Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts actively is lining up a new mission, once its F-15s depart for good. (This is the base that everyone—including BRAC commissioners—thought was to close under BRAC 2005.) (DR, 09/15/05) Leading the list of potential missions is intelligence, per Brig. Gen. Michael Akey, head of the Massachusetts ANG. Akey tells the Boston Globe that ANG members at Otis could easily handle the job of processing intelligence data from unmanned aerial vehicles. He also thinks ANG personnel could take over operation of the PAVE PAWS radar facility at Cape Cod AFS, Mass., currently run primarily by active duty airmen and contractors.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
