The Air National Guard’s 102nd Fighter Wing at Otis AB, Mass., has sent its first few airmen to intelligence school in Texas, reports the Cape Cod Times. The transition from an F-15 fighter unit to one that operates a distributed ground station—providing a real-time image analysis capability—will take place over about a year and a half. The state’s Adjutant General had confirmed the intel mission last year, saying the Air Guard would rename the wing sometime in 2008. The Times also notes that the new mission will not support all the wing’s airmen, so Otis is still in search of another new mission.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.