July 14, 2006
Helicopter unit mobilized for duty in Kosovo
Nearly 100 members of a Wisconsin Army National Guard helicopter unit will head to Kosovo to support efforts to stabilize the region.
The members of the Madison-based 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation will mobilize this weekend.
They will take five of the battalion’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters when they join National Guard soldiers from several other states.
The Wisconsin battalion has 241 members. The current mission will involve only 92 of them because most of the others already served in Kuwait and Iraq after the unit was mobilized in 2003.
The current mission is expected to last 18 months, with one full year in Kosovo, which is legally part of Serbia.
Kosovo has been run by a United Nations mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since mid-1999, when the alliance’s air war ended Serb forces’ crackdown on the province’s ethnic Albanian majority.
Talks are now under way to settle Kosovo’s future status. Ethnic Albanians want the province to become independent, while Serbian leaders and the province’s Serb minority want it to remain within Serbia’s borders.