Three unresolved situations in Libya give Army Gen. Carter Ham, US Africa Command boss, the greatest concern. The first is that Libya’s stockpile of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles will find their way into the hands of terrorists or insurgents in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Ham told defense reporters in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. He noted that the State Department is engaging with those countries in the region that the missiles might pass through on their way elsewhere, and these nations are “trying to craft a way ahead” to prevent that. “The countries recognize the risk this runs,” he said. Ham’s second biggest concern is that captured Libyan munitions likewise will migrate and be cobbled into improvised explosive devices. Thirdly, although Libya didn’t have weaponized chemical weapons, it did have the ingredients, and Ham is anxious to see that those precursor materials are rounded up and rendered safe.
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…