Friday, February 11, 2011

Super Bowl Flyover

There’s a snit in the air today as information about the Super Bowl flyover of 4 Navy F-18 fighters become public knowledge.  There are a few troublesome facts emerging.  Apparently the Navy acknowledges a fuel cost of about $110,000 for flying the jets from Virginia to Texas and back.  The other costs being tacked on would be for maintenance and other operating expenses.

One wonders why jets from Pensacola or Corpus or even locally from nearby Naval Air Stations in the DFW area couldn’t have been used.  Maybe they didn’t have any available state of the art planes or maybe not enough available pilots, who knows.

Of course, one obvious question would be to ask why do it at all when the stadium roof was closed due to snow and icy weather.  Some defenders are already responding to that one with statements that the flyover wasn’t done for the folks in the stadium, it was done for the 100+ million TV audience.

Well, be that as it may, there are some legitimate questions that need to be answered about this decision.

Adios

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do not defend our government much these days, as I rip it for its secret organizations and other secret business and expense...mega billions.

My guess is that the flyover was part of more expensive things. Though having seen a STRIKE one unit firsthand, in various training phases, it was most expensive for those who spent more than a share of off time sleeping in the shadow of operating engines—all with live ammo...at times those activities were also questioned.

The highly trained crews and expensive flyovers conducted on Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, once an Unknown Soldier, or a brief VIP event. But, the crews trained hard; they needed the training; all of the events became very brief minutes incorporated in their training programs. One huge result of such training was to learn that the group was not nearly as tuff and intelligent as they thought they were, and some of these appearances made warriors feel more invincible.

When considering the ingredients of a warrior, practice and the study of war – skills are attained from all corners of the store.