Otis Air National Guard Base Tuesday. 

    Teixeira has a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday in Worcester, Massachusetts.

    The Justice Department argued in court documents filed late Wednesday that he should be held until his trial because, among other things, he poses a significant flight risk and nations hostile to the U.S. might even try to help him flee.

    Eleanor Watson

    CBS News reporter covering the Pentagon.

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  • Pregnant Air Force pilot takes to the skies in supersonic bomber

    Pregnant Air Force pilot takes to the skies in supersonic bomber

    Pregnant Air Force pilot flies supersonic bomber


    Pregnant Air Force pilot flies supersonic bomber

    01:39

    Majors Lauren and Mark Olme met at the United States Air Force Academy more than 10 years ago.

    They got married seven months after graduation and have deployed all around the world together training to fly for the Air Force. Now based in Texas, the pair both fly supersonic B-1 bombers.

    “It’s a really fun airplane to fly,” Lauren Olme said.

    Now, Lauren Olme is making history. She is among the first pregnant pilots to fly an ejection seat plane, even hitting supersonic speeds during one flight.

    “I looked over and I saw Mark in the other aircraft and knew that flying with my husband and carrying, hopefully, the next generation bomber pilot while flying supersonic was, it was quite the memory,” Lauren Olme said of the flight.

    But until recently, creating that memory would have been much more difficult. Until last year, the Air Force had red tape that made it difficult for pregnant pilots to fly.

    “Now the Air Force, who has spent a lot of time and resources to develop these professional pilots who are female, you know, they can continue to contribute in the ways they want to,” Mark Olme said.

    Pilots have highly specialized training and need to fly to maintain their skills. Previously, pilots would be out of the plane for up to 12 months when pregnant, now they can stay in the air into their second trimester.

    Norah O’Donnell


    Norah O'Donnell

    Norah O’Donnell is the anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” She also contributes to “60 Minutes.”

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  • Pentagon releases dramatic video said to show Russian jet collision with U.S. drone over Black Sea near Ukraine

    Pentagon releases dramatic video said to show Russian jet collision with U.S. drone over Black Sea near Ukraine

    The U.S. military on Thursday morning released dramatic video that it said showed a Russian fighter jet intercepting and then colliding with the American MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday. The U.S. has accused Russia of operating its warplane in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner during the encounter near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

    On Wednesday, a senior Russian official said Moscow would try to recover the wreckage of the drone. U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the unmanned aerial vehicle had likely broken during the crash and whatever debris was left likely sank to a depth of thousands of feet in the Black Sea.

    “That’s U.S. property,” Milley said Wednesday at a Pentagon news conference. “There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly.”

    An official told CBS News that the Russians had reached the site of the crash and would probably manage to collect some pieces of the debris, like metal chunks, but Milley said the U.S. had taken mitigating measures to prevent the loss of any sensitive intelligence.

    “We are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value,” he told reporters.

    The video released Thursday by the Pentagon (above), captured by a camera on the MQ-9, first shows a fighter jet pass by at close range before making another pass during which it allegedly hit the drone’s propeller. The camera view is lost briefly after the apparent collision but it comes back to show what the Air Force said was damage to the propeller from the strike.

    The Russian jet “dumped fuel upon and struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters,” the Air Force said in a statement accompanying the video.

    The video released by the U.S. military’s European Command was “edited for length, however, the events are depicted in sequential order,” the statement said.

    dod-mq-9-drone-russia-collision-black-sea.jpg
    An image taken from video released on March 16, 2023 by the U.S. military shows what the Pentagon said is a Russian fighter jet approaching a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 drone over the Black Sea just before colliding with the drone, forcing it to be brought down, on March 14, 2023. The image was captured by a camera on board the MQ-9, the Pentagon said.

    U.S. Military handout


    Speaking to reporters this week, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder wouldn’t say whether the drone was armed, and he referred to the unmanned aircraft as a MQ-9, but not by its other name, the Reaper. The U.S. uses Reapers for surveillance and strikes and has operated the aircraft from Europe to the Middle East and Africa.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday, speaking alongside Milley, that he had spoken with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu after the incident over the Black Sea, but the American defense chief didn’t provide details of the conversation.

    “The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows, and it is incumbent upon Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner,” Austin told reporters.

    A MQ-9 Reaper drone flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nevada.
    A MQ-9 Reaper drone flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nevada.

    Isaac Brekken/Getty


    Russia’s Defense Ministry said Shoigu had told Austin that the collision was the result of “increased [U.S.] intelligence activities against the interests of the Russian Federation” and “non-compliance with the restricted flight zone” declared by Moscow amid its ongoing war in Ukraine. Ukraine’s southern coast is on the Black Sea, and Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014 and claimed as its sovereign territory, sticks out into the body of water.

    Ukraine-Russia map

    Created with Datawrapper


    The Russian ministry said it would react “proportionately” to any more U.S. “provocations” in the region, warning that “flights of American strategic unmanned aerial vehicles off the coast of Crimea are provocative in nature, which creates pre-conditions for an escalation of the situation in the Black Sea zone.”  

    “Russia is not interested in such a development of events, but it will continue to respond proportionately to all provocations,” the defense ministry said.

    CBS News’ Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.

    Tucker Reals

    Tucker Reals is the CBSNews.com foreign editor, based at the CBS News London bureau.

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  • The 4 highest-ranking women in the U.S. military speak about their experiences

    The 4 highest-ranking women in the U.S. military speak about their experiences

    The 4 highest-ranking women in the U.S. military speak about their experiences – CBS News


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    Only 10 women in U.S. military history have served as four-star generals or four-star admirals, the military’s highest ranks. Four of them took part in an exclusive interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell to discuss their experiences.

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  • The 4 highest-ranking women in the U.S. military speak about the obstacles they overcame

    The 4 highest-ranking women in the U.S. military speak about the obstacles they overcame

    Army Gen. Laura Richardson flew helicopters in Iraq and led an assault helicopter battalion. She now leads U.S. Southern Command.

    “Where else in the military can you be a helicopter pilot, work at the White House, work at the United States Capitol, work at the Pentagon, and lead American sons and daughters in combat,” Richardson told CBS News.

    Hundreds in U.S. history have held the rank of four-star general or admiral, only 10 are women.  

    Richardson is one of four of those women who spoke exclusively to CBS News this week about the challenges they faced to achieve what they did.

    “And there’s four of us, right?” Richardson said. “A first. And so, pretty soon, there will be no more firsts.”

    Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, the head of the Coast Guard, is the first female service chief in U.S. history, and the only woman to be a de facto member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    “The journey we’ve all been on has taken sustained, persistent effort, endeavor,” Fagan told CBS News. “Yes, there’s been some difficult people along the way, but, you know, they’re not sitting here in these chairs right now.”

    Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost leads the U.S. Transportation Command. As a teenager, she had her pilot’s license before her driver’s license. But when she enlisted, she wasn’t allowed to fly fighter jets because she was a woman.

    “A senior leader from that school said there really is no reason that women should be here,” Ovost said. “And you don’t belong here. I talked to … fellow wingmen. They were helping me so that I would be sharp, so that when I ended up flying with that person again, I would demonstrate that I had every right to be there.”

    Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the number two officer in the Navy, once commanded a carrier strike group. On her first deployment, though, her commanding officer told her she wasn’t welcome there, a situation each of these women has faced.

    “He made it very clear to me that he didn’t think women should be on our ship and he was going to make sure that I did not succeed,” Franchetti said.

    That discrimination was met by determination. 

    “I just worked harder,” Franchetti said. “And, you know, I was gonna make sure that what he wanted to have happen wasn’t going to happen.”  

    The four women acknowledge, though, that there’s still a long way to go.

    “It’s all about who’s on the bench, and who are we in the pipeline reaching way down, not just at our colonel level, but to the majors and captains and grooming them to fill our seats,” Richardson said. 

    Norah O’Donnell


    Norah O'Donnell

    Norah O’Donnell is the anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” She also contributes to “60 Minutes.”

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  • National Guard airman dies in snowboarding fall at NJ mall

    National Guard airman dies in snowboarding fall at NJ mall

    EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — A man who was serving in the Air National Guard died after he fell while snowboarding at an indoor ski park inside a New Jersey mall, officials and family members said.

    Peter Mathews, 24, of Bay Shore on New York’s Long Island, fell Dec. 8 as he snowboarded at the Big Snow American Dream, which is within the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, his family told Newsday.

    Mathews fell backward, hit his head, became unconscious and had trouble breathing, his sister, Sarah Mathews, told the newspaper.

    After CPR was performed at the mall, Mathews was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, his sister said.

    Mathews was an airman first class in the Maryland Air National Guard, which he joined in 2020. He had hoped to become a commercial airline pilot, Sarah Mathews said.

    Mathews was wearing a helmet and other safety gear when he fell and had no underlying health problems his family was aware of, his sister said.

    Big Snow American Dream is an indoor skiing and snowboarding facility within the mall at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. It opened in 2019 and is the first indoor ski park in North America. Skiing stars including Lindsey Vonn attended its grand opening event.

    In a statement, Big Snow said: “We can confirm that our ski patrol responded to a guest incident last Thursday evening. First aid was administered, and the guest was transported to a hospital for further care. Our thoughts are with this guest’s family at this time.”

    Beno Varghese, a friend who was with Mathews at the mall, told Newsday that Mathews suffered what at first looked like a routine fall. “I saw him on the ground. I ran up and he was already unconscious,” Varghese said.

    Varghese said he and other friends who had gone to the indoor ski facility together gathered in a circle and prayed as medical personnel tried to keep Mathews alive.

    U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Jeffrey Galabiehs, the senior enlisted leader of the 175th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, said Mathews was recently awarded the Air Force Achievement Medal for his accomplishments during exercises in eastern Europe. Mathews had mobilized with the Air Force unit to help with the exercises.

    “If you had a chance to talk to him, you knew instantly he had a remarkable future and was destined for greatness,” Galabiehs said in a statement.

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  • Joseph Kittinger, who set longtime parachute record, dies

    Joseph Kittinger, who set longtime parachute record, dies

    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Retired Air Force Col. Joseph Kittinger, whose 1960 parachute jump from almost 20 miles (32 kilometers) above the Earth stood as a world record for more than 50 years, died Friday in Florida. He was 94.

    His death was announced by former U.S. Rep. John Mica and other friends. The cause was lung cancer.

    Kittinger, then an Air Force captain and pilot, gained worldwide fame when he completed three jumps over 10 months from a gondola that was hoisted into the stratosphere by large helium balloons. Project Excelsior was aimed at helping design ejection systems for military pilots flying high-altitude missions.

    Wearing a pressure suit and 60 pounds of equipment, Kittinger almost died during the project’s first jump in November 1959 when his gear malfunctioned after he jumped from 14.5 miles (23 kilometers). He lost consciousness as he went into a spin that was 22 times the force of gravity. He was saved when his automatic chute opened.

    Four weeks later, Kittinger made his second jump from just over 14 miles (22 kilometers) above the surface. This time, there were no problems.

    Kittinger’s record jump came on Aug. 16, 1960, in the New Mexico desert. His pressure suit malfunctioned as he rose, failing to seal off his right hand, which swelled to twice normal size before he jumped from 102,800 feet — more than 19 miles (31.3 kilometers) above the surface.

    Free falling in the thin atmosphere, the Tampa native exceeded 600 mph (965 kph) before the gradually thickening air slowed his fall to about 150 mph (241 kph) when his parachute deployed at 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers).

    “There’s no way you can visualize the speed,” Kittinger told Florida Trend magazine in 2011. “There’s nothing you can see to see how fast you’re going. You have no depth perception. If you’re in a car driving down the road and you close your eyes, you have no idea what your speed is. It’s the same thing if you’re free falling from space. There are no signposts. You know you are going very fast, but you don’t feel it. You don’t have a 614-mph (988-kph) wind blowing on you. I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet.”

    His record stood until 2012, when Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped from 24 miles (38.6 kilometers) above the New Mexico desert, reaching the supersonic speed of 844 mph (1,360 kph). Kittinger served as an adviser.

    Kittinger stayed in the Air Force after his jumps, serving three tours of duty during the Vietnam War. He was shot down over North Vietnam in May 1972, but ejected and parachuted to Earth. He was captured and spent 11 months in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp, undergoing torture.

    He retired from the Air Force in 1978 and settled in the Orlando area, where he became a local icon. A park is named there is named after him.

    He is survived by his wife, Sherri.

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  • U.S. Cuts Pacific Airpower Presence As China’s Military Grows

    U.S. Cuts Pacific Airpower Presence As China’s Military Grows

    The United States broadcast contradictory messages last week, perplexing allies and potential adversaries alike. The U.S. Air Force announced that it was withdrawing F-15C/D air-superiority fighter aircraft from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, after 43 years on station. They will not be backfilled anytime soon with permanently assigned fighter aircraft. The day prior, the U.S. released its new National Defense Strategy, which highlights China as the “pacing challenge” to U.S. defense capability.

    The cause of the apparent discrepancy between the new defense strategy and reductions of U.S. forces in the Pacific traces back to a series of poor decisions made by Presidents, Congress, and Department of Defense (DOD) leaders over the past three decades. Those decisions consistently underfunded the Air Force and cut its fighter force structure without buying enough replacements. For the past 30 years, the nation has invested less in its Air Force than in its Army or Navy. As a consequence, the Air Force is now the oldest, smallest, and least ready it has ever been in its 75 year history. Further confirmation of the impact of these decisions is the blaring alarm contained in the recent Heritage Foundation annual report that evaluates the readiness, capability, and capacity of the U.S. armed services. It reduced the rating of the Air Force from “weak” last year to “very weak” this year.

    The Air Force has consistently said it is not sized to meet the mission demands placed on it by the various U.S. combatant commands. A 2018 study—the Air Force we need—showed a 24 percent deficit in Air Force capacity to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy. Those conclusions remain valid, except demand is even higher today given world events, and the Air Force is now smaller than it was in 2018.

    DOD will implement the stopgap measure of rotating fighter aircraft through Kadena Air Base, but that option has several downsides. It will stress those aircraft, their pilots, and their maintenance personnel exactly at a time when pilot retention is a serious problem. It also deprives other regional combatant commands of advanced fighter aircraft at a time when demand for them is very high. For example, F-22s from a location that would source fighters to rotate to Kadena are now deployed in Europe to deter Russia.

    Withdrawing the permanent presence of two F-15C/D squadrons from the Pacific is the inevitable result of decisions that slashed investment in successor aircraft. The original inventory objective of 750 F-22 stealth fighters, planned in the early 1990s, was cut to a validated requirement of 381 in 2000. But the program was prematurely ended in 2009 at just 187 airframes—less than half the validated requirement—a short-sighted decision by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who stated that he did not see China as a threat.

    Without enough F-22s to replace the aging F-15C/D force and accomplish other missions, the F-15C/Ds were extended well beyond their original design lifetime. The first flight of the F-15 was 50 years ago in 1972.

    Now, 13 years after Secretary Gates made his disastrous decision, the F-15C/Ds are structurally exhausted. The Air Force is no longer training new active-duty F-15C/D pilots. Kadena-based F-15 pilots are the only active-duty F-15 pilots remaining, and they cannot stay there beyond a normal tour length without inhibiting their career progression. The Air Force has been put in a position that it has to sunset the active duty F-15C/D force.

    The force structure shortfall in the Air Force is also due to a significantly reduced F-35 production rate that never materialized. The F-35 purchase rate has simply not scaled as required—in fact, production has significantly dropped from what was originally planned due to a variety of circumstances.

    The new F-15EX—an advanced, evolutionary version of the original F-15—is years away from the operational volumes necessary to fill squadron-level requirements. The next generation air dominance aircraft—the F-22 follow-on—will not see operational service until sometime after 2030. Future collaborative combat aircraft—advanced, autonomous, uninhabited aerial vehicles—are still largely conceptual, and perhaps a decade away.

    Compounding the Air Force’s aircraft capacity challenges, its future year’s budget plan eliminates about 1,000 more aircraft than it buys over the next five years. That will create an even smaller, older, and less ready force. The reason for a plan with significant additional aircraft reductions? The administration and the Congress are not funding what is required to meet the force structure needs of the National Defense Strategy. So, without the resources to fund the force it needs, the Air Force is doing the only thing it can—divest current force structure to free up funds to invest in future requirements.

    The new National Defense Strategy focuses on a concept called “integrated deterrence,” but it does not offer any force-sizing construct for defining the forces required to achieve the U.S. goal of deterring China, Russia, and other adversaries, or winning if deterrence fails. Instead, it appears to be counting on allies to compensate for the U.S. decline in military capacity and capability. While allies and partners are absolutely essential to deter, and if necessary, defeat our adversaries, only the U.S. can provide the sufficiency of forces necessary to succeed in accomplishing those objectives.

    The United States must buy fighter aircraft capacity now at a rate high enough to reverse the decline in fighter force structure, the decline that forced the Air Force’s hand at Kadena today. That number is a minimum of 72 new fighters per year, compared to the 57 in the administration’s fiscal 2023 Air Force budget request. Nor is this just about fighters, with circumstances just as bad with bombers and other key mission areas. The alternative is to accept increased risk with declining forces yielding insufficient capability and capacity to execute that new national defense strategy that is so reliant on deterrence. Without the forces to assure a decisive and overwhelming victory if forced to fight, deterrence is only an aspiration—not a reality.

    Dave Deptula, Contributor

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  • China slams reported plan for US B-52 bombers in Australia

    China slams reported plan for US B-52 bombers in Australia

    CANBERRA, Australia — The United States is preparing to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in northern Australia, a news report said Monday, prompting China to accuse the U.S. of undermining regional peace and stability.

    The United States is preparing to build dedicated facilities for the long-range bombers at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal in the Northern Territory, national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

    Tindal is south of the coastal city of Darwin, where thousands of U.S. Marines Corps troops have spent about half of each year since 2012 under a deal struck between then-U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not directly respond when asked at a news conference on Monday if the United States is preparing to deploy bombers in Australia.

    “We engage with our friends in the United States alliance from time to time,” Albanese said.

    “There are visits to Australia, including in Darwin, that has U.S. Marines on a rotating basis stationed there,” he said.

    The U.S. Air Force told ABC the ability to deploy U.S. bombers to Australia “sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal air power.”

    Asked about U.S. nuclear bombers being positioned in Australia, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said defense and security cooperation between countries should “not target any third parties or harm the interests of third parties.”

    “The relevant U.S. behaviors have increased regional tensions, seriously undermined regional peace and stability, and may trigger an arms race in the region,” Zhao told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.

    “China urges the parties concerned to abandon the outdated Cold War and zero-sum mentality and narrowminded geopolitical thinking, and to do something conducive to regional peace and stability and enhancing mutual trust between the countries,” Zhao added.

    Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton, who was defense minister when his conservative government was voted out office in May, welcomed the prospect of B-52 bombers having a regular presence in Australia.

    “It would be fantastic to have them cycling through more regularly,” Dutton said, referring to the bombers. “It bolsters our security position in an uncertain time.”

    While in office, Dutton said he had discussed with U.S. authorities rotating all aspects of the U.S. Air Force through sparsely populated northern Australia.

    “To defend that (northern Australia) and to deter anybody from taking action against us is absolutely essential,” Dutton said.

    “We have a vulnerability and it’s important for us to have a very strong relationship with the United States … and all of our allies,” Dutton added.

    ABC said U.S. tender documents showed that the U.S. Defense Department is planning to build an aircraft parking apron at Tindal to accommodate six B-52s.

    There were detailed designs for the construction of a U.S Force “squadron operations facility” at Tindal as well as a maintenance center, jet fuel storage tanks and an ammunition bunker, the ABC reported.

    “The RAAF’s ability to host USAF bombers, as well as train alongside them, demonstrates how integrated our two air forces are,” the U.S. Defense Department told the ABC.

    The ABC did not provide a timeframe for the Tindal upgrade.

    ———

    AP video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.

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  • US, Canada send armored vehicles to bolster Haiti’s police

    US, Canada send armored vehicles to bolster Haiti’s police

    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. and Canada sent armored vehicles and other supplies to Haiti on Sunday to help police fight a powerful gang amid a pending request from the Haitian government for the immediate deployment of foreign troops.

    A U.S. State Department statement said the equipment was bought by Haiti’s government, but it did not provide further details on the supplies flown on military aircraft to the capital of Port-au-Prince.

    A spokesman for the U.S. military’s Southern Command said he could not provide further details on the supplies sent, though he added it was a joint operation involving the U.S. Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force.

    “This equipment will assist (Haiti’s National Police) in their fight against criminal actors who are fomenting violence and disrupting the flow of critically-needed humanitarian assistance, hindering efforts to halt the spread of cholera,” the State Department said.

    The equipment arrived more than a month after one of Haiti’s most powerful gangs surrounded a fuel terminal and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Demonstrators also have blocked roads in major cities to protest a sharp rise in fuel prices after Henry announced in early September that his administration could no longer afford to subsidize fuel.

    Since then, gas stations have closed, hospitals have cut back on services and banks and grocery stores open on a limited basis as fuel, water and other supplies dwindle across Haiti.

    The owners of the fuel terminal announced Saturday that armed men had attacked their installations for a second time and fled with more than 28,000 gallons of petroleum products after overpowering surveillance and emergency personnel at the facility.

    It was the second time this week that armed men broke into the terminal, which stores more than 10 million gallons of gasoline and diesel and more than 800,000 gallons of kerosene.

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