Eubanks makes career pitch for Arkansas Air National Guard

Arkansas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Casey Eubanks will be the first to tell you “I’m not a recruiter.”

That’s not how the top brass sees it, however.

“But the director of the Air National Guard came out a couple of days ago,” Eubanks clarifies, “and said that we are all recruiters.”

So while Eubanks was not being a recruiter Wednesday as the keynote speaker for the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce’s monthly membership luncheon, he not only bombarded his audience with an alphabet soup of acronyms, but gave anyone with even a passing interest in military service, especially those who focus on intelligence and surveillance strategies, a big push in the direction of the Arkansas Air National Guard.

“My intent is to sing the praises of my airmen to our community,” Eubanks told the chamber members assembled at the People Inc. Conference Center. “They do a lot of great work that is behind a secured, classified facility that not a whole lot of people get to enter.

“The Army, Air Force, Navy — oddly, the Marines don’t have a recruiting problem right now — and the National Guard have a recruiting problem. That’s a bad thing nationally. I focus on my community, and my community is Sallisaw, Sequoyah County and the River Valley,” he said.

Eubanks is the commander of the 123rd Intelligence Squadron (IS) at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. The 123rd IS is responsible for conducting near real-time exploitation of imagery intelligence data collected by intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, and provides actionable, multisource combat intelligence to combatant commanders and war fighting forces. The 123rd IS falls under the 188th ISR group at Distributed Ground Station-Arkansas as part of the Air Force’s Distributed Common Ground System.

“We provide the ability, we provide the eyes, sometimes the ears, sometimes we give advance notice to the warfighter,” Eubanks explained. “Our focus is still on our global war on terrorism mission. Now we’re moving into that nearpeer fight [e.g., China].

“Everything we do is centered around that publicly available information [such as social media] that our targets are throwing out there [on the internet] all the time,” Eubanks emphasized, which includes working in partnership with the CIA, FBI and NSA.

“For the AET, Analysis and Exploitation Team, our main focus is joint forces air combatant commanders’ priorities. Those problem sets are usually strategic in nature, sometimes they can be tactical in nature.”

Those in the 18-to-35 age group interested in pursuing military service with either the 188th Wing or Eubanks’ 123rd IS will receive training that is applicable to both global missions and domestic response.

“We’re gonna train you on our active-duty Air Force mission,” Eubanks said. “But the thing about our active-duty mission is it translates very well and very easily to our domestic response.” Examples of the National Guard’s domestic response include dealing with flooding events and other natural disasters.

Eubanks graduated from Stilwell in 1994, and earned his bachelor’s degree from Phillips University, where he majored in mathematics and computer applications. He enlisted in the Air Force Arkansas Air National Guard in July 1999, and graduated Air Force Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in June 2000.

And if you think he looks familiar, he was a teacher and girls basketball coach at Sallisaw High School from 2006-12.

Chamber business

In other chamber business, executive director Marty Green reported on the proceeds from this year’s Junior Livestock Show sale.

“It looks like the livestock show is gonna be in excess of $129,000 — the second year to set a record on this,” he told the members. He said there is still about $8,000 to be collected.

“We’re hoping to write the checks [to the sale participants] next week. We wanna thank this community for giving way above what would be expected.”

Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce president Nikki Garrett (left) presented the March Member of the Month plaque to Gary and Zack Schaefer of BHC Insurance. LYNN ADAMS | TIMES

Member of the Month

The Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce announced BHC Insurance as its March member of the month.

In 1979, BHC Insurance acquired the Johnson Agency in Sallisaw, and later merged with the Schaefer Agency in 1985. Sallisaw was the second agency location, with the main office in Fort Smith.

BHC has been in business in the River Valley almost 108 years, and has grown to more than 72 full-time employees. This includes locations in Sallisaw, Poteau, Fort Smith and Rogers. BHC represents more than 100 companies, ensuring it provides the best coverage for its clients. BHC is a family company owned and operated by second-generation agents. With the recent addiction of three third-generation agents, BHC is committed to providing expertise and quality service to the River Valley for years to come.

The Sallisaw office is operated by Gary and Zack Schaefer, who have more than 50 years of combined experience in commercial and personal insurance.

Upcoming events

• Ribbon cutting and grand opening for United Faith Church at 11:30 a.m. today. The new facility is located on Highway 59 south of I-40.

• Tour of Larry Crowe’s Big Toy Museum at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. The museum is located at the old middle school gymnasium.

• Diamond Daze Downtown is May 5-6. Applications for vendors are still being accepted. Main Street Sallisaw is sponsoring the annual barbecue cookout, and team entries are still being accepted.