The gap between losing their A-10s and gaining new Joint Cargo Aircraft still worries Air National Guardsmen in Battle Creek, Michigan. Col. Rodger Seidel, commander of the 110th Fighter Wing, said this week that he and other officials are working now to convert the Battle Creek facility into “one large Southwest Michigan DOD complex,” reports The Enquirer. The facility already has a new civil engineering building slated to open soon and has added a new Security Forces building and expanded the fire station. The wing loses the last of its Warthogs to sister ANG unit, the 127th Wing in Selfridge, in 2009 and doesn’t receive new JCA tactical airlifters for another three years. Seidel told the Rotary Club of several possibilities, including consolidating other reserve operations at the facility and creating a warfighting headquarters to oversee missions in Africa. However, Battle Creek City Manager Wayne Wiley, like other local officials whose Air Guard units suffered BRAC 2005 cuts, told the newspaper, “The main issue is if there will be a flying mission.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. still “believes” in his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose”—and indicated the doctrinal changes it produced when he was Air Force Chief of Staff played a role in the service’s recent response to Iran’s aerial assault on Israel, he…