China's airport construction program is continuing to expand. The latest update of the building campaign for 2011-15 includes 56 airports, up from 45 announced earlier and the 33 commenced under the previous five-year plan. The country is working toward a scheme based on five clusters of airports to serve the north, east, south, southwest and northwest of China. Major international gateways anchor the first three of those clusters, at Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

If the South Korean air force's plans come to fruition, by 2030 its leading combat aircraft will be pilotless—and domestically made. That strike aircraft will be backed by a home-grown manned fighter, which by then will have been in service for nine years. It all seems rather ambitious for a country whose main experience with combat aircraft development so far has been a light attack aircraft based on a supersonic trainer that was designed with guidance from Lockheed Martin.

Hidden among hills, mostly in tunnels, hundreds of North Korean heavy artillery pieces stand ready to rain thousands of shells a minute onto Seoul. For decades, the big guns have been the biggest threat that South Korea has had to face. More recently a new one has become more prominent in the South's strategic calculations: an uncertain number of nuclear warheads of uncertain performance and reliability, potentially fitted to ballistic missiles fired from heavily protected sites in the far north of the Korean Peninsula.