At least one Air National Guard unit’s aircraft boost, courtesy of BRAC 2005, is creating problems because the additional aircraft didn’t come with the money to support them. KOTV news reports that the additional nine F-16s gained by the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 138th Fighter Wing in Tulsa have exceeded the unit’s capability. The unit can only house and maintain 15 not the 26 Vipers it now has. The unit needs money to resurface its crumbling ramp and add parking space for the new aircraft and to recruit and fund additional aircraft maintainers.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…