148th Fighter Wing to conduct night flying

October 22, 2020 (DULUTH, Minnesota) — The 148th Fighter Wing will be conducting a readiness exercise October 23-25, 2020. Residents in the local area, northern Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan may hear F-16s taking off, flying and landing from approximately 7:00 a.m. until midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 7:oo a.m. until 5:oo p.m. on Sunday.

Residents in the local area, near the Duluth International Airport, may also hear additional activity to include ground burst simulators, the firing of blanks for small arms fire, emergency vehicle sirens and increased us of the unit’s public address systems. This is for training purposes only.

The 148th routinely holds such exercises to assess the unit’s ability to employ and sustain combat capability in a contested environment. The 148th has recently deployed Airmen and F-16s to Osan Air Base, South Korea, in 2016, the 407th Air Expeditionary Wing, Kuwait, in 2018 and the Southern United States in support of a NORAD-tasked homeland defense mission in early 2020.