If an Associated Press report has it right, the US government may be close to working an arrangement with Colombia to host a new base from which the US military could launch its counter-drug missions. US Southern Command has been running counterdrug operations from Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta, Ecuador, since 1999 but Ecuador earlier this year signaled it wanted to end the lease arrangement by the end of September.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
