Members of the Vermont Air National Guard have been deployed on back-to-back missions to the Caribbean and the Middle East since mid-December. And more than 100 days later, as the war in Iran rages on, even Guard staff say they don’t know when members will be home.
“We don't have any further information on a possible return for our airmen of the 158th Fighter Wing,” Joseph Brooks, spokesperson for the Guard, said Tuesday.
Brooks added that any decision to send Guard members home would come from U.S. Central Command, since troops are currently mobilized under Title 10 — the code that allows the president to take command of states’ National Guards. Legally, mobilizations of this kind can last up to two years.
U.S. Central Command declined to comment. President Donald Trump said in a speech this week that the war in Iran is “nearing completion," but said that first the U.S. plans to intensify its barrage on the country.
In December, the Vermont Air National Guard was deployed on short notice to Puerto Rico to help unseat and arrest Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Immediately after, those Guard members and their F-35 fighter jets were sent on another deployment — this time, to the Middle East, as the U.S. began its war on Iran. They did not come home between missions.
Maj. Gen. Henry “Hank” Harder, Jr., who leads the Guard, told Vermont Edition last week that he couldn’t confirm how many members are currently deployed in the Middle East, but said it was in the “hundreds region.”
“We can’t wait to bring them home,” Harder said. “Don’t know when they're coming home, but we’re really looking forward to welcoming them back safe.”
It’s not unusual for the Vermont Air National Guard to deploy overseas. Most of the time, those are training missions, with a fixed time frame. For example, last year Guard members were deployed on a regular training rotation in Japan.
But it’s been about a decade since the last large-scale mobilization of the Air Guard for a combat mission. And this deployment is now approaching the length of that 2016 mission, when Air Guard members were deployed to the Middle East for four months to fight the Islamic State group. Prior to that, Army Guard members were deployed on extended missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This time around, Guard members were originally under the impression they’d be home by the end of March, according to one relative of an airman who asked to remain anonymous. But she said in mid-March, family members heard from support staff that the deployment would likely be extended for an unspecified amount of time.
The family member said being in the dark on details has been horrible.
“My mental health has been bad,” she said. “I had to get counseling because I feel really helpless. I don’t know how to help him. And I’m scared every day I’m going to wake up to really, really bad news.”
Though the Guard is usually mum on operational details, it did announce that all Vermont airmen were unharmed after an F-35 was struck and made an emergency landing last month. It did not say whether or not the F-35 belonged to the Vermont Guard.
Vermont’s 158th Fighter Wing was the country’s first Air National Guard unit to receive the F-35A. The decision was announced in 2016 and the first planes arrived in South Burlington in 2019.
