Gen. Paul Hester, head of Pacific Air Forces, has invited delegations from China to visit and observe various exercises in the Pacific in recent months, particularly one on Guam—and they have accepted every one. However, Hester told Air Force Magazine during an interview Sept. 26 at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington, that there has not yet been a reciprocal invitation to observe exercises or visit air facilities in mainland China. The US was invited to observe joint Sino-Russian exercises in Russia, and the US sent “three lieutenant colonels” to those, he noted, adding that progress in engaging his counterparts in China have been “slow, plodding.”
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
