New missions, new personnel and new equipment are hard to come by in this time of dwindling resources. This is a real feather in the cap for the Arizona Air National Guard.

The National Guard's position is that we're not going anywhere. To do that would take an enormous amount of resources, of which nobody has discussed with us.

We try to make it as realistic as we can and then make it as challenging at the same time.

They had to be people of similar size. We had 15 different guys try them two days at a time. At the end of the trial, 14 swore it was the best thing in the world. The 15th guy was neither here nor there. It's unusual to have 15 guys agree.

You deal with it a person at a time, you listen to what they have to say, offer support where you can, and work with them to find a solution. But in this case, there's no happy solution.

Once we're setup it's very, very quick. Right now we're 30 minutes to launch. From the time we get the official word from our joint operations center we can be in the air in 30 minutes.