But as the Air Force began to close and consolidate bases, active duty bases became less accommodating. There was a time when active duty Air Force bases had the ground and air space for pilot training missions. One of Ator’s first stops back in Arkansas was visiting then Arkansas Adjutant General Kendall Penn – now the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs secretary – to let him know he wanted to push Ebbing for the FMS site. We’d be very interested in this.’ So I put our name in the hopper right then and there,” he explained during a mid-April interview with Talk Business & Politics. So I knew the possibilities because you have different funding streams, and I knew what they would be. I ran the C-130 FMS schoolhouse in North Little Rock. Ator, the former commander of the 189th Airlift Wing of the Arkansas Air National Guard, the largest Air National Guard C-130 Wing in the U.S., couldn’t believe his luck. “And what they said to me was, ‘Well, you’re probably not interested in this one because it’s not an operational mission,’” Ator said.īingo.

They mentioned a project in the early stages, but it wasn’t the usual manned mission. Part of that visit was a meeting with Senate Armed Services Committee staffers to review “different potentials” for a military mission at Ebbing. What’s next?” Ator summarized about a meeting with Cotton and his staff in late 2019. We need to be looking over the horizon for when their mission finally ends. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and other Arkansas Congressional delegation members. He was in Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S.

The wing’s three primary missions are Remotely Piloted Aircraft (MQ-9 Reaper) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Targeting (Space-Focused). And there was an “air war” over western Arkansas, “damn good” weather when it mattered, and a unique Singapore connection - more on those later.Ītor, a retired Air Force colonel and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission director of Military Affairs, was worried about the future of the 188th Wing located at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. There was a quick decision to extend the Fort Smith Regional Airport main runway and a dinner hosted by Alice Walton in her Bentonville art museum. Air Force in 2019 needed a new place to train foreign pilots to handle the fifth-generation F-35 fighter plane. Asa Hutchinson to retain and recruit military operations. Rob Ator had been tasked in early 2018 by then-Gov.

Just My Luck by Alice Winters