The 181st Airlift Squadron is a unit of the 136th Airlift Wing of the Texas Air National Guard stationed at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas. The 181st is equipped with the Lockheed C-130J Hercules. The squadron was allotted to the United States National Guard as the 181st Fighter Squadron and was activated in 1947. It served in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as a fighter squadron until the early 1960s, when it assumed an air refueling mission, which continued until 1978, and has been an airlift unit since then.