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U.S. Sen. Rob Portman wants the local air service station’s equipment and planes to be replaced
VIENNA
The Youngstown Air Reserve Station greatly needs upgrades in equipment and planes because the mission of its unit is “important for our country,” said U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
Visiting the home of the 910th Airlift Wing on Friday, Portman, a Cincinnati-area Republican, said, “They help around the globe with their spraying mission not just to deal with mosquito infestations, but to deal with oil spills – for instance, the big one in the Gulf of Mexico recently” – and undesirable vegetation.
It is the Department of Defense’s only large-area, fixed-wing aerial spray unit.
The unit’s spray equipment and C-130H planes are outdated and should be replaced, Portman said.
“They do a hell of a job with old equipment,” Portman said.
The 910th has nine aircraft and is losing one in September, said Col. James Dignan, the wing’s commander.
The C-130 aircraft at the base need to be upgraded in order to be permitted to fly beyond 2020, he said.
Getting next-generation C-130J planes “would really be ideal because that will keep us [operating] well beyond 2020,” and probably to at least 2050, Dignan said.
Portman – along with U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Cleveland, and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th – helped obtain $9.4 million in federal funding for a new state-of-the-art indoor firing range. It will replace a partially covered outdoor firing range that’s at least 30 years old, Portman said.
The base will break ground on the firing range next spring and take 12 to 18 months to build, Dignan said.
During his visit to the station, Portman was asked about a gunman who opened fire at a recruiting center and a nearby Navy-Marine training center Thursday in Chattanooga, Tenn., killing four Marines.
“It is clearly a terrorist act,” Portman said. “It’s domestic terrorism, and we shouldn’t call it anything else.”
The senator added: “Unfortunately, we live in a dangerous world at a time when on a military base like this we need to continue to have heightened security. [We need to] ensure the tragedy in Chattanooga doesn’t happen in Youngstown.”