Burg went on to say that he is working hard on Capitol Hill and in other places to dispel the myth that non-deployed service members are not active participants in the Global War on Terror. “That’s absolutely wrong,” Burg says airmen in space operations are key to providing near-time ISR capabilities from platforms such as Global Hawk and Predator UAVs to warfighters in the field and intelligence-gathering operations back home.
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.