Members 
of the 62nd Aerial Port Squadron at JB Lewis-McChord, Wash., helped to move a section of NASA’s full fuselage trainer—the full-scale mockup of the space shuttle, without the wings, that shuttle astronauts trained in—to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle. The 29-foot-long crew compartment, one of three trainer sections, arrived in Seattle on June 30 aboard NASA’s Super Guppy transport from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The section was too large for a commercial carrier to move it to the museum’s new Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, so the airmen stepped in with their specialized equipment, according to a July 6 McChord-Lewis release. “Downloading a place is something we do every day, but cargo that tall required extra attention to make sure it went perfect,” said SSgt. Ryan Stoks, who led the squadron’s team. The trainer’s remaining two sections are scheduled to arrive later this summer. The squadron plans to help with them as well, according to the release. (Lewis-McChord report by Capt. Tawny Dotson) (See also CBS News report.)
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…