The 36th Wing provides day-to-day mission support to more than 9,000 military, civilian, dependent and retired personnel and 15 associate units on the base.

The 36th Wing has three major missions: operate Andersen Air Force Base via its subordinate 36th Mission Support and 36th Medical Groups; Provide power projection through an attached, rotational bomber force via its subordinate 36th Operations and 36th Maintenance Groups; and provide rapid air base opening and initial air base operation ability via its subordinate 36th Contingency Response Group.

The squadron was assigned to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base West Germany on 13 August 1948, being the first USAFE unit to be jet-equipped with the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star.

In May 1949, the wing formed the Skyblazers [ja] aerial demonstration team, which it controlled until August 1952, and again from October 1956 to January 1962 when it was disbanded.

In addition to its primary installation at Fürstenfeldbruck, the wing controlled Oberpfaffenhofen AB, West Germany, December 1949 – February 1950.

The 36th FBW remained at Fürstenfeldbruck until 1952 when it was reassigned to the new Bitburg Air Base, in the Eifel mountains west of the Rhine River.

The Soviet Union's new generation of MiG and Sukhoi fighters made NATO military planners anxious.

The twin-engined MiG-25 reached speeds of over 3,000 km/h even at high altitude (over 70,000 feet) and it could be armed with radar-guided AA-6 Acrid air-to-air missiles.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the 36th conducted routine training missions however the outbreak of the 1990–91 Gulf War put the F-15s of Bitburg into the heart of the conflict.

The celebration was brief, however, as the 36th deployed back to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey to support Operation Provide Comfort.

In July 1993, HQ USAFE announced the closure of Bitburg Air Base and the pending inactivation of the 36th Fighter Wing.

In September 1996, the wing provided around-the-clock forward-deployment support to Air Combat Command Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses during their Operation Desert Strike missions over Iraq, and began hosting more than 6,600 Kurdish evacuees during the 8-month humanitarian assistance mission, Joint Task Force Pacific Haven.

The change in the wing's official designation was meant to better align Andersen with its mission statement: "To provide a U.S.-based lethal warfighting platform for the employment, deployment, reception, and throughput of air and space forces in the Asia-Pacific region."

The first boar given this name was captured in the late 1970s from the jungle near the munitions flight storage area, with the intention of slaughtering the animal and cooking it on a barbecue.

"[4] This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency