The Defense Department has named TSgt. Jeremy Lock, with the 1st Combat Camera Squadron at Charleston AFB, S.C., as its Military Photographer of the Year for 2007. It marks the third time Lock has received DOD’s top photographer honor. He has served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, capturing images of military operations and service members of all branches of the US military. DOD journalist Gerry Gilmore reports that in addition to his cameras, Lock carries a 9 mm Beretta automatic pistol, because as Lock says, “when we’re put on a team with Army, Marines, and Special Forces, we become an asset not a hindrance.”
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…