Story Published: Jan 10, 2009 at 8:38 PM PDT
Story Updated: Jan 11, 2009 at 12:03 PM PDT
Inside a C-130.
"We're in a sunset mode right now," says Lt. Col. Tim Marsano with the Idaho National Guard.
Two other C-130 Hercules airplanes attached to the Idaho Air National Guard have already been sent to other states as part of the Pentagon's restructuring of military bases nationwide known by the acronym BRAC for Base Realignment and Closure.
The 189th Airlift Squadron is based at Boise's Gowen Field and is being deactivated sometime this year, once the remaining C-130s are redeployed.
The deactivation will affect about 200 airmen. Some are retiring, others are leaving Idaho for jobs with the National Guard in other states. Some are still working things out.
Despite leaving Idaho sometime in the next year, the 189th Airlift Squadron keeps training.
"You can't not be ready to go, because some of the training we do, it can take months and months to get back to being proficient at what we need to do," says Lt. Col. Frank Coprivnicar.
In a Nov. 6, 2007 letter to Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo, and Representatives Mike Simpson and Bill Sali, pressed their case for new C-130s to replace those that are leaving.
Those efforts appear to have been unsuccessful.
The Idaho lawmakers wrote that the loss of the C-130s "hurts not only Idaho but leaves the governors in Northwest severely lacking in their ability to respond to regional disasters in a timely manner."
They also pointed out $26 million dollars in military construction funds have been spent to support the C-130s in Boise.
A spokesman for Senator Mike Crapo says Idaho's congressional delegation is not giving up. They continue to push for a new mission for the Air National Guard at Gowen Field.
