Defense Department forensic scientists identified the remains of two airmen who had been missing in action since their F-4D Phantom II aircraft crashed during the Vietnam War, announced Pentagon officials on Oct. 16. Col. Wendell Keller of Fargo, N.D., and Capt. Virgil K. Meroney III of Fayetteville, Ark., will be buried with full military honors as a group—in a single casket representing the Phantom’s aircrew—on Oct. 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, according to DOD’s release. Meroney was interred individually on June 9 in his hometown, states the release. Enemy fire reportedly brought down Keller and Meroney’s F-4D during a nighttime strike mission in Khammouan Province, Laos, on March 1, 1969. Heavy enemy presence in the area prevented recovery efforts. Between 1994 and 2011, joint US-Lao teams conducted several investigations and excavations of the crash site, recovering human remains, military equipment, a military identification card, and aircraft wreckage, that, along with more than 40 eyewitnesses accounts, led to the identification of these airmen.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…