Cost will play “more and more significantly” in the realignment of US military forces in Japan, South Korea, and Guam, said Adm. Mike Mullen, Joint Chiefs Chairman. “The affordability aspect of this is much more intense in this discussion than it’s been in the past,” he told reporters in Washington, D.C. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) last month called the Defense Department’s current plan to shift some Marine forces on Okinawa, Japan, to Guam, and make additional posture changes in East Asia “unrealistic, unworkable, and unaffordable.” They urged DOD to consider ideas, like moving some Air Force assets from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa to places like Guam. “I appreciate their focus on this,” said Mullen of the Senators’ engagement during his June 2 media event. “We need to be as open as we possibly can to solutions now” and “work our way through in terms of preserving the kind of both influence and stability that our presence in that that part of the world has [created] for 60-plus years.”
So many new F-35s have piled up waiting for TR-3 upgrade testing to conclude that it will take a year to deliver them all once deliveries get the green light to resume, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. That go-ahead isn't likely to happen right away.