Operational tempo and personnel numbers remain the two biggest problems facing Air Force Special Operations Command, said CMSgt. Bill Turner, AFSOC command chief. “There is no relief in sight for ops temp,” said Turner Monday during AFA’s Air & Space Conference in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington, D.C. Although Iraq is drawing down, air commandos will remain actively involved in Afghanistan and other parts of the world. The challenge will be getting more trained airmen on the ground to relieve the ops tempo on commandos who have deployed significantly over the last 10 years. The goal, he said, is getting the ops tempo away from one-to-one.
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…