Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel urged Pakistan to keep NATO supply routes to Afghanistan flowing or it may risk losing some financial aid, reported Bloomberg’s Business Week. Pentagon Assistant Press Secretary Carl Woog confirmed that Hagel “raised the importance of keeping the ground supply routes out of Afghanistan open” during Dec. 9 meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Minister of Defense Khawaja Asif, Minister of Finance Mohammad Ishaq Dar, Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif, National Security and Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz, and other Pakistan officials in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, according to a DOD statement. The Pentagon was forced to halt shipments on one of the main routes in and out of Afghanistan last week as hundreds of Pakistanis blocked parts of the route in Peshawar and other northwestern towns in protest of US drone strikes in the region. The Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which governs the northwestern area, said Hagel’s visit is proof the blockade, which began on Nov. 23, is successfully pressuring the US, reported Bloomberg, which cited information secretary Shireen Mazari. (See also Afghanistan in Retrograde from the September issue of Air Force Magazine)
SDA Outlines Missile Tracking Satellite Plan
April 16, 2021
The Defense Department's Space Development Agency wants to blanket Earth with a constellation of low-cost, open-architecture data-relay and missile-tracking satellites whose sheer numbers, along with their 1,000-kilometer-high orbits, would theoretically thwart some modes of interference—but not all. With all going according to plan so far, SDA expects to launch five…