VERONA — The federal government has placed 18 acres of central New York land into tax-exempt trust for the Oneida Indian Nation.

The transfer of land from the Air Force to the U.S. Department of Interior bypassed the lengthy, contentious battle that has engulfed the Oneida nation’s request to place more than 17,000 acres of Oneida-owned land into trust, where it would be exempt from local and state governance and taxes.

Interior officials last year recommended putting more than 13,000 acres into trust, a decision that triggered seven lawsuits still pending in federal court.

The 18 acres are part of a 513-acre parcel of land known as the U.S. Air Force Space Command Complex.

Built in the 1950s as a testing site for the now-defunct Griffiss Air Force Base, the site has been mothballed for years.

In 1999, the Air Force declared the 18-acre parcel was no longer needed.

The remaining 495 acres of the complex were declared excess in 2006. A spokeswoman at the General Services Administration, which handles the actual transfers of land from one government agency to another, said she did not know if that 495 acres would also be turned over to Interior for Oneida trust land.

The Oneida Nation issued a brief statement supporting the trust land acquisition.

“We are pleased by the Department of Interior’s action, as it is a first step toward using trust land in a way that will benefit not just the Oneida Nation but all the communities that make up Central New York,” the statement read.

Opponents of the larger trust action say they’ll fight the transfer of the Air Force land.

“This will be challenged,” said David Vickers, president of Upstate Citizens for Equality, which has filed one of the lawsuits against the larger trust request.

“This is yet another violation of New York’s sovereignty by the federal government.”