The armed services are all facing a quantity versus quality problem, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “Quantity does have a quality all along in our business,” Welsh said, noting that the US “can have the coolest ship on the planet,” but it can’t be in two places at once. “Numbers matter in our business,” Welsh said, noting that all of the services have gotten smaller, but the demands on the military have not decreased at the same rate. “We just don’t have enough to do everything we’re asked to do and everything we could potentially be asked to do,” he said. “If the term simultaneity enters the discussion, we have a problem.”
Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd III met with his counterparts from Australia, Japan and the Philippines to discuss bolstering defense ties on May 2. The discussion included plans for joint F-35 exercises with Japan and Australia in the coming years.