Vice commander at McGhee Tyson Air Base talks Air National Guard during ORNL Veterans Day program

ORNL’s Veterans Day ceremony Nov. 11 was highlighted by a keynote address delivered by Col. Lee Hartley, vice commander of the 134th Air Refueling Wing of the Tennessee Air National Guard at McGhee Tyson Air Base. Hartley thanked ORNL’s Global Security Directorate and other ORNL directorates in developing and testing technologies that have benefitted the military, noting that McGhee Tyson has had a strong working relationship with Oak Ridge over 74 years and one of the air base’s missions is to provide security support to Oak Ridge. Hartley also told the standing-room audience in the Conference Center the Tennessee Air National Guard not only provides air-refueling support to the U.S. military, but is also involved in defense support of civil authorities. This includes participation during the summer of 2016 in an exercise simulating a response to a seismic event in the New Madrid zone in West Tennessee – basically an earthquake. The Air National Guard partnered with about 150-plus state, local and federal agencies during the response exercise.