Dark Clouds Hang Over Air Shows After Budget Cuts

[jack973]

I am not sure if this topic should be here, but it is about the air shows and you know is a concern for everybody. read the article.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dark ... Zp8RZyM_1w

[JohnB]

For years the DoD has said that flybys and the like were part of the training budget. In other words, if a plane/pilot had to fly, it didn't cost any more for them to do a flyby or doing a cross country at an event (now this is different than the Thunderbirds).
Remember, the military doesn't pay overtime, so if a flyby is needed on a weekend, I don't see any extra cost incurred.

What has changed? And I don't mean this as a political point.

[Ken]

For years the DoD has said that flybys and the like were part of the training budget. In other words, if a plane/pilot had to fly, it didn't cost any more for them to do a flyby or doing a cross country at an event (now this is different than the Thunderbirds).
Remember, the military doesn't pay overtime, so if a flyby is needed on a weekend, I don't see any extra cost incurred.

What has changed? And I don't mean this as a political point.

You are 100% correct. I've done a number of fly-bys and air show "capability demos" in the C-130 and always came away having learned something. The time control and air-ground coordination for the flyby is very similar to what we would do for an airdrop. The ultimate rub is that the units still flying are under pressure to execute their flying hours budgets to the hour regardless. This means planes are going out and droning the airways today unnecessarily and getting close to zero training in the name of budget execution. Our flawed budgetary process, coupled with our overriding need to be politically correct simply serves to tap the nails in the coffin that much deeper.

Ken

[Forgotten Field]

Well, I don't mean to get political either. But the demographic NOT effected by airshow demise won't care a whim about what happens to them. It is purely political meant to put subtle pressure on the demographic that IS effected by airshow demise. And taking away from OUR nation's celebration of its history to make a political point, when there is no earthly good operational reason to do so, is pretty low. But it is what I expect out of our Politicians nowadays- short-sighted political melodrama to further their agenda. Whether or not they understand it, WE own that hardware (as in, WE the people), and we deserve to see it doing what WE intend to have it doing. Period.

[bdk]

Please treat this as an opportunity for civilian owned warbirds to shine. They need to be played up by airshow promoters. The few civilian jet formation acts have not been very profitable because airshows have been getting this stuff for free from the military.

Chino put out a fantastic airshow for years without the support of the military, and there were plenty of jets. Back in the '80s the crowds were huge. That vibrancy needs to return.

[k5083]

But who is responsible for this decision to cut this particular thing? Forgotten Field assumes it is our elected representatives, but I doubt that. I assume it is the Air Force and Navy. All federal agencies seem to have been given considerable discretion in where to make the cuts. Most have chosen the most publicly visible and inconvenient areas they can think of, as a way of throwing a tantrum about their reduced (or just less increased) budgets. That backfired on the FAA when they cut ATC just before the congressmen were to fly home for recess and they received a very stern, "No, we didn't mean cut that" message. Maybe we need that message sent to the armed services as well?

August

[67Cougar]

The services themselves made the decision to curtail all civilian event support activities - airshows, flybys, demo teams, Heritage Flight Program, Legacy Flight Program, flybys during military burials, etc. This was done to trim the training budget - which is where finances for these items comes from. Training budgets got slashed just as badly, it not more, than the other budget items at the Pentagon. The USAF alone lost almost a quarter million flying hours out of its training budget for this year.

Cancelling these particular parts is pretty much for show to the public. It's a drop in the bucket in the overall picture. However, imagine the PR nightmare when coverage of military teams flying at an airshow is contrasted with thousands of military and civilian employees at the Pentagon being let go. Contrasted with 17 AF squadrons being grounded for the year, some never to return. Contrasted with 4 Navy Carrier Air Wings being disbanded, and 2 more put in mothball status - and the associated carrier battle groups left tied up and non-operational.

Yes, this has hit the airshow scene hard. Personally, I am really p.o.'d about it, airshows are a big part of my life each year. However, the bigger picture is how this disaster was allowed to happen by our politicians in the first place, and how none of them seem to care the least little bit. As I posted elsewhere, this mess is the biggest hit the United States Armed Forces have ever sustained. No attack, no war, no dictator has ever caused this much loss of military capability to our armed forces.

The cuts are not just a one time deal for this year. All of this stuff isn't going to magically reappear next year. The Pentagon was already in the midst of a $485 billion budget cut over 10 years, before this happened. Now, they lose an additional $45 billion a year - for the NEXT 10 YEARS. What we've seen lost this year is not coming back unless Congress acts to reverse the sequester cuts. I am sure that all of us would think that a reversal would be a no-brainer - but just think about how inept Washington is, and the fact it couldn't avert this in the first place.

Sorry for getting on my political soapbox, Mr. Moderator. I've tried to keep my comments non-partisan ...

[k5083]

I don't think your comments are partisan, but some of them seem a bit exaggerated.

August

[67Cougar]

I wish they were exaggerated. The figures come from press releases from the heads of the USAF and USN. I know cuts to the USMC and USA are just as bad, but I haven't seen details.

Take for instance the impact on the US Navy Aviation. There are 9 active duty Carrier Air Wings. 4 of those Air Wings are going away. Each Air Wing has 4 F-18 squadrons, an EA-18 or EA-6 squadron, an E-2 squadron, and one or two H-60 squadrons. Each Air Wing is comprised of appx. 2500 sailors and airmen - almost all highly trained personnel. Those aircraft are being parked, with no plans to bring them back. Two more Air Wings are being put into minimum maintenance mode, just enough work to keep the aircraft flyable. The Navy stated that it will take a minimum of a year to bring those two Air Wings back to fully operational status (not to mention costing 3 times more money to regenerate than it would have taken to keep them fully active in the first place).

That will leave the Navy with 3 fully capable Air Wings to deploy. Normal training and regeneration rotations will mean that only two of those will be able to be deployed on carriers at a given time. If you have only 3 Air Wings, we don't need all of the carriers, and we certainly wouldn't need to build new ones anytime soon. We wouldn't need all of the ships and personnel that make up the Battle Groups around the carriers that are parked, unused, at the pier. Thousands of people let go, or idled.

I am sure you've heard the time honored saying, that when a crisis emerges, the first thing the President asks is 'Where are the carriers?' The answer he/she will receive very shortly is 'Well, Mr. President, we have one that can get there in about a month.'

The Air Wings going away are CVW-2 (USS Reagan), CVW-7 (USS Eisenhower), CVW-9 (USS Stennis), and CVW-17 (USS Vinson).

The Air Wings going into 'mothballs' are CVW-1 (USS Roosevelt) and CVW-11 (USS Nimitz).

Can you think of any other time or happening in our history that has cost us so much Naval capability?

[Ken]

But who is responsible for this decision to cut this particular thing?

August

I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some political direction given in closed door meetings, but even if commanders were left to their own devices, they are no dummies when it comes to the politics of their jobs. I have seen an AF Wing Commander purchase an airline ticket to travel to another US city because he was concerned that using a unit aircraft to take him to a mandatory meeting in that city would look poor, even though there was absolutely nothing shady about the trip. Instead the AF paid MORE (because they had to buy airline tickets, hotel because he had to stay and extra day, etc) and the kicker is that the airplane that would have flown him, flew that day anyway and droned along burning hours that "needed" to be burned anyway.

I have also seen where we have delivered an airplane for depot maintenance and volunteered to load a unit staff car in order to drive the 4 hours back to base and save the unit money. The unit, being concerned about the image of hauling a government vehicle to a govt base on a govt mission, denied the use of the car and instead sent another aircraft round trip to retrieve the crew. The delivery crew didn't have to make the drive home but, in this case, another crew on a training line stopped training activities and ran the errand instead.

There seems to be no end in sight to this bufoonery and this is only in the small sliver of gov't that I have experience in ... who knows what other nonsense is happening in all the other segments?

Ken

[k5083]

There have been far bigger cuts, as a percentage of capability. You mentioned attacks, wars and dictators, but those are actually things that help our military, in the sense of causing it to be built up in strength. What hurts the military is peace. After the revolutionary war, Congress reduced the standing army to 80 privates and no officers above the rank of captain. That and much more can be found in this 2002 Army study comparing the downsizing of 10 years ago to the downsizings after WWI, WWII, and other conflicts. It found the downsizings over time very comparable, and the alarmist rhetoric very consistent as well. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA415899.

To take the example most familiar to Wixers, after WWII, the military budget was slashed 90% within three years. What do you think all those photos we keep posting of Army and Navy planes in fields awaiting the scrapper after 1945 mean? They reflect a drastic reduction in capability far greater than today's. The same study notes that the Army's strength in personnel was slashed one-third between 1953 and 1957, 50% between 1969 and 1975 and about one-third between 1990 and 1996. Between these reductions there were buildups. It has been a cycle of boom and bust. We have had a big buildup since 2002, with current military spending in inflation-adjusted dollars being at its highest since at least the Korean War (don't know if the graph below will display, but:)



So yes, there have been bigger cuts than today's -- much bigger. And through it all, we still had participation in airshows and similar public events. I am not interested in debating how much the cuts impact operational capability and whether that capability is really needed; that really would start to get political. I'm just supplying some historical context to cool down the exaggerated rhetoric about how unprecedented this all is.

August

[67Cougar]

You are welcome to your opinion. As to whether my statements are exaggerated, my opinion is that they are not.

[bdk]

If anything the politicians are exaggerating the effect of these "cuts." We are still spending more this year than we did last year, right? Everyone wants to make cuts at everyone else's expense, and everyone wants to tax the "other guy."

Will anyone in D.C. ever be honest about any of this? I doubt it because this is all about power and control over money.

If our politicians were honest about this they would demand a 10 or 15 percent spending cut all across the board.

[wendovertom]

I think the last comment by bdk is about right - a lot of this is about power and money. And making the "other guy" look like a idiot. Both parties are playing this game and it really stinks that they are so doggedly hanging on they cannot compromise a bit and come up with a workable plan. I wonder if the 13 colonies felt like this before the continental congress came up with the "great compromise".

I also agree that there are a few, precious few, shows that can get away with no jets at thier event. Chino, Reading, Midland and TOM come to mind for me. Wow - only four in the whole country! Sadly, many warbirds are really expensive to bring much further than say 800nm to a show with a smaller budget and crowd. The aforementioned shows can do it because they are well established and/or have huge population centers to pull from. Civilian jet teams are awesome - I hosted HMJT (now Black Diamonds) a few years ago, but if you are not in a position to cover the fees and costs of a team like 'The Patriots' (depending on distance to show it can be $25K+) you are not going to see a jet. The USN and USAF single jet demos really filled that niche. The air show industry needs to evolve, but it is going to see a lot of shows just go away. Business principles show if you cannot satisfy the sponsor (i.e. get a big crowd), you are not going to get the money to help put the show on.

My .02

Tom P.

[Rob W]

Maybe a little "thinning of the herd" going on right now in the "airshow industry?" Perhaps that's not such a bad thing.