After nearly a 13-year hiatus, the Air Force Academy this summer will reinstate training for cadets to resist an enemy if taken hostage. The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Superintendent Lt. Gen. John Regni outlined the revamped course on Jan. 10 in a meeting with the academy’s Board of Visitors. Regni said the three-week training course will entail classroom instruction, including role-playing exercises like placing cadets in front of video cameras and forcing them to denounce the United States. Beginning in mid 2009, the course will incorporate field exercises, the newspaper states. The Air Force discontinued the training course in 1995 amid claims that the mock rapes and simulated sexual abuse used to teach the male and female cadets how to resist sexual assault had crossed a threshold into actual sexual abuse. Details of how to incorporate resistance to sexual assault into the revamped training are still being discussed, the newspaper said.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
