Officials at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, held a ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday, opening the doors to the 711th Human Performance Wing’s new 680,000 square-foot complex. The $239 million facility will be home to the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, the Human Effectiveness Directorate, the Human Performance Integration Directorate, and the Naval Medical Research Unit-Dayton. The school relocated to Wright-Patt from Brooks City-Base in San Antonio as part of BRAC 2005. The new complex is named after deceased Maj. Gen. Harry Armstrong, the second Air Force surgeon general and a pioneer in the field of aerospace medicine. (See Dayton Daily News report and Wright-Patt release)
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…