Gen. Paul Hester, Pacific Air Forces commander, said Thursday afternoon at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., that he has not stepped up the operating tempo of forces around Korea since Pyongyang detonated a small A-bomb last fall. The Air Force has been “observant” of North Korea and has kept up its reconnaissance efforts, but Hester said he’s relieved to report that no big troop movements or mobilizations attended the nuclear test or the big salvo of ballistic missile tests at about the same time.
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.
