A memorandum on Secretary of War letterhead, dated September 23, directs the Air Force to create an Air National Guard Special Tactics Squadron Total Force Association at Hurlburt Field, Florida, with an associated new organization at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
The one-page memo below is addressed to the Secretary of the Air Force and is entitled “Air National Guard Organization at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.” In that memo the Secretary of War’s office directs the Department of the Air Force to create an Air National Guard Special Tactics Squadron Total Force Association at Hurlburt Field, FL, “with an associated new organization at MacDill AFB, FL”.
A Total Force Association generally is a Guard unit paired with an active-duty counterpart and conducts the same mission with the same personnel and equipment. The headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command is located at Hurlburt Field. The headquarters of U.S. Special Operations Command is located at MacDill Air Force Base.
The National Guard Bureau (NGB) and Department of the Air Force (DAF) will use the organizational change process in DAFI 38-101, Air Force Manpower and Organization Instructions, to implement this change. The organizational change process will be consistent with the Air Force Strategic Basing Process and with environmental and other legal requirements.
The action will take place in FY 2027 when funding for the initiative will be executed in accordance with FY 2027 Program/Budget Review numbers. Further resourcing of this initiative to include military construction, equipment and manpower authorizations will be developed for the President’s Budget 2028.
It is unclear how many personnel the new squadron will have, which National Guard unit will be responsible for the squadron, and where within MacDill AFB the new organization will be located.
The one-page memo, which was provided to Armed Forces Press, carries a handwritten signature with no typed name or title, and Armed Forces Press has not independently verified the document. To date, the Pentagon has not publicly announced the order.
It is worth noting that this directive comes at a time of growing attention from the legislature in Florida as to how special operations forces are to be based at Hurlburt. Sen. Rick Scott, Sen. Ashley Moody and Rep. Jimmy Patronis in November 2025 wrote to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink regarding a Biden-era decision to relocate a portion of the Air Force Special Operations Command units at Hurlburt to other bases. And, as reported elsewhere this month, SPACEFOR-SOC (the Space Force component command) was activated at MacDill.
The full memo is embedded below.
