Indiana National Guard unveils first F-16s in Fort Wayne
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The Indiana National Guard’s 122nd Fighter Wing in Fort Wayne has received the first of nearly two dozen F-16 fighter aircraft that are returning to the base after more than a decade.
The guard announced in January that the F-16s would replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II after the 122nd was approved for conversion as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
“This is the culmination of a lot of work, a longtime effort by our local state and federal representatives to make sure that this happened,” said Col. Joshua Waggoner, commander of the 122nd Fighter Wing. “It opens a new door into the future, and it guarantees that the 122nd is engaged, and we can continue the success that we’ve had.”
Speaking to reporters after a ceremony Saturday marking the arrival of the first two F-16s, Waggoner said the base has been preparing for a while.
“Right now, we have trained about 10 pilots. We’ve trained about 30 maintenance [crew], and then we’re going to have formal training for about 300 additional maintainers starting in January,” he said. “So over the next 15 months, we’ll train approximately 35 pilots and 450 maintainers on how to take care of this jet and fly it.”
The F-16 previously flew out of the Fort Wayne Air National Guard Base from 1991-2010. While the new F-16s are now beginning to show up, the effort to get them to Fort Wayne has been going on since 2015, officials said.
In total, the 122nd Fighter Wing will have 21 F-16s on the base by December 2024. But, Waggoner said he expects to have regular flying of the aircraft sometime next spring.
But the Fort Wayne base is not stopping at just the F-16. Waggoner said the F-16s will fly through 2040, but officials are looking beyond that time frame.
“We view this as a bridge mission; the A-10 went away, and it’s going away around the world,” he said “We know that the F-16 won’t last forever. So, the goal is to have either [the] F-15EX, F-35, or NGAD here in Fort Wayne so that my grandkids can fly airplanes in Fort Wayne just like I am today.”
Indiana National Guard officials also mentioned an effort to modernize the 122nd Fighter Wing base, though no specific plans were unveiled. Waggoner said they’re looking to build a base that’s sustainable for the future.
“We know that some of these facilities were built in the 1950s, and they need to be replaced,” he said. “So that way, there’s active initiatives to improve and be able to have not only the facilities, but the capabilities to fly those jets far into the future.”
Waggoner credited the 1,000 men and women of the 122nd Fighter Wing, noting that only a few of them are pilots, and about half make up the maintenance crew.
“The other 500 people either support one another, provide us with services to maintain the facilities, the runway, and then take care of what we need every day to make sure that we can get these jets flying,” he said. “So about half the people in this room will never touch this jet in any way. But their job is just as important because if they didn’t take care of us, then we couldn’t maintain the jets as required to, to take them off and do what we need to do.”
The arrival of the F-16s comes just a few weeks after a report from Purdue University’s Community Research Institute was released, saying the 122nd Fighter Wing generates an estimated $113 million in economic impact for the entire state.
The study, commissioned by Greater Fort Wayne Inc., estimates that local spending of the 122nd is an estimated $63.5 million, and $94.1 million across the 10 counties that make up Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District.
The 122nd Fighter Wing was originally established in 1943, when it was known as the 358th Fighter Group out of Richmond Army Base in Virginia. It was re-designated the 122nd Fighter Group and assigned to the Indiana Air National Guard in 1946.