While the Montana Air National Guard (MANG) held a briefing yesterday about the first F-15 leaving Montana and heading to Fresno, California, the folks in Fresno held a celebration when the first F-15 arrived from Montana.

When you’re winning you can have a celebration, so pop the cork on that bottle of bubbly, Fresno – your leaders beat Montana’s leaders in the fight for jets.

More F-15s are on the way to Fresno with the last planes leaving Montana by October. That means Montana will not be a “fighter unit” for the first time in about 66 years – 66 years.

The local newspaper and television station have stories about the briefing and the move. You can read the Great Falls Tribune story HERE. KRTV (CBS) has a nice package that you can read/watch HERE.

As a consolation, Montana is “scheduled” to have eight C-130 cargo planes by next spring. Montana is also scheduled to lose about 80 jobs according to the Great Falls Tribune, “but not as many as originally on the table, according to spokeswomen for Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus” which is a nice way to “spin” the loss of jobs that happened on their watch.

Today, the Great Falls Tribune editorial board decided to say their farewell to the F-15s, “We will miss the fighter jets training over the Electric City.” They closed their editorial with, “The critical role of MANG in this nation’s security and in our local economy cannot be overstated. Its continued role in both is a credit to the hard work of many.”

Hold on while I wipe away some tears because that editorial was touching – especially the part about pre-game flyovers at Montana and Montana State before home football games.

Supporters of the MANG should be a little nervous until the last of the C-130s are bedded down in Great Falls. They’ll need some funding approved by Congress for construction, which has problems approving about anything these days except recess. There will need to be an environmental assessment completed, more pilots, and more training for crews – and actually find some crews.

And if it all goes well, local leaders will be able to actually say, “we’ve maintained a mission” and the political folks can say they fought to maintain a mission.

But deep down everyone knows that Fresno won…

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