If federal, state, and local officials want the Pentagon’s help for the upcoming hurricane season, they need to be snappy about major storm predictions, so DOD officials told lawmakers last week. According to Paul McHale, assistant homeland defense secretary, a week would be nice. However, he urged diligence in making predictions to avoid a rash of false alarms. McHale told reporters a day earlier that the Defense Department is “better prepared than at any point in our nation’s history to move [disaster response] assistance as rapidly as is humanly possible.”
The U.S. continued to move a significant amount of airpower toward the Middle East in recent days as talks to forge a nuclear deal with Iran hung in the balance. Flight tracking data indicate there was unusually heavy movement of dozens of fighter jets and other assets that might be…
