Officials in Richland County, Ohio, secured a Labor Department grant for nearly $145,000 to help search for a new mission for Air National Guard’s 179th Airlift Wing at Lahm Airport in Mansfield, reports the Mansfield (OH) News Journal. The 2005 BRAC spared the wing but took its C-130s, so it must find a new mission. Local officials plan to use the money to compile information on skills and training levels of employees to market them for a new military mission and to research how to attract private sector development. An Ohio ANG spokesman tells the paper that a new mission could be assigned to the 179th within weeks. We should never underestimate the power of positive thinking.
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…