New Secretary of the Air Force Wants a Budget He Can Use To ‘Scare’ China

Frank Kendall, the brand new Secretary of the Air Force, told Defense News in an Aug. 13 interview that he wants to “Scare China” but he needs to convince Congress to let the service retire entire fleets of aircraft so that it can use the resources thus freed up to modernize. “I’ve been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now — and its military modernization, what that implies for the U.S. and for security,” said Kendall, who previously served as the Pentagon’s acquisition chief during the Obama years. “One of the things I’ve gotten back up to speed on since I came back was our intelligence on what the Chinese are doing with their modernization programs,” he declared. “They’re moving faster than I might have anticipated. So, we have a lot of work to do.”