The Administration again stepped on Congressional toes when it opted not to let lawmakers know early about a planned sale of 36 F-16s to Pakistan. The Administration must give Congress 30 days in which to review the sale, but it is customary to add on another 20 days of pre-formal notification. According to the Congressional newspaper, The Hill, the Pakistan deal frustrates lawmakers on two levels: the abbreviated process and the potential for Pakistan to leak US technology to China. Reuters news service obtained a copy of a letter in which US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has assured lawmakers that Pakistan will sign up to necessary security commitments. That’s one down.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
