Army Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, head of Joint Task Force Haiti, told bloggers Monday there has been only one way to get supplies, equipment, and people into earthquake-devastated Haiti, the international airport, which routinely hosted only 13 flights per day. Now, said Keen, thanks to “the best airmen in the world” who quickly got the airfield operating again and with turnover of airfield management to USAF airmen, the flow has been fairly constant at 100 aircraft or so a day. He noted that some delayed and turned away flights, like one international flight delivering a portable hospital, have generated bad news, but he said many US flights also were turned away, in many cases because an aircraft on the ground had mechanical problems. On Jan. 18, Keen said 180 flights went through with no delays. Still, he advocated getting ports reopened quickly to “take pressure off the airport.” (Transcript)
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…