Allies of Youngstown air base must fight to keep C-130s aloft

Over its five-decade history, the sprawling Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna Township and its supporters have fought the good fight many times over — usually with impressive victories. Time and time again, the base has warded off threats of significant downsizing, substantial fleet cuts and even closure thanks to strong congressional allies and steadfast community support.

In the latest noble battle to ensure stability and growth of the air base, the Mahoning Valley’s U.S. House and Senate delegations and residents who recognize the base’s colossal importance to our region’s economic livelihood must marshal their forces anew to safeguard one of the reserve station’s greatest assets — its fleet of C-130 transport planes.

Unless this nation’s C-130 fleet is upgraded and modernized, the aircraft will be inoperable in 2020 due to new and more stringent Federal Aviation Administration rules and international safety, navigation and air-traffic control regulations.

Air Force Col. James D. Dignan, commander of the 910th Airlift Wing at YARS, doesn’t mince words when linking the needed upgrades to the base’s very survival: “Without modernization of communications and avionics [in the C-130s], we would be dead in the water.”

The Mahoning Valley cannot fathom such an outcome. After all, with hundreds of civilians and contractors in full- or part-time positions and the $100 million that is pumped into the economy of the region each year, the air base remains a major cog in the region’s well-being and future.

CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT

Fortunately, Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. Senate also recognize the paramount importance of the upgrades. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, visited the air base last week to draw attention to and solicit support for Senate Bill 2758, the C-130 Modernization Act.

“It is in our domestic interest, our national interest and certainly in Youngstown’s interest that this base continue to prosper,” Brown said.

His junior peer from Ohio in the upper chamber of Congress, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, concurs. In a commentary published in The Vindicator last month, Portman said that he wrote a letter to military leaders, “pressing on them to not let the Air Force turn their backs on this important [C-130] upgrade program.”

The Senate bill would allow the Air Force to use a less expensive communication and navigation overhaul without sacrificing safety, thus ensuring fiscal responsibility while strengthening national security. The C-130s, after all, are muscular war horses of the Air Force fleet. They are the military’s primary combat delivery aircraft and have provided humanitarian assistance, precision airdrop and tactical airlift across the globe for more than 40 years. At the Youngstown air base, the aircraft have a history of accomplishment, ranging from supply missions in Iraq and Afghanistan to aerial spray missions after hurricanes in Louisiana .

The Greater Youngstown area can’t afford to lose the myriad benefits that the base and its C-130s provide. That’s why there’s no time to waste in moving the modernization bill out of committee, where it’s been languishing since last July.

The companion bill in the House, House Resolution 5119, also needs stronger bipartisan momentum. We’re counting on U.S. Reps. Tim Ryan, D-Howland, a founder of the C-130 Congressional C-130 Modernization Caucus, and Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, a staunch supporter of the air base, to lead the charge.

Time, however, is not on their side. We’re now in the waning days of the 113th Congress, and bitter partisanship continues to block advancement of virtually all legislation. We’d hope that responsible legislators would recognize, however, that national security should not be tossed around like a political football and that action on the C-130 modernization bills will strengthen the apolitical objective of national security. In the fight to secure needed upgrades to the C-130 fleet, neither the Mahoning Valley nor the United States can accept defeat.