provided major air and ground support for Operation Desert Shield, conducted in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Thousands of military personnel and tons of equipment passed through Zaragoza en route to the crisis in the Middle East. The base and the wing continued to act as a major aerial port providing support during and after Operation Desert Storm. Subject to the same provisions requiring the removal of other units from Spain, the 406th began efforts to end its operations and return Zaragoza to the Spanish Government in 1992. The use of the training range ended in December 1991, followed by the turnover of base operations to the Spanish in April 1992. The 406th Tactical Fighter Training Wing was inactivated on 1 April 1994 when USAFE ended its presence and returned control of Zaragoza Air Base to the Spanish government. 406th Air Expeditionary Wing The wing was converted to provisional status as the 406th Air Expeditionary Wing. It was activated on 30 March 2011 at Moron Air Base, Spain to support Operation Odyssey Dawn, a mission to enforce a no-fly zone put in place to protect civilians in Libya during the escalating Libyan Civil War. The task of assembling an aerial refueling force initially fell to the 171st Air Refueling Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, starting with two tankers that were already at Moron to support planes rotating to and from the Middle East. The first four tankers of the 171st arrived on the morning of 20 March. By the following day, the yet-to-be formally designated wing had grown to a mix of fifteen Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers and four McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extenders, drawn from 14 different wings of the regular force, Air Force Reserve Command, and the Air National Guard. Looking at the mix of tail stripes on the planes he commanded, Brigadier General Uptegraff dubbed his unit the "Calico Wing." Because Congress had not approved the mission, much of the wing's manning was on a volunteer bases, with funding drawn from money budgeted for other purposes. While operational control of the wing was assigned to United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE)'s Seventeenth Air Force, deficiencies in manning and experience with air mobility operations led to a combined control between USAFE (for tactical control) and Air Mobility Command (AMC). On 31 March, control of Odyssey Dawn was assumed by NATO, which named it Operation Unified Protector.