The 
Air Force Scientific Advisory Board released the three topics that it will study in Fiscal 2013 as part of its mission to inform the Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff on matters related to science and technology. Airborne Networking and Communications for Contested Environments will identify and recommend promising technology for use in fifth generation and other combat aircraft to improve cross-platform and reachback communications. Electro-optical/Infrared and Laser Threat Warning and Countermeasures will assess threats posed to Air Force aircraft by threat EO/IR detection and tracking systems and identify ways to counter them. Microsatellite Mission Applications will explore the viability of disaggregating capabilities currently found in a single larger satellite payload across multiple smaller sized satellites. AFSAB’s winter board meeting in scheduled in mid January, during which time it will kick off these studies, according to the board’s website. Notional schedules call for briefing the findings of each study to the Air Force leadership in July 2013, followed by publishing each study’s report next December. (See also our entry on AFSAB’s Fiscal 2012 studies.)
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…