An initial cadre of 12 personnel from four nations has started work on the new Heavy Airlift Wing base at Papa, Hungary. NATO’s Strategic Airlift Capability partnership, which recently suffered a setback with the loss of Latvia, plans to operate three NATO C-17s from the western Hungary facility. The 12-person advance team will prepare the base for the rest of some 155 multi-national personnel that will comprise the HAW over the next several months. “We’ve already accomplished a lot of the work during the past several months, but there are still things that need to be done, said Col. John Zazworsky, HAW commander. The wing plans to begin flying operations with the arrival of the first C-17, now scheduled for spring 2009. (Ramstein report by Capt. Davian Petermann)
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…