Gen. Paul Hester, head of Pacific Air Forces, said PACAF was “surprised by the speed” at which China brought its new J-10 fighter from development to squadron service. “It was a little faster than we predicted,” he admitted during AFA’s Orlando symposium, but he said the new fighters don’t pose a particularly thorny problem for PACAF, even though the J-10 can refuel in the air and carry an F-16-like weapon payload. Hester diplomatically said, “It will be a fine aircraft for them.”
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…