Airmen with the 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston AFB, S.C., have begun shipping M1117 armored security vehicles to Southwest Asia for the Army. A C-17 carried the first load of them on a flight to the combat theater Oct. 24. The base took delivery of 82 ASVs earlier this month and will continue shipping them as part of DOD’s surge to supply them to deployed Army military police units. The ASV is an armored, four-wheel-drive vehicle with ballistic protection and a machine gun and grenade launcher mounted in a turret capable of traversing 360 degrees. Airmen from Charleston have also played a big role in transporting thousands of mine resistant ambush protected vehicles to Southwest Asia to give mounted ground forces there more protection against improved explosive devices. (Charleston report by A1C Melissa White)
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…