A report released recently by the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research calls on the US to maintain its capability levels across Asia in the face of broad overseas cutbacks. The report is the work of 14 defense and security analysts. (It is not free, but you can find a summary and order instructions here.) They assess how Asian countries are modernizing their militaries in the face of China’s rapid rise as a global power, as well as the region’s counter terror efforts and prospective changes in US force deployment. Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., in his chapter, urges America not to sacrifice traditional military infrastructure “in an overzealous belief in the power of rapid defense transformation.”
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
