Inside the National Guard operation at the former Loring Air Force Base

Standing in the tall grass alongside Maine’s longest runway, camo-clad members of the 260th Combat Airfield Operations Squadron radioed weather readings and landing perimeters to the hulking military transport plane on the horizon. 

Briefly touching down at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, the LC-130 Skibird — piloted by the 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard — left off a few crew members before returning to the sky and circling the perimeter of the base. 

Heading back over the runway, airmen dropped sand bags with parachutes from the back of the aircraft, aiming for targets in a designated “drop zone.” The activity was part of a weeklong training exercise hosted by the New Hampshire National Guard that brought a large-scale military operation back to the base for the first time since it closed in 1994. 

Air National Guard units from Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York participated in the event, dubbed “Operation Northern Phoenix.”

The National Guard granted the Bangor Daily News access to the operation Tuesday morning, as airmen set up equipment and the landing zone went hot, briefly bringing back to life the once roaring military installation, which was home to more than 10,000 personnel at its peak during the Cold War. 

Northern Phoenix is designed for the 260th Combat Airfield Operations Squadron, a specialized unit of air traffic controllers, to practice rapidly deploying to sparse airfields to expand their capabilities. 

“It directly relates to our mission and our ability to project air power into austere environments,” Maj. David Stern, commander of the 260th, said in an interview. “It allows us to practice agile combat deployment to be able to be sent to an austere airfield and set up, provide services, and then pack up in a short amount of time to be able to project power in multiple areas.”

Next to a decrepit air traffic control building and on top of cracking pavement in the middle of the airfield, the 260th and supporting units staged their operations. 

The 265th Combat Communications Squadron of the Maine Air National Guard monitored equipment set up on a folding table. Behind them, airmen had erected three large antennas for a radio system. Air traffic controllers watched the skies from an MSN-7, a mobile air traffic control tower mounted on top of a Humvee. 

“This is the perfect environment, one, due to the size of the airfield,” Stern said. “It’s able to handle any sort of aircraft in the inventory, and also the location, where it is remote, so we have the space to do it.”

Standing with the National Guardsmen were a group of German Air Force officials, who observed the day’s exercises. 

Under a pop-up tent down the runway sat a combination of National Guard and local firefighters. 

“It’s pretty cool to see the military aircraft back up here in Aroostook County,” Presque Isle Fire Chief Darrell White said.

2026 is the second in five years of planned exercises at the former base. 

This year’s operation was originally intended to be significantly larger, with as many as a dozen military units participating. But the number of attending personnel shrank in the months and weeks leading up to it. 

Public affairs spokespeople for the New Hampshire National Guard declined to comment on why the exercise had been pared down, and cited the “fluid” nature of most military operations. But at least two units that were slated to participate — Kentucky’s 123rd Airlift Wing and a fighter squadron under Vermont’s 158th Fighter Wing — are deployed overseas, as the U.S. negotiates a tense ceasefire in its war with Iran.

The 69th Bomb Squadron, an active Air Force unit that operates the B-52 Stratofortress and was once stationed at Loring, also pulled out of the exercise. That meant the aircraft involved in the week’s operations were mostly C-130 Hercules and a few helicopters, Stern said. 

The LC-130 Skibird that took part in Tuesday’s exercises is a modified version of the C-130 equipped with retractable skis to land in the Arctic and Antarctic.  

Airmen described Loring as “familiar” and compared it to an active duty base, even if the neighboring buildings are empty or in commercial use. 

“It’s like a time capsule,” Staff Sgt. Justin Reidel of the 260th Combat Operations Squadron said. “And I’m a nerd, [so] it’s very interesting. I love the history of it.”

In the more than three decades since Loring closed, efforts to commercialize the former base and the thousands of acres of land and buildings that surround it have moved slowly. 

That trend has begun to reverse in recent years, in part because of Northern Phoenix. 

A global aerospace company that retrofits wide-body passenger aircraft moved into the base’s most recognizable building — a more than 100,000-square-foot arch hangar — last summer because of the attention brought by the training exercise. The company, Kansas City-headquartered Aero Intelligence, signed a 20-year lease worth $5.4 million that covers a full restoration of the historic hangar.

Green 4 Maine, a redevelopment company that purchased roughly 450 acres of the former base in 2023, has also brought in a handful of tenants into long-unoccupied buildings, with more on the way. And the construction of a $65 million potato chip factory at the site is expected to be completed this year. 

“This proves to the world that Loring is not just a mothballed runway,” Loring Development Authority President Jonathan Judkins said earlier in June. “It’s a viable training resource for multiple different military units as well as local law enforcement.”