U.S. News: Leak Case Shows Rise of Air National Guard

"The Air National Guard, at the center of an investigation into the leak of highly classified documents, has moved over two decades to the forefront of military operations, analyzing much of the intelligence for drone strikes and carrying out many of those missions.

The Guard, which was once viewed as largely a strategic reserve force, now provides half of the Air Force's targeting analysis, according to data provided to The Wall Street Journal. It also flies more than a third of the Air Force's global MQ-9 Reaper drone missions, that data showed.

That role has involved the Guard in the U.S.'s decadeslong fight against militants in the Middle East and, increasingly, in operations to counter Russia and China.

The Air National Guard was involved in the March mission in which an MQ-9 drone was harassed by a Russian warplane and later crashed into the Black Sea, according to a Guard official who didn't provide additional details.

Next month, 110 Guard aircraft will fly over Germany and other European nations in one of the largest air exercises since the end of the Cold War. All told, some 2,300 Guard personnel will be involved.

The arrest of Airman First Class Jack Teixeira for allegedly retaining and distributing national defense information has cast a spotlight on the Guard and its widely overlooked role in handling sensitive reconnaissance information and intelligence.

Air National Guard personnel serve along with active-duty personnel and reservists at two major Air Force bases in Virginia and California, where reconnaissance data from manned and unmanned aircraft is processed.

The Guard also runs six additional centers that perform this mission, including at the Massachusetts base where Airman Teixeira served.

That facility has worked closely with a key Air Force center run by active-duty personnel at Ramstein Air Base in Germany that processes reconnaissance data and has been focused on the Russian military.

The role of the Guard in operating drones and supporting the Ramstein facility helps explain why the National Guard installation where Airman Teixeira served had access to Ukraine-related top-secret data and other intelligence.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has directed the service's inspector general to investigate Airman Teixeira's unit, the 102nd Intelligence Wing.

The Air National Guard traces its roots to 1910, when members from New York raised money to buy the organization's first airplane, which crashed on takeoff.

During the Vietnam War, the Air National Guard acquired a reputation as an organization that draft-age men sometimes sought to join to minimize their chances of seeing front-line combat.

Military cutbacks that followed, however, pushed thousands of Air Guard members to the forefront of U.S. military operations.

"This goes all the way back to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the ensuing decades, the overall military got smaller and the Air Force got very much smaller," said David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a retired Air Force lieutenant general.

Wholesale shifts in technology and data collection have led to even more far-reaching changes in the Air Guard's mission.Drones that could be operated from bases thousands of miles away came hand-in-hand with the military's growing ability to transmit massive amounts of data from the drones' cameras and sensors to bases in the U.S.

The work of turning that data into what the military calls "actionable intelligence" was often done at bases in the U.S., including Air National Guard units.The demand for drone pilots and intelligence analysis went up and trained pilots made the transition to drones and other Air Guard personnel shifted to intelligence work.

In 2000, the Air National Guard had one intelligence squadron. Today it has dozens. Though some are based at little-known installations, they have become keystones in the service's global combat operations." [1]

1. U.S. News: Leak Case Shows Rise of Air National Guard
Kesling, Ben; Gordon, Michael R.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 May 2023: A.3