On January 20/21, 2018 ten F-16Cs from the Alabama Air National Guard's 100th Fighter Squadron arrived at Lajes in the Azores as they returned home from an operational deployment to southwest Asia. The aircraft arrived at Lajes from Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait but their deployment was decribed only as being in somewhere in southwest Asia. They deployed to the 407th Air Expeditionary Group in October 2017.

The aircraft involved were:-

87-0282/AL 'TREND11'
87-0218/AL 'TREND12'
87-0219/AL 'TREND13'
88-0400/AL 'TREND14'
87-0220/AL 'TREND15'
87-0222/AL 'TREND16'
87-0271/AL 'TREND21'
87-0217/AL 'TREND22'
87-0263/AL 'TREND23'
87-0332/AL 'TREND24'