Salina ? The Kansas National Guard has announced plans to establish a combat operations group in Salina that will provide air traffic control for combat aircraft.

The establishment of the combat training group is part of an expansion by the Guard that could, over the next three to four years, double its presence in Salina to 400 employees.

The Guard’s goal is to enhance joint disaster training with the National Guard units and first responders, emergency managers and active military, said Col. Eric Peck, chief of staff of the Joint Forces headquarters of the Kansas National Guard.

The Salina Airport Authority Board has approved leasing the National Guard a building and 4.8 acres of land in another area of the Airport Industrial Center.

The old Vortex building will be the initial home the Guard’s Air Support Operations Squadron. The 4.8 acres is a place where the National Guard can expand.

“We’re looking at it as an emergency operations teaching facility and a place we can use as an alternate emergency operations center,” Peck said Wednesday.

The Guard is ready to use the $9 million in bonding authority it got from this session from the Legislature to begin building a joint training center at the weapons range, Peck said. Training could begin as early as this fall.

Some of the $9 million will be used to build classrooms and a “disaster city” at the range. The airport authority plans to build a big hangar where aircraft can be housed or maintained, including the unmanned aerial vehicles that are routinely tested at the weapons range.

The award fell short of the $32 million the Guard sought to establish joint training centers in each of the four quadrants of Kansas, while making Salina the hub. Peck said the Guard will return to the Legislature next year to request the remaining funding.

The 2008 legislative session was the original target, he said, until the Department of Defense in January made the need for training centers for the military more immediate.

The secretary of defense determined the mobilization period for a Guard unit was to be no more than 13 months, including the time it takes to train those troops for overseas deployment.

Before that, the amount of time units were mobilized included training out of state three to seven months plus the required year overseas.

The move shortened the time Guard soldiers were away from home and on active duty, but state Guard officials are expected to make sure their troops meet certain training standards before leaving home, Peck said.