Despite sequestration, Maj. Gen. Steven Kwast, the Air Force’s Quadrennial Defense Review director, said completing the forthcoming review can be successful “as long as you’re strategic in the way you think.” “There’s still value even though we have sequestration hanging out there,” he told defense reporters during a meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 15. In this climate of uncertainty, Kwast admitted that “it would help if we had a consistent [budget] topline,” but leaders can adjust to changes in the future, and there is still room for “strategic conversation on how we approach this.” A lot of military judgment is necessary for the strategy and so is understanding the risks involved, he said. While some might contend that the review is “really useless because you don’t know what the topline is,” Kwast asserted that, even though programmatic details may change, the overall strategy usually doesn’t. Regardless, he said, we “better have a strategy.”
The Pentagon is significantly bolstering airpower near Venezuela, dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to Latin America, it said in an Oct. 24 statement. The announcement came just hours after U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers and other U.S. assets flew near the Venezuelan coast on Oct. 23.
