Senior officials from US Southern Command, along with local Miami area government representatives, broke ground at Homestead Air Reserve Base for the new headquarters facility for Special Operations Command South. The $41 million, 125,000-square-foot building is slated for completion within the next three years. It will host more than 400 personnel from all branches of the military and will feature new teleconferencing tools and technology. “We are building up front in this building the mechanisms [so that] our operations, plans, intelligence, and logistics [personnel] can have a lot more active collaboration,” said Rear Adm. Thomas Brown, SOCSOUTH commander. The project will see the command transition from a trailer-based building to a more permanent presence in South Florida. SOCSOUTH, a component of SOUTHCOM, overseas special operation missions throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. The ground-breaking was on Jan. 10. (Homestead report by Arthur McQueen)
The Chinese spy balloon may have popped, but funding to protect against similar threats is inflating, according to the Department of Defense. The high-attitude surveillance balloon that traversed the U.S. in late January and early February prompted last-minute additions to the Pentagon's budget of around $90 million for measures to…