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.
The U.S. thwarted a drone attack on U.S. forces at Al Asad air base in western Iraq on April 22, marking the first time that American troops have been targeted since February, U.S. officials said. “We can confirm it was an attack on Al Asad,” a defense official told Air & Space…