Although a final decision remains on whether the Youngstown Air Reserve Station will receive eight new C-130J Super Hercules aircrafts, it’s not stopping command at the facility from being ready to go when one is made.

A routine environmental assessment is all that’s left before the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force makes the announcement, which is expected sometime toward the end of October, Col. Michael Maloney, new commander of the 910th Airlift Wing, said.

“I don’t anticipate anything stopping” the transition from the older C-130H planes at the reserve station to the new C-130Js, he said.

In fact, “I will go out on a little bit of a limb here to let you know I already have training spots lined up for my pilots and my maintainers,” Maloney said.

Maloney, who assumed the commander’s role in July, took part in a panel discussion Thursday at Impact Ohio’s daylong Mahoning Valley Regional Conference on the military and defense industry in the region.

He was alongside Lt. Col. Shaun Robinson, commander of Camp James A. Garfield Joint Military Training Center, and Michael Dustman, program director of the military and federal sector of JobsOhio, the state’s nonprofit economic development corporation. Phyliss Gastgeb, market president for iHeartMedia, moderated the panel.

The discussion was among three panels that dealt with issues and opportunities vital for future growth and prosperity in the Mahoning Valley; the others were on additive manufacturing, and repopulation as a way to meet workforce needs. It was held at Waypoint 4180 in Canfield.

The first of the new planes is expected to arrive in March / April 2024. The full conversion is expected to be complete by the end of 2026, Maloney said.

“There will be zero interruption for our spray mission,” Maloney said of the aerial spray mission at the 910th, the only large area, fixed-wing aerial spray mission in the U.S. Department of Defense.

The mission plays a vital role across the U.S. in its capability to control mosquitoes and other insects, to disperse oil spills in large bodies of water and for vegetation control as well as spreading fire retardant.

As chief of the programs division at the Air Force Reserve Command at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, Maloney said he was “knee deep” in shepherding the selection process that involved the new planes. It included everything from community support, government support, reciprocity agreements to schools and living conditions.

“Because of the efforts of EOMAC (Eastern Ohio Military Affairs Commission) and the local community here, and the Ohio House, the product that the state of Ohio, and this place in particular, put forward in the C-130J competition, it wasn’t even close,” Maloney said. “My hat’s off to everybody in this community to making that known and taking that effort.”

About $45 million has been invested in recent years at Camp Garfield, part of which lies within Trumbull County near Newton Falls. The spending has included funds for new barracks, new firing ranges, maneuver lanes and training areas, Robinson said.

It’s helping to transform the facility to be an all-encompassing military training center.

“Right now, we’re beginning to have the opportunity to train Ohio soldiers in Ohio,” Robinson said. “We haven’t had that opportunity before.”

Camp Garfield, it’s estimated, has a yearly economic impact of about $50 million per year. For the reserve station in Vienna — the No. 1 employer in Trumbull County and second largest employer in the Mahoning Valley — it’s about $150 million per year.

JobsOhio’s Dustman said an economic impact analysis done in 2020-21 on defense-related jobs in Ohio found there are about 380,500 jobs in the state in the sector, which has an economic impact of about $40 billion, or about 6 percent of the state’s economy.

Drilling down, military / defense accounts for about 110,500 jobs in northeast Ohio with an impact of about $10.6 billion.

“From the state on down, it’s pretty impressive,” Dustman said, adding law and policy makers have been at work to make the state more military friendly, from spousal license reciprocity, which eliminates employment barriers, to educational opportunities.