Airmen among Victims of Deadly Helicopter Crash: The Defense Department Aug. 11 announced that three airmen were among the 30 US military personnel and eight Afghans killed in the Aug. 6 crash of an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. The airmen were TSgt. John Brown, 33, of Tallahassee, Fla.; TSgt. Daniel Zerbe, 28, of York, Pa.; and SSgt. Andrew Harvell, 26, of Long Beach, Calif. All were assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron at Pope Field, N.C. In addition to the airmen, 22 Navy SEALs, five Army aircrew, and eight Afghan soldiers perished, making it the single most deadly incident for US forces in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war in 2001. Continue
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…