Back from a deployment to the Philippines under Operation Enduring Freedom is one of the C-12J turboprops now stationed at Yokota AB, Japan, and the airmen to fly and support it. Just this summer, Yokota traded its C-21s for C-12Js. The Yokota team, during its first C-12 deployment, flew nearly 265 hours, transporting 552 passengers and more than 57,000 pounds of cargo over the two month deployment. (Report by A1C Eric Summers.)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…