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The National Guard Bureau is supporting an effort to keep F-15's assigned to the Montana Air National Guard, but the Air Force is still pushing a plan to move them to California.

MT State Senator Ed Buttrey (R-Great Falls) is working to keep the F-15 mission in Montana, and he says that National Guard Bureau is on the same page.

Buttrey said, "It's no secret that they believe there should be a flying mission in every state, and that mission should have the states' tail logo on the aircraft. This means, in my opinion, that the state Guard has a flying mission."

Buttrey says if the F-15 mission was removed from the Montana Air National Guard, it would be a significant loss for the Treasure State, equating to about $70 million dollars in federal funding and 1,000 jobs disappearing in Montana.

But Montana wouldn't be the only one to feel the burden, according to Buttrey; he said that the nation's taxpayers will be footing a massive bill.

Buttrey said, "We've documented it's going to cost between 1/4 and a 1/2 billion dollars of new infrastructure and wasted infrastructure to move the mission from Montana to California."

Buttrey says those figures do not factor the Environmental Impact Statement in Fresno, and that the Air Force has acknowledged air quality and noise as two major problems that will create more costs to mitigate.

Buttrey said, "Why don't we leave the mission here, where the infrastructure is in place, we have great Hays MOA to fly in, and we have an incredible rate of success. It's not the time, or place, to move these."