Pease Air National Guard Base is the home of the 157th Air Refueling Wing and the KC-46A Pegasus. Our dedicated Airmen serve locally and globally, preserving peace, defending our nation, and projecting our nation’s power through aerial refueling and transport. We are always ready, always there.
The 157th Air Refueling Wing is a unit of Air Mobility Command and New Hampshire’s only Air National Guard Base. The wing encompasses more than 1,300 personnel, including more than 650 traditional Guardsmen and nearly 450 full-time military members and civilian employees. Seventy percent of these Airmen live in the seacoast area. The base has a total budget of nearly $133 million.
Pease maintains more than 50 buildings, spread across 215 acres, and operates 12 KC-46A Pegasus aircraft off a two-mile long runway. The total value of equipment assigned to Pease Air National Guard Base, which also includes snow removal trucks, KC-46A simulators and other equipment, is more than $3 billion.
The 157th Air Refueling Wing is the first Air National Guard unit to fly the nation’s newest aerial refueler and has its full contingent of 12 KC-46A Pegasus jets. The wing is part of the Tanker Task Force and the NGB’s Hurricane Crisis Response. It is regularly called upon for operational support, including the first-ever F/A-18 coronet refueling.
The wing has several other unique missions, including:
- 24/7/365 260th Air Traffic Control Squadron, one of 10 in the Air National Guard
- CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package (CERFP), 1/17 supporting FEMA operations;
- The Pease Fire Department
- Home to the state’s Civil Support Team
- Counter Drug and Drug Prevention Program
- State Partnership Program with El Salvador and Cabo Verde
The 157th Air Refueling Wing is capable of providing worldwide in-flight air refueling, movement of troops, supplies, equipment and medical patients. Other essential units on the base provide communications, engineering, logistical, medical and security support.
Airmen and the fleet of tankers of the 157th support both federal and state missions. The dual mission requires the members to be well-trained, equipped and available for prompt mobilization during war and national emergencies. When N.H. National Guard units are not mobilized or under federal control, they report to the governor of New Hampshire and provide protection of life, property and preserves peace, order and public safety.
The peacetime mission at the base includes recruiting, training, humanitarian and contingency operations. The wing is also responsible for the management of aircraft maintenance and personnel support.
The Wing’s tankers have been an emblem in the skies over New Hampshire since the base first became an Airlift Group in 1966. The Airmen here continue to make history, playing key roles in disaster response missions while becoming a global power in medical evacuation and humanitarian support, consistently fueling the fight to win our nation’s wars.
In the last decade Pease has been involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, Hurricane Sandy Relief, flights to Afghanistan AOR, Operations Inherent Resolve & Freedom’s Sentinel, humanitarian missions throughout Central America, Hurricane Irma & Maria relief, state-wide flood response, the El Salvador State Partnership Program and COVID-19 relief missions.