US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and South Korea’s Minister of National Defense Kim Jang Soo agreed during a meeting Feb. 23 in Washington that the two countries will disestablish the current Combined Forces Command on April 17, 2012. At that time they will complete the transition to the new South Korean-led command relationship. The two long-time allies have wrestled for months with timetables and cost sharing arrangements, with Seoul wanting to move more slowly with the transfer of control of forces on the peninsula.
In the final few hours before the Senate adjourned for its Memorial Day recess on May 26, lawmakers approved a raft of some 3,400 pending military nominations, including a number of high-profile Air Force and Space Force generals to assignments that will significantly reshape some of the upper echelons of…