‘Thousand little things’ resulted in military pilot training center in Fort Smith

The first class of Polish Air Force pilots who are set to graduate from the foreign pilot training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith are the first fighter pilots to cycle through the new center.

Lt. Col. Don “JAB” Roney, director of operations with the 57th Fighter Squadron, said the Polish pilots being trained now “are the initial cadre” and will eventually become instructors so they can be “self-sustaining” in terms of future training in Poland of F-35 pilots.

Roney said the second class of Polish pilots are in Fort Smith. There are four Polish F-35 fighter planes in Fort Smith.

Ebbing, home to the 188th Wing in Fort Smith and co-located with the Fort Smith Regional Airport, was selected in March 2023 by the U.S. Air Force to be the long-term pilot training center supporting F-16 and F-35 fighter planes purchased by Singapore, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Finland, and other countries participating in the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.

The 85th Fighter Group and the 57th Fighter Squadron, both under the Eglin, Fla.-based 33rd Fighter Wing, are based at Ebbing and are responsible for training F-35 pilots. The cost to get the new training center fully operational is estimated to be $1.2 billion.

Ebbing is set to receive four more Polish F-35 jets by the end of 2025, with eight F-35 jets for Finland to arrive in 2026.

“The speed at which everything has moved to get the jets here,” Roney said when asked during an April 22 interview with Talk Business & Politics about what has gone right so far to establish the new training center. “I am just really happy and pleasantly surprised that we’ve just kept trucking and here we are at the end of our first Polish class that is about to graduate.

“The team that has come together, you know, they talk about death by a thousand pinpricks, well, you have success by a thousand little things as well. And to see all those things come together, has been very rewarding.”

Roney, who arrived in Fort Smith in March 2024, said one of the early challenges was the weather. Ice and snow hit the Fort Smith area when the first group of Polish pilots began flight training. Roney said when pilots are learning a new aircraft there are “tighter weather restrictions” that can limit flight time.

“It just was the timing,” he said. “That first class was there during a time when there was quite a bit of weather, when there was ice and snow, or just low ceilings. That was just a little bit of a challenge.”

The pilot and plane arrival schedule also includes F-35’s from Singapore arriving in the fall of 2026, and Singapore F-16s roaring in around August 2027. German F-35 planes and pilots are also set to arrive in 2026, according to previous U.S. Air Force reports.