About 200 members of the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing returned home to Syracuse, N.Y., on Aug. 5, along with 14 of their F-16 fighters, after several months of supporting combat operations in Iraq out of Joint Base Balad. The deployment was the wing’s eighth and final rotation to Southwest Asia as an F-16 unit; since, as part of BRAC 2005, it is now ending its 51-year fighter mission to transition to operating MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicles. It will be the first ANG unit to operate the armed MQ-9, which the Air Force has used in combat in Afghanistan since September 2007 and since last month in Iraq. The transition to the MQ-9 starts this fall, but unit members are not expected to actually begin training on the unmanned systems until 2010 and to receive their own MQ-9s in 2011. (NGB report)
Top Lawmakers Want 15 Percent Pay Raise for Enlisted Troops
April 19, 2024
A new law introduced by Congress would raise the pay rate 15 percent for junior enlisted troops and seek improvements on a range of quality of life issues, such as pay and compensation, child care, housing, health care access, and military spouse employment.