Oregon Air National Guard base set to receive new jets and a massive overhaul

In one of the biggest overhauls of Oregon’s military in a generation, the state’s Air National Guard base in Portland is about to take control of 18 new jets and undergo hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure improvements.

“This is an immense deal for Oregon,” said Lt. Col Scott Wilcox, commander of the 142nd Civil Engineering Squadron.

The Oregon Air National Guard currently has 1,400 full- and part-time service members and 17 fighter jets, all F-15Cs. Their job is to protect the skies from the Canadian border to Northern California. If a Russian long-range bomber probes the nation’s air defenses, or a commercial airline is hijacked, pilots out of Portland might fly a pair of F-15Cs to investigate.

But the newest of those jets dates back to 1985, the equivalent of having Portland Police patrol the city in 40-year-old DeLoreans.

The planes are still controlled using buttons and dials. There are internal computers, but they’re tiny and based on 1970s technology.

“It looks like an 8-track cassette,” said Col. Mike Kosderka, a fighter pilot and the commander of the 142nd Wing, “No kidding.

“Our current airplanes have no jamming capability. We have no self-protection capability really. The newer airplanes have got all that stuff.”

Starting this summer, the Oregon Air National Guard will get the first of about 18 new F-15EX planes at a cost of $95 million each. That’s a total of about $1.7 billion.

The old planes will go to other Air National Guard bases and be broken up for parts.

“With such an old airplane, part availability is difficult,” said Kosderka.

Made by Boeing, the new fighter is full of secret military technology, so the base will also need a new hangar. That construction is estimated to cost another $110 million.

Pilots will need training on the new planes, but staffing at the base isn’t expected to increase.

The new planes have undergone an environmental assessment, to gauge whether they will be louder or have any other negative effects on the area. But a draft finding from the National Guard Bureau has found “no significant impact.”

“This brand new airplane is going to allow us to get back into the fight, be survivable and help out with the overall effort,” said Kosderka.

The guard is also building a new training facility for the 125th Special Tactics Squadron. They’re known as the “Quiet Professionals” and they are to the Air Force what Green Berets are to the Army.

The squadron is made up of about 100 highly trained service members who conduct rescue missions, reconnaissance, personnel recovery and what the military calls precision strike missions around the world.

This being the Air National Guard, Portland’s squadron is made up of largely older, formerly active service members. They also help with humanitarian aid and disaster relief, like after Hurricane Katrina.

OPB was granted a quick look at the plan for the new Special Tactics facility. It includes a specialized gym, an air traffic control simulator, a diving equipment maintenance area, a simulator for fighting fires and storage for their fleet of unique vehicles.

There’s even a building to dry parachutes.

“It’s a tall tower-type building … they basically hang them up. And it has to have proper heat and humidity throughout the building to make sure that it’s dried correctly,” Wilcox said.

To put the new training facility into perspective, Wilcox estimates Oregon is getting about 40% of the country’s entire Air National Guard construction budget this year.

“The whole scope of the project is sitting around $75 million, which again as far as we’re tracking is the largest single project in the history of the Air National Guard,” Wilcox said.

Adding up all the various upgrades scheduled for the Portland base, Wilcox estimates that over the next five years, the federal government could spend up to $500 million, not including the new planes.

“This is an immense deal for Oregon,” he said.

Oregon doesn’t usually get as much military funding as other states because it doesn’t have any active military bases.

Oregon is the 27th most populous state, but last year it ranked 42nd for military spending at about $1.2 billion. Washington ranked 11th with $14 billion, because the state hosts several active military bases and is home to Boeing, a large supplier to militaries around the world.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and toured the 125th Special Tactics squadron last year.

“I had not heard about them before their request came to our office,” Merkley said. “I went out to investigate.”

He said their quarters seemed crowded with little training space, so he helped find funding.

Work on the new facility will start next year, and Oregon’s first new jets are expected in June. But to the untrained eye, they’ll look the same as the old jets.

The Portland Air National Guard base isn’t the only Oregon military facility undergoing big changes.

The 116th Air Control Squadron out of Camp Rilea, Warrenton, is changing from an Air Control Squadron — with a mission of documenting aerial battles for commanders — to working on cyber defense.

“That’s a massive change,” Kosderka said. “Totally different mission, totally different footprint.”

And at Kinglsey Field in Klamath Falls, the 173rd Fighter Wing will start training pilots to fly F-35s, a much more complex and expensive jet than the F-15Cs they currently fly.