Meridian is a city situated in the east of Mississippi, close to the border with Alabama and has about 40.000 inhabitants. Around 4.000 of them are employed by the two military facilities that are close to the city; Naval Air Station Meridian and Key Field Air National Guard Base.

Naval Air Station Meridian
NAS Meridian is situated about 12 miles northeast of the city and is one of the Navy’s two jet strike pilot training facilities. The air station, with three runways, is situated in a beautiful rural area and is surrounded by large pine tree forests. Training Wing One at NAS Meridian trains strike pilots for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines and for several foreign countries. The training takes 9 to 12 months and is comprised of 21 stages. During the training the students will fly approximately 160 hours in a T-45C Goshawk. After receiving their golden wings, the students will go on to other bases to train flying the aircraft they will be eventually assigned to, like the F/A-18 or F-35.

Key Field Air National Guard Base
Key Field Air National Guard Base is situated in the southwest corner of the city of Meridian and is a joint military-civil airfield. The civil part is known as Meridian Regional Airport. Key Field is home of the Mississippi Air National Guard´s 186^th Air Refueling Wing which operates the KC-135R Stratotanker. Along with providing tanker support, the wing also carries out Incident Awareness Assessment (IAA) tasks with the RC-26B Metroliner. Its Operations Support Squadron (OSS) provides all the training for the ANG’s RC-26 pilots and mission system officers. The unit owns two RC-26s.

Key Field opened in 1930 and was run by the brothers Algene and Frederick Key, pioneers of aviation who established and still retain the flight endurance world record. The old terminal building and hangar are still visible on Key Field. T-45 Goshawk aircraft from nearby NAS Meridian and Air Force T-6A, T-1A and T-38C aircraft from Columbus AFB practice approaches and other procedures over Key Field almost every day and are frequent visitors at Key Field.

Our article about the 186th Air Refueling Wing was published in the December 2019 issue of Full Stop Magazine.
Our article about U.S. Navy training was published in the August 2020 edition of Air Forces Monthly.