{"id":129792,"date":"2026-05-19T15:31:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-congressional-delegation-seeks-answers-about-lost-colorado-air-national-guard-jobs\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T15:31:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:31:29","slug":"colorado-congressional-delegation-seeks-answers-about-lost-colorado-air-national-guard-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-congressional-delegation-seeks-answers-about-lost-colorado-air-national-guard-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado congressional delegation seeks answers about lost Colorado Air National Guard jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A F-16 Fighting Falcon from the Colorado Air National Guard's 140th Wing takes off from Buckley Air Force Base on Friday, May 15, 2020, in Aurora. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 included a controversial provision: the transfer of Air National Guard space mission jobs to U.S. Space Force, which was done without obtaining gubernatorial approval.<\/p>\n

The letter, from the entire Colorado congressional delegation and led by Democratic Rep. Jason Crow and GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, points out that the move \u201chas had a profound and immediate impact on our state\u2019s military footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

The delegation letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, wants to know by June 19 what new missions are being set up for Colorado\u2019s Air National Guard members in order to retain and give certainty to \u201cthe remaining highly trained service members.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis divestment affected a total of 393 military billets within the 233rd Space Group \u2013 COANG based at the Greeley Air National Guard Station, impacting the livelihoods and careers of 178 full-time and 215 part-time Airmen,\u201d the letter from the entire delegation notes. \u201cFuture mission uncertainty has led to retention challenges of skilled personnel across a wide variety of backgrounds, such as Space Operators, Security Forces, Communication Specialists, and Logistics personnel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fiscal Year 2025 NDAA impacted about 600 people in space-focused units in Colorado, Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, New York and Ohio.<\/p>\n

According to the letter, 19 airmen transferred to the Space Force, while 14 went to other units or left service. The rest are still waiting to hear what will happen to them with their billets \u2013 job assignments \u2013 now elsewhere.<\/p>\n

A Colorado Air Guard survey last year found that only 8% of space professionals would transfer and that almost 80% would not, according to the National Guard Association of the United States.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A F-16 Fighting Falcon from the Colorado Air National Guard’s 140th Wing takes off from Buckley Air Force Base on Friday, May 15, 2020, in Aurora. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press) The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 included a controversial provision: the transfer of Air National Guard space mission jobs to U.S. Space Force, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6401],"tags":[120,28,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-129792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-news","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129792"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=129792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}