Air base births new airlift unit

913th to have 850 personnel

A C-130J flies over C-130H planes at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville in this file photo. A new Air Force Reserve unit, the 913th Airlift Group, will be activated at the base today and will add personnel and aircraft, possibly including 10 of the J-model aircraft.
A C-130J flies over C-130H planes at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville in this file photo. A new Air Force Reserve unit, the 913th Airlift Group, will be activated at the base today and will add personnel and aircraft, possibly including 10 of the J-model aircraft.

The activation of a unit at the Little Rock Air Force Base today will bolster the presence of the Air Force Reserve on base and draw more airmen and aircraft to central Arkansas, according to Reserve officials.

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The Air Force Reserve will gather today to activate the 913th Airlift Group, a combat unit that will replace the base's 22nd Air Force Detachment 1, which was established on the Jacksonville base in March 2011 and worked for two years with the Air Force's active-duty 314th Airlift Wing and the Air National Guard's 189th Airlift Wing to train C-130 flight crews before shifting to a combat mission in October.

Now, the unit is shedding its designation as a detachment and receiving an identity of its own, said Col. Archie Frye, commander of the detachment. In addition to an increased number of personnel and aircraft, the designation will bring a level of autonomy to the unit, though it will continue to report to the 22nd Air Force Command at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga.

"Unit activation, it's equivalent to the birth of a child," said Frye, who will stay on as commander of the 913th. "It's something new. You have hopes and dreams for it, and you get to watch it grow up."

As an aircraft-equipped combat airlift group, the unit will add to the base's classification as home to the largest fleet of tactical transport aircraft in the Air Force.

For more than three years, the detachment has raised its numbers to be large enough to gain its own designation, Frye said. It now comprises approximately 500 airmen and civilians -- a number that is expected to grow by 70 percent in the next two years.

The 913th is authorized to increase to 850 personnel in fiscal 2015, according to a statement from 2nd Lt. Jamillah Gonzalez, spokesman for the unit.

"It builds our presence," Frye said. "In times of reduction, it means a lot to the community. More importantly, it's a boost to the economy."

The 913th Airlift Group will include a headquarters staff, the 327th Airlift Squadron, the 913th Operations Support Squadron, the 913th Maintenance Squadron, the 96th Aerial Port Squadron, the 913th Force Support Squadron and the 913th Aerospace Medical Squadron.

Twenty-eight percent of its members will be full-time technicians or civil servants. Most of the people filling those positions have already been hired, Frye said, and many were recruited from other units on base.

Officers are now preparing to fill the remaining positions -- traditional, part-time reservists. Because these positions don't require a certain skill set and the Air Force Reserve wants to build its numbers for the future, recruiters are targeting young people, specifically recent high school graduates within a 200-mile radius of the Jacksonville base.

Frye said the goal is to recruit about 200 reservists per year until the unit reaches capacity.

"Everyone is always recruiting, but we're more active now that we have a bigger requirement to recruit," Frye said. "We will be aggressively building our junior platform for two more years, and then go back to sustainment mode."

As the unit's personnel increases, so too will its aircraft.

The Little Rock Air Force Base has approximately 83 C-130 aircraft, said Arlo Taylor, spokesman for the Air Mobility Command. About 52 of those are H models and 31 are the newer J models. The 83 aircraft are split between the Air Force's active-duty 19th Airlift Wing and 314th Airlift Wing, the Guard's 189th Airlift Wing and the Reserve's 22nd Air Force Detachment 1.

The 913th Airlift Group will keep its 10 C-130H tactical airlift aircraft, two of which are currently on loan to the Guard's 189th Airlift Wing for training, said Maj. Rick Rogers, one of the officers in charge of managing the growing unit's fleet.

Last week, the unit received one C-130H from Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Rogers said, taking the fleet to 11. One more plane will arrive from Dobbins later this week. The 913th Airlift Group will share its aircraft with the Air Force's 19th Airlift Wing and 50th Airlift Squadron.

"With the two we have just been assigned, we have our full complement of 12 aircraft," Rogers wrote in an email last week.

Going forward, the number and type of aircraft the unit will operate is dependent on the proposed 2015 Air Force budget.

Under President Barack Obama's proposed budget, the 913th Airlift Group would be equipped with 10 C-130J aircraft, the latest version of the C-130 that requires a smaller crew than the C-130H and has the ability to climb higher and faster and take off and land on shorter runways.

The J-model aircraft that would be sent to Little Rock Air Force Base under the proposed budget would come from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. The unit's C-130H models would be relinquished, and the Air Force may decide to retire them, Frye said.

"It's been proposed to equip us with the Js, but that hasn't been finally approved," he said. "It's on the table, but until Congress acts, we're operating on the plan that's been in the works."

Maj. Gen. Mark A. Kyle, commander of the 22nd Air Force at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, will present the 913th's guidon at today's activation ceremony. The last time the unit's flag flew was in 2007, when the airlift group was deactivated at its home station in Willow Grove, Pa., because of cuts in the 2008 defense budget.

Frye said reactivating the unit will be his last mission because he plans to retire at the end of 2014 after 35 years in the military.

When Frye is presented with the guidon today, the 913th will unveil its new patch and celebrate the solidification of the Reserve's presence on base.

"All of this is a culmination of three years of wanting an identity of our own instead of being a detachment," Frye said. "There will be a lot of excitement."

A seciton on 07/13/2014

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