page_title: Fourth Air Force
section_title: Air Force Reserve
hierarchical_section_title: Fourth Air Force / History / Air Force Reserve
caption_attribution_description: English: Travis Air Force Base, California C-17 Ceremony Air Force and local community members watch, as the newest C-17 to be stationed at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. touches down. Assigned to 60th Air Mobility Wing and 349th Air Mobility Wing USAF Photo by Nan Wylie
context_page_description: The Fourth Air Force is a numbered air force of the Air Force Reserve Command. It is headquartered at March Air Reserve Base, California.
  4 AF directs the activities and supervises the training of more than 30,000 Air Force Reservists. If called to active duty, 4 AF's ready reserve units would be assigned to Air Mobility Command, Air Education and Training Command, and Pacific Air Forces.
  One of the four original pre–World War II numbered air forces, 4 AF was activated on 18 December 1940, at March Field, California with a mission of air defense of the Southwestern United States and Lower Midwest regions. During the war, its primary mission became the organization and training of combat units prior to their deployment to the overseas combat air forces.
  4 AF is commanded by Major General Randall A.Ogden
context_section_description: The command remained inactive until 8 October 1976, when it was activated as Fourth Air Force (Reserve) at McClellan Air Force Base, CA, and assigned to the Air Force Reserve. Fourth Air Force has been a key component of the Air Force reserve ever since.
  Fourth Air Force personnel supported operations in Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) and Panama (Operation Just Cause). More than 8,000 Air Force Reservists assigned to Fourth Air Force units served in the United States, Europe, and the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This included more than 2,878 medical personnel assigned to Fourth Air Force units.
  Since the end of the Cold War, Fourth Air Force has supported humanitarian missions such as Provide Promise in the Balkans and Provide Relief and Restore Hope in Somalia. Units rushed to provide aid and rescue service to the residents of Florida, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean in the aftermath of the traumatic and prolonged 1995 hurricane season. It supported immediate assistance to aid victims and disaster officials following the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Fourth Air Force units provided assistance for several natural disasters, including the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the Los Angeles area, and the catastrophic midwest floods and the California wildfires in 1993.
  Fourth Air Force units routinely support United Nations and Department of State missions. Fourth Air Force people were on the first teams into Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy, and supported Vigilant Warrior and Desert Thunder deployments to Southwest Asia. The men and women of Fourth Air Force continue to perform international peacekeeping and humanitarian missions on an almost daily basis.  Headquarters Fourth Air Force officially returned to its original home, now March Air Reserve Base, in Riverside, CA, in April, 1998.
  In 2003 Fourth Air Force became an intermediate echelon responsible primarily for all Air Mobility Command (AMC) gained AFRC air refueling units in the United States and AMC gained AFRC strategic airlift units in the western United States. Today the sixty person staff consists of Traditional Reservists, Air Reserve Technicians and civilian employees. They direct the activities and supervise the equipping and training of more than 30,000 Air Force reservists in unit programs located across the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam. Reservists from 4 AF units were routinely deployed to Air Expeditionary units in combat areas of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the "war on terror".
caption: The newest Boeing C-17A Globemaster III, 06-6164, arrives at Travis AFB
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