Saved in Terre Haute: Indiana Air Guardsmen of the 181st Fighter Wing in Terre Haute still have to give up their F-16s (to neighboring Fort Wayne, no less) under BRAC 2005, but they get two new missions in exchange, reports the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. The Pentagon plans to put an intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance data analysis unit (called a Distributed Common Ground Station) and an Air Support Operations Squadron (read that battlefield airmen) at Terre Haute. Combined, the two new missions will require about 420 Air Guardsmen.
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.