The Pentagon on Monday said that A1C Eric M. Barnes, 20, of Lorain, Ohio, had been killed following an improvised explosive device attack on an Air Force convoy on June 10 about 100 miles south of Baghdad. Barnes, who had deployed to Iraq from the 90th Logistics Readiness Squadron, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo., was the second airman to be killed in Iraq last week. We reported in yesterday’s column that an IED attack killed SrA. William N. Newman on June 7. New information from Hickam AFB, Hawaii, states that explosive ordnance specialist Newman died while attempting to defuse an IED.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III chaired a China-focused military briefing Oct. 27, part of a biweekly series of briefings with senior military commanders about China’s growing threat in the wake of an orbital hypersonic weapon test that elicited public worries from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “What we…