William Arkin, the Washington Post’s online military blogger, has taken aim at AIR FORCE Magazine, citing articles in the April issue for specific criticism. Arkin’s point, evidently, is that the magazine has presented an exaggerated and overly dire portrait of world threats in general and China in particular. Arkin writes that the upshot of the Pentagon plan to reprogram money from the Air Force and Navy shows that “even inside the military, some are at war while others aren’t.” He believes the Air Force “feels starved for resources and overwhelmed by the potential threats” so has been talking up threats outside Iraq. He says of our April issue, it “reads to me like a catalog of post-Iraq disasters and threats: China, North Korea, Iran, and cyber-threats, even a resurgent and threatening Russia.” Arkin calls planning for a China threat “wasted energy and resources and the wrong course.” Read his entire column and comments here. Arkin is a usually well-informed analyst, though airpower is not considered his strength.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
