Really? As the death toll mounts, the economy withers, and bankruptcy looms, this administration decides to waste precious tax dollars to send jets on pointless and unnecessary flyovers, to the tune of $1.3 million? How many ventilators, masks, months of rent, is that?!
Why, oh why, did it have to be this particular administration this particular year? Can’t we just borrow Bush for a few months? Let Ivanka run the military for a few weeks?
How did our country become so malevolently stupid? :mad:
The pilots and crews still need to fly.
The lack of ventilators and masks isn’t because the federal government hasn’t got the money.
The two are unrelated.
As explained in other threads, military pilots are required to log flight time each month. They would be out flying whether they do a flyover or not. May as well kill two birds with one stone.
As has been stated above the pilots need the time. In my state they used the National Guard to do a 2-ship formation flight over hospitals. It’s literally on their way to the practice airspace they use. I’m surprised they haven’t used the local cargo planes. Their flight time seems to be on the low side lately so they’re about do. A 2-ship formation of C-17’s would be visually impressive especially if they split over the hospitals.
So the pilots need hours, then maybe the question is why are they out flying at all? Is it really too much to expect the military to cut back on extraneous programs like this when we’re hemorrhaging taxes? Change the policies, have them fly sims, save the fuel…
Even if the money can’t buy supplies due to shortages, it could at least be redistributed to those who need it more. $1.3 mil is like 2000 months of rent for Americans. Ground the pilots, house, feed, and employ them, but why the hell keep them flying through all this?
Exactly how many Americans have we lost to air superiority failures in the last decade? And to a lack of healthcare, even before the coronavirus? If China wanted to attack us, all they’d have to do is spread a few posts on Facebook :rolleyes:
It’s not even that I necessarily have a gripe with military expenditures in general, but really, shouldn’t they be making cuts like the rest of us? What good is combat readiness if we can’t even keep our people alive in peacetime?
In the greater scheme of things, the costs involved with fly-bys is inconsequential. True military cost savings are very complex and take years to enact. You can’t just say “All ships in the Navy need to anchor for a month to save fuel costs.” The thing with the military is that when you need them trained and proficient, you need them that way yesterday.
I’m all for a much smaller military, but not at the cost of training and readiness.
Is having demonstration flight squadrons really essential to combat readiness? If so, why don’t we have them fly by every day? Maybe we need more parades while we’re at it.
Seriously, would pausing these show squadrons for a few months, or a few years, suddenly open us up to attack? Is there some Russian-Chinese-Muslim-Communist general just waiting for this moment to strike? “Ah HA! The Americans have sealed their fate! With the Thunderbirds grounded and all the militias too busy watching Netflix, VICTORY IS OURS!”
You’re really missing the point. They need to get to a different location anyway, so why NOT do a fly by? Plenty of people enjoy seeing them - a close friend of mine takes photos of them when he can and they’re really, really good. If it has any effect, even a small one, on moral, and they need to get to a different location anyway, why not to it? Not all federal money can be put just anywhere. It seems silly and naïve to believe it can.
The pilots don’t sit around playing cards all day between airshows; they spend their time planning, practicing, reviewing, and perfecting their routines. The same is true for all the other active-duty pilots who aren’t in an air demonstration squadron.
The Blue Angels’ planes are pretty in blue and yellow, but they can reportedly be rendered combat-ready in 72 hours if a need arises.
Bottom line, you could eliminate the Blue Angels, but those planes and pilots would still be flying; you’d just be saving some money on blue and yellow paint. And you would lose a significant recruitment tool.
Yes, like it’s been said earlier, they need the flight hours to stay certified, so why not do this as a tribute to the front-line people who are ALSO keeping us safe?
If you want competent pilots then those pilots need to practice their skills on a regular basis.
The people who fly in these demonstration teams do not spend their entire careers in them, they only serve about 2-3 years on the team before rotating back out to other duties. So the skills learned aren’t just kept locked up on the team, they are disseminated back into the Navy and Air Force in other areas.
Since most of the air shows, sport games, county fairs, and other festivities that fly-bys from these teams are mostly cancelled this year, and the teams still have to get their flying in, and still need to get from point A to point B, that leaves them available for flying over large cities and so forth.
So… by doing fly-bys you not only get transport and proficiency training, you also get entertainment. But even if they weren’t doing fly-bys they would still be flying, so the same money would be spent either way.
Dude, there is no fucking way that flying straight and level at 1,500 AGL is an essential flight task for maintaining proficiency. There is no fucking way that the Blue Angels just routinely find themselves on a nationwide tour when no air shows are occurring.
If there were an actual air show, where the demonstration teams do their aerobatics, I’d say fine, those pilots are doing what they need to do.
But my recollection from talking to folks at Air Combat Command is that each proficiency flight needs to check a handful of tasks to maintain proficiency in them. I strongly suspect that these flights are just racking up flight hours with little benefit to the pilots. Is anyone really going to argue that the Thunderbirds spending one hour doing a low flight over Baltimore and DC is anywhere near as valuable as an hour on the Western Range doing all the cool shit that they weren’t allowed to do during this publicity stunt? Wait, it wasn’t even a publicity stunt, because there was nothing stunt-y about it.
If Evel Knievel just cruised up and down Main Street on his bike at a moderate speed so people could watch him, would you folks say “WeLl hE NeEdED the TraInIng foR SnAkeRiVER GorGE!!!”