FORT SMITH -- Staff Sgt. Bryan Cheeks isn't afraid to say he cried a little bit.
"I'll be honest with you, seeing those last two A-10s take off," Cheeks said Saturday, standing near the flight line at Ebbing Air National Guard Base. "Last night, thinking about it, I teared up a little."
Cheeks, a munitions expert with the 188th Wing -- formerly the 188th Fighter Wing -- was one of several hundred Air National Guard members in attendance Saturday for the 188th Conversion Day. After serving an evolving series of aircraft for more than 60 years, the 188th Maintenance Group, which included about 350 of the wing's approximately 1,000 military and civilian members, was inactivated.
Moments later, the 188th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group came alive.
The mission of the new group, which includes two intelligence squadrons and two support squadrons, is a significant departure for its members and will require extensive retraining, Maj. Heath Allen said. The process is expected to take several years.
The group's new mission -- intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- will center on the use of remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as "drones." The MQ-9 Reapers, which will be piloted from the Fort Smith area, will be used to collect intelligence data that will be collated and analyzed by members of the 188th, many of whom have served as mechanics or munitions experts with the unit for years.
Allen said the group is scheduled to put 125 of its 347 members through intelligence schools next fiscal year.
"We're not even halfway through the pipeline yet," Allen said. "It requires a lot of retraining. These intel schools are seven to nine months long, and they all require a top-secret security clearance before you can even get a school date."
Allen said that most of the 347 members of the maintenance group will remain with the new intelligence group, although a few -- including Cheeks -- will relocate to other units to stay in aircraft-maintenance roles, and some others will retire.
"If we've got someone who's two or three years from retirement, it doesn't make any sense to send them through an entirely new school, knowing we won't even be fully 'stood up' before they're ready to retire," Allen said.
Allen said a typical mission attached to a Reaper involves a three-man crew: a pilot; a mission-intelligence coordinator; and a sensor operator, who runs the camera installed on the drone.
During the process of converting the group, which is expected to take several years, Allen said members of the Air National Guard's 123rd Intelligence Squadron -- now assigned to the 189th Airlift Wing in Little Rock -- will relocate to Fort Smith. The unit is already trained and participating in remote reconnaissance missions like those the 188th Intelligence Group will eventually be involved in, Allen said.
As members of the new intelligence group complete their training, they will be temporarily reassigned to other remotely piloted aircraft and intelligence units throughout the country in order to maintain their certifications, Allen said, until the 188th Intelligence Group is fully staffed and operational.
While members are awaiting school dates for their new training, Allen said they will receive training on basic software programs such as the Microsoft Office Suite.
"Intelligence training is very intense, and a lot of it is about putting together briefings, analyzing data, working with spreadsheets, a different skill set than they'd normally be working with inside the maintenance realm," Allen said. "A lot of these guys are used to turning wrenches. They're mechanics. So we're going to be giving them the basic tools they need to succeed."
The first of the 20 A-10 Thunderbolt II jets attached to the 188th departed in September 2013. During the past nine months, most of the wing's fighter jets have been reassigned to Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Ga., Allen said.
NW News on 06/08/2014