161st Air Refueling Wing
military unit
The 161st Air Refueling Wing is a unit of the Arizona Air National Guard, stationed at Goldwater Air National Guard Base, Arizona. If activated to federal service, the Wing is gained by the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command.
Mission
The 161st Air Refueling Wing principal mission is air refueling. The wing enhances the Air Force's capability to accomplish its primary missions of Global Reach and Global Power. It also provides aerial refueling support to Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft as well as aircraft of allied nations. The wing is also capable of transporting litter and ambulatory patients using patient support pallets during aeromedical evacuations.
Units
The 161st Air Refueling Wing consists of the following units:
161st Operations Group
197th Air Refueling Squadron
161st Mission Support Group
161st Maintenance Group
161st Medical Group
History
On 2 October 1957, the Arizona Air National Guard 197th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron was authorized to expand to a group level, and the 161st Fighter-Interceptor Group was established by the National Guard Bureau. The 197th FIS becoming the group's flying squadron. Other squadrons assigned into the group were the 161st Headquarters, 161st Material Squadron (Maintenance), 161st Combat Support Squadron, and the 161st USAF Dispensary. The new Group was assigned to the 34th Air Division, Air Defense Command.
“161st Air Refueling Wing” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what 161st, Refueling and Wing can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4551246. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “161st Air Refueling Wing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.