VIENNA — The 910th Airlift Wing at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station is getting a new leader with Col. Christopher E. Sedlacek being installed during an upcoming assumption of command ceremony.

Major General Melissa A. Coburn, commander of the 22nd Air Force, Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, will preside over the event.

The air base gets a new commander about every two to three years depending on the assignment.

Col. Michael Maloney, who was the 910th commander since July 2023, departed in early March.

Before his arrival at YARS, Sedlacek served since August 2022 as the 302nd Airlift Wing commander at the Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado.

Prior to that, Sedlacek spent more than six years at the 934th Airlift Wing at the Minneapolis Air Reserve Station — May 2016 to September 2021 as commander of the 934th Operations Group and from September 20212 until August 2022 as special assistant to the commander.

Sedlacek graduated in 1997 from the Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in legal studies. While on active duty, he served at bases in the United States as well as a C-130 instruction navigator for the 37th Airlift Squadron at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany for more than three years.

Sedlacek was deployed five times in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He left active duty in 2004, the same year he received a master’s degree in business administration from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. He then joined the Air Force Reserve and has held numerous positions, including squadron commander, group commander and major command staff officer.

Sedlacek was promoted to colonel Feb. 22, 2018.

He is a command navigator with more than 3,500 flying hours and has amassed more than 370 hours of combat time.

YARS is going through a significant upgrade in its aircrafts, switching from C-130H models to new C-130J-30 Super Hercules aircrafts. Two of the eight new aircrafts have arrived, with the remaining six coming in stages until mid-2026.

The base had a major event July 16 to welcome the first C-130J-30 that came from Lockheed Martin’s production plant in Marietta, Georgia. The second aircraft arrived in December.

The planes are replacing C-130H models at YARS that were built between 1989 and 1992 and were assigned to the air base in 1994 when the 910th received its airlift wing designation.

The new planes cost about $109.75 million each for a total investment of $878 million.

YARS had 10 C-130H planes, with two of them on backup status. The two backup planes were assigned before the first C-130J-30 arrived July 16, with one for airborne training and the other for aircraft maintenance training.

When a new C-130J-30 comes to YARS, one of the old C-130H aircrafts leaves YARS to be reassigned to the National Guard.

Compared to the C-130H, the C-130J reduces manpower requirements by two personnel per aircraft, lowers operating and support costs, flies faster, is more fuel efficient and provides life-cycle cost savings over earlier models.

YARS has about 2,000 employees, most of them reservists and active duty, and an annual economic impact of about $150 million.

The base is home to the U.S. Department of Defense’s only large-area fixed-wing aerial spray unit. It controls disease-carrying insects, pest insects and undesirable vegetation as well as dispersing oil spills in large bodies of water.

Work to get new planes at the air base started well over a decade ago with Democrat Tim Ryan, a former congressman, instrumental in passing legislation to ensure YARS would be in line to get the state-of-the-art equipment.

In addition to the new planes, an $11 million main gate relocation project broke ground in April 2024 and is expected be finished by this August and $8 million was secured to resurface the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport’s 9,000-foot taxiway that leads to the facility’s main runway and connects to YARS.

A new $25 million fire station at YARS is in the process of obtaining federal funding.

The money for the fire station was included in the National Defense Authorization Act, but Congress still needs to pass a defense budget for the project to go forward.

The base received approval in March 2024 for a $2.5 million federal earmark for planning and design work for the station.

The YARS fire department is one of the largest in Trumbull County and has 42 mutual aid agreements, mostly in Trumbull. The department also provides crash response to the airport.