ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- Staff Sgt. Coleman Babcock, a radar, airfield and weather systems technician for the 241st Air Traffic Control Squadron, hit the jackpot when he enlisted with the 139th Airlift Wing in 2011.
Babcock leads the AN/MSN-7, or deployable air traffic control tower, by making sure all maintenance is up to date and the tower is ready to deploy whenever needed.
Recently, Babcock and his team were able to execute their training at the Tarkio Air Show located in Tarkio, Missouri.
“The tower is designed to just drop in somewhere and it raises up to create or take over airspace,” Babcock explains. “So, that’s kind of what we did in Tarkio. We drove it in, we set it up and then took over airspace, and they conducted the show with us.”
The 139th Airlift Wing assists the Wing Nuts during the Tarkio Air Show each year.
“It’s always something different that acts like an awesome training exercise because you learn something new every year,” Babcock says.
Through his experience at the 139th Airlift Wing, Babcock was able to travel around the world. He deployed to Djibouti, Africa in 2021 and describes his experience as awesome and eye-opening.
“That, for me, is when it really all started to click in this career field,” Babcock says. “I got so much hands-on experience, met a lot of great people and got to see, in a real world environment, what we do here, how we train and hear how it translates to that.”
Babcock traveled with the unit to Hawaii in January of this year to complete annual training on the AN/MSN-7. The 241st worked in correspondence with the Hawaii Air National Guard to practice set up and tear down of the AN/MSN-7.
“That’s kind of like on the brochure where they say ‘go see the world’…Hawaii was that, it was awesome,” says Babcock.
Traveling the world hasn’t been the only experience Babcock was able to gain from his 12 years at the 139th Airlift Wing. He completed a five year program at Drury University receiving a degree in architecture.
“It’s been neat, especially with deployment, being a member of the guard and working with active duty people you get to challenge some of the stereotypes that people have about each other and it pays off,” says Babcock.