Peaceniks on the Prowl: A Vermont anti-war group wants to expel the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing from its base at Burlington airport, reports the Burlington Free Press. Citing the Air Guard’s involvement in the Iraq War, a citizen group calling itself “Take Back the Air Guard” is lobbying the city council to curtail the unit’s lease. It’s not the ANG unit per se that has fired the group’s ire, though, it’s the unit’s “new” mission of fighting in Southwest Asia, or so Hal Cochran, a member of Take Back the Air Guard, told the Free Press. According to Cochran, an air defense unit has “no business going to Iraq.”
A recent Air Force contract to buy up to $50 million worth of small drones from Anduril Industries may soon allow the service’s special operations command to transform its MQ-9 Reapers into drone-launching motherships.
