The Air Force’s first MQ-9 Reaper maintenance field training detachment was dedicated during a ceremony Oct. 2 at Hancock Field ANGB in Syracuse, N.Y., home of the New York National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing. The wing, which relinquished its F-16s in June 2008 per BRAC 2005 for the Reaper mission, will now operate the only schoolhouse in the Air Force dedicated to training MQ-9 maintenance personnel. “Now you have to execute the mission you have been given, and I have great confidence that the instructors of this new field training detachment and the men and women of the 174th Fighter Wing will do exactly that,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt, Air National Guard director. Conversion of the wing’s former aerospace ground equipment facility to the schoolhouse began last September and was completed in May. (Syracuse report by Capt. Anthony L. Bucci)
The U.K. and the U.S. will continue to enjoy access to the ports, airfield, and workshops at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for at least another century, under a deal inked between the U.K. and Mauritius May 22.