Fairchild’s 141st Air Refueling Wing activated to support Iran war

WASHINGTON – About 100 members of a Washington Air National Guard unit stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base have been activated to support the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, the Washington Military Department confirmed Monday.

Department spokeswoman Karina Shagren confirmed the activation of the 141st Air Refueling Wing, first reported by the Seattle Times, and added that the move didn’t require the approval of Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat. She referred other questions to the Defense Department, where a spokesperson wouldn’t confirm if the Air Force’s 92nd Air Refueling Wing, also based at Fairchild, has been deployed to support Operation Epic Fury.

A spokesperson for U.S. Central Command declined on Monday to answer questions about specific units, citing operational security and the need to ‘protect our people.’ ” Fairchild is home to the Air Force’s only “super” wing of Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers, with 63 total aircraft as of 2021. A fact sheet provided by U.S. Central Command on March 3 confirmed only that “refueling tanker aircraft” were among the U.S. assets employed in the operation.

Iran has targeted several U.S. military bases in the Middle East, analysis of satellite images by The New York Times and other outlets has shown, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Thursday to have targeted Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, where social media posts and open-source aircraft tracking data indicate that a large number of U.S. KC-135s have been operating since the United States and Israel began strikes on Feb. 28.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington of Kentucky, 26, died Sunday after being wounded a week earlier in an Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Six other U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian drone strike on a U.S. command center in Kuwait on the same day.