A community with global missions

Journal of Business, Jul 01, 2004 by Read, Paul

Generations of Spokanites have watched the lumbering B-52s and KC-135s fly overhead and seen their fatigue-clad neighbors leave each day for work at Fairchild Air Force Base. Some of us have ventured out to the West Plains base to take advantage of open-house invitations to see and touch the mystery of a military facility

Few people here, however, likely understand the magnitude of Fairchild's operations, the breadth of its missions, or the richness of its history. This glimpse inside Fairchild provides some basic information about what's there and what's done there.

Because Fairchild is a military base, detailed information about it is closely guarded. The information here was provided by the base's public affairs office, as well as from research done by the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce and Avista Corp' economist Randy Barcus.

The big picture

Fairchild primarily is home to the 92nd Air Refueling Wing, one of the U.S. Air Force's largest tanker wings. Its KC-135 tankers refuel military aircraft in flight, allowing them to go farther and stay in the air longer during missions.

In addition to the Fairchild primarily is home to the 92nd, the base also is home to a host of "tenants," including the Washington Air National Guard's 141st Air Refueling Wing, which has its own KC-135 tankers; the 336th Training Group, better known as the Air Force survival school; a KC-135 maintenance training group called Detachment 13, and at least a dozen smaller associated units.

They all share a 4,300-acre base located 10 miles west of Spokane along U.S. 2.

The base itself is larger than many Eastern Washington communities. There are nearly 1,500 buildings there, with a combined 6.7 million square feet of floor space. There are 230 acres of pavement on the base's flight line, including aprons capable of accommodating 100 large aircraft, and a 13,900-foot-long runway big and long enough to handle the Air Force's largest aircraft.

Fairchild's massive ground-refueling system is capable of refueling as many as 50 aircraft at a time. Two pipelines, one from Montana and the other from the TriCities, provide the base with fuel.

More than 5,600 people work at Fairchild, including 3,600 active military personnel, about 1,100 guard members, and more than 900 civilians, either working for the Department of Defense or private companies there.

Nearly 2,000 people live on base, where there are about 1,350 family housing units and another 1,048 rooms in dormitories and other lodging facilities. Fairchild also has many of the amenities of a small community, including places to shop, dine, recreate, or even go to school.

There are nearly 4,000 computers on base and a fleet of about 600 vehicles. The base has total assets exceeding $6 billion and expected fiscal 2003 expenditures of about $191 million.

The 92nd Air Refueling Wing

Looked at in its full military jargon and acronym soup, the 92nd Air Refueling Wing appears quite complex. Broken down, however, it amounts to four main groups: one of people who fly the planes, one of people who fix the planes, and two of people who support the base operations, says Fairchild spokesman 1st Lt. Matt Hasson.

The 92nd Operations Group is perhaps Fairchild's most visible group to those outside the base, because it is the group that flies the KC-135s.

As Fairchild puts it in a welcome guide to new arrivals, "Whether supporting B-2s on a round-trip bombing mission to Kosovo or flying medicines and supplies across the Pacific, aerial refueling and airlift extends America's ability for global reach and power projection."

Within the group currently are four flying squadrons, each with about 125 personnel. The wing currently has 56 planes assigned to it, though it doesn't have that many currently on base. Some are being overhauled at repair depots at other bases, and some have been transferred to other refueling bases as part of an Air Force reorganization, but for now remain on Fairchild's books, says Hasson. By the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in September, the base will have 44 planes assigned to it, though the actual number of planes on the base could be different than that, he says.

In addition to the flying squadrons, the group includes an operational support squadron, which handles airfield operations, air traffic control, weather forecasting, scheduling, tactics, and combat crew communications.

During Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990s, Fairchild crews flew a combined 4,000 hours on 721 sorties (individual flights), and offloaded a total of 22.5 million pounds of fuel to such aircraft as the A-6, A-10, B-52, C-5, EA-6, EC-130, F-4, F111, F117A, and KC-10.

Since then, the wing has supported operations throughout the world, including Operation Restore Hope, in Bosnia; Operations Northern and Southern Watch, in Iraq; Operation Allied Force, in Kosovo; Operation Joint Forge, in northern Europe; and continuing operations in Enduring Freedom, in Iraq.

When not on operational missions, the flying squadrons regularly perform training missions around the Northwest, where Fairchild has established 15 air-refueling routes within 100 nautical miles of the base.