WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill urged top Air Force officials this week to bring the C130-J aircraft to the Missouri Air National Guard Base in St. Joseph.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Air Force budget request for 2015, McCaskill pressed Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh on the importance of the J model to training missions for both the Air Force and America’s allies.
“In March I had the opportunity to go to the 139th Airlift Wing of the Missouri National Guard in St. Joseph,” said McCaskill, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. “As you know, they fly C-130s, and do a critical training mission for other members of the Guard, and for our allies. And one of the reasons that is a cost effective base for the National Guard and for our nation’s military is because of the training that they’re providing, and getting revenue for, to many pilots from across the world. I think you probably know the problem: they don’t have a J. And if they don’t get a 130-J, then those countries are no longer going to come to get trained at St. Joseph. And then all of a sudden we’ve got a different problem in terms of that infrastructure that is so vital to the rest of the Guard across the country.”
McCaskill recently teamed up with fellow Missouri Senator Roy Blunt at the Air National Guard Base for a roundtable discussion with 30 community leaders and leadership from the 139th Airlift Wing, to talk about the role of Missouri’s military bases in our national defense and the impact of the recently proposed Pentagon budget cuts.
McCaskill continued, “I’ll never forget when I was in Afghanistan and I got in a C-130 to go up North, and I was up in the cockpit area with the pilots and we were talking about where I was from, and they were two National Guardsmen from Maryland, and they said, ‘Oh we just came from Rosecrans. We just trained there on this aircraft.’ And were so complimentary of the training they’d received. So I really want to ask you-you can’t update everybody and expect the Guard to be what it needs to be if they don’t get the updated J model. Is it possible that you can figure out a way to get at least one J model to St. Joseph fairly quickly so they won’t have a real problem in term of their training mission?”
“Senator, of course we can look at the plan for St. Joseph,” General Walsh responded. “…We don’t have that many J models coming off the production line of the next 4-5 years to dramatically alter the numbers going into place yet in the Reserve component. It’s clearly got to be part of the plan. We’re putting the whole plan together, and we’d love to get that done and come brief you and anyone else who is interested.”
