Airmen of Air Force Reserve Command’s 910th Airlift Wing at Youngstown ARB, Ohio, are flying out of Barksdale AFB, La., to cover areas of Louisiana with insect spray to keep down flies and mosquitoes in the wake of heavy rainfall and flooding after Hurricane Ike, according to a Sept. 22 Barksdale release. The wing’s spray-modified C-130s, which deployed to Barksdale over the weekend, started the spraying operation on Sept. 21. The plan worked out with the Federal Emergency Management Agency was for the unit to blanket southwestern Louisiana and then move to other areas hard hit by the storm.
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…