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.
A new White House policy calls for the Pentagon to craft plans for additional space launch facilities to support a projected increase in launch demand that could see the U.S. supporting as many as 1,000 launches by 2030, more than a fivefold increase from 2025.