The San Francisco Board of Education voted 4-2 Tuesday to phase out its school system’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, reports Associated Press news service. The problem, the board says, is the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, enacted during the Clinton Administration. AP reports that city by the bay Mayor Gavin Newsome called shelving JROTC a “bad idea” that puts people who want to participate in the “political peril of being in this ideological debate.” AP says San Francisco has some 1,600 students who participate in JROTC. The phase out would take place over 2007-08.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
