US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and South Korea’s Minister of National Defense Kim Jang Soo agreed during a meeting Feb. 23 in Washington that the two countries will disestablish the current Combined Forces Command on April 17, 2012. At that time they will complete the transition to the new South Korean-led command relationship. The two long-time allies have wrestled for months with timetables and cost sharing arrangements, with Seoul wanting to move more slowly with the transfer of control of forces on the peninsula.
The Space Force on April 15 released two highly anticipated future-casting documents that describe what the service expects the space environment will look like in the year 2040 and lay out the force structure it thinks it will need to operate in that environment.