Tag Archives: Vermont Digger

Complaint Filed Against Vermont Guard

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What’s up with basing the military’s newest and most controversial fighter jet, the F-35  under operational control by a National Guard force that is, itself,  under scrutiny for corrupt behaviors?

Vermont Digger was recently taken to the woodshed for daring to investigate the Vermont National Guard with regard to systemic issues of sexual harassment, discrimination, corruption and substance abuse; but they are a prestigious regional news source and we are just a lowly blog site with no pretensions of influence; so we have have little to fear, and, arguably, an obligation to speak truth to power.

If anyone has paid attention to our postings, they will know that a number of GMD scribes have taken issue with the F-35 siting at Burlington airport.

Our questions were mainly about the safety of the densely populated urban area left at least statistically vulnerable to a disasterous crash by a minimally tested, nuclear-equipped war plane. More subtle issues of public safety, like health impacts from audio disturbance and unknown stress for aerial wildlife also concerned us. Then there was the extremely puzzling choice of Burlington over much more suitable (and willing) locations.

It appears that nothing will stop the fledgling war-dragons from descending on Burlington Airport now.  What the Guard wants, the Guard gets, and on this there simply is no political will for pushback.

With the recent scandal investigated in a series of articles by Digger’s Jasper Craven, there is even more reason to question the wisdom of the F-35 siting.  How is it prudent to hand over control of such a sensitive weapons system to a unit that has failed so recently and so conspicuously in the areas of discipline, honor and simple common sense?

Being a civilian, the conventional wisdom is that I am too ignorant even to raise questions; and I probably haven’t gotten the technical picture even half-right, from that point of view.  But if there is even a kernel of validity in the concerns that have been raised over the past few years about the siting and the process, we civilians have a right to be very worried by disciplinary failures in the Guard.

This is a rather long-winded way to segue into a complaint filed on January 4, 2019 by South Burlington attorney James Marc Leas with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  I will allow excerpts from Mr. Leas’ press release to take it from here, and will add the full text of Mr. Leas’ press release, the full complaint and links to Jasper Craven’s articles in the comments section below.

“The heavy drinking culture and severe alcohol-impairment is inseparable from the intermingling of the military jets with a densely populated civilian neighborhood,” said Leas. “Pilots cannot be expected to blast children with thousands of F-16 afterburner takeoffs each year, impairing their learning and permanently damaging their hearing, as described by the US Air Force in its 2013 Environmental Impact Statement, without negative impact on themselves,” he said. “What was revealed by VTDigger are state agency commanders and pilots awash in alcohol and operating dangerous equipment amidst the densely populated Chamberlin School neighborhood of South Burlington. A recipe for imperiling health, safety, learning, hearing, and honor.”

…Far from putting a stop to the misuse of alcohol, VTDigger reports that under the redesign of facilities for the F-35, commanders are doubling the size of the “Afterburner Club” room for alcohol abuse. Commanders and pilots appear to understand that as they increase harm to civilians, more space for alcohol abuse is needed.

Nor is the corruption limited to Guard commanders and pilots. The abuse originated in political and military leaders who pushed for routine use of the F-16 afterburner in 2008, “just in time to vastly boost ‘baseline’ noise levels to facilitate selection of the Vermont Air Guard for the F-35 in the scoping process that began in 2009,” said Leas.

The complaint notes that the culture of falsifying records mentioned in the VTDigger series is intimately related to the F-35 basing. The fourth in the VTDigger series of articles disclosed a “longstanding policy” in which Guard commanders did “a very deliberate cooking of the books.” In the VPR interview, Jasper Craven explained to VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb, “Senior officers of the Vermont Guard are also alleged to have cooked the books around their personnel numbers ‘to project an operational readiness, a sort of strength to the National Bureau, in order show that the Guard deserves continued support and the F-35.’”

…said Leas, “None of the VTDigger articles suggested wrongdoing by the enlisted women and men of the Guard–the bad apples are all at the top of the tree: the commanders, the pilots, the congressional delegation, the Burlington mayor, and the governor himself. All the bad apples must be removed and composted. The enlisted women and men in our Vermont National Guard, and the public, deserve a leadership and a culture devoted strictly to serving the people of Vermont, free of alcohol abuse, where sexual abuse, retaliation, and falsifying records has no part, and where impairing learning of children and damaging hearing are not permitted.”

 

The F-35 has friends in high places.

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Jasper Craven  deserves kudos for his well-researched and insightful look  (Vermont Digger, April 13) into political forces driving the rather incongruous choice of Burlington Airport for the Air National Guard’s F-35 program..

With three surrounding cities opposing the F-35 plan,  a considerable grassroots opposition force, and all the issues of locating in the midst of a bustling city, one must really ask…why?

Mr. Craven’s article synthesizes the interest factors into a landscape of political blackmail, over which Governor Phil Scott bashfully presides.

Like so much that unseats environmental and ethical concerns these days, jobs are at the heart of the matter.  More precisely, it is the threat of jobs disappearing.

It’s the kind of political blackmail we’re regrettably used to from DC, but it’s pretty disheartening to the good people of Chittenden County, Vermont.  

We have only the word of interested (and therefore conflicted) parties to the siting, that failure to locate the F-35 at Burlington airport would mean an end to the Air National Guard’s Vermont mission.  If we are to believe, as we are told, that the Vermont Air National Guard is considered to be an elite within the force, this claim seems rather counter-intuitive.

To politicians who have grown accustomed to short interest cycles driven by frequent elections, it’s sufficient just to dangle the possibility of job departures in order to recruit their support for the most dubious of enterprises.   This, in a year when Vermont unemployment  stands at the remarkably low figure of 2.8%.

One has to ask whether we can ever shake this bugaboo in order to do the right thing, if we can’t do it when unemployment is so low.

Despite the fact that joblessness is the Republican cudgel, in Vermont, it holds sway over our Democratic DC delegation as surely as it does our Republican Governor.  This means that business interests, represented in this case by Ernie Pomerleau of Pomerleau Real Estate and Frank Cioffi of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, hold greater sway over politicos than do their constituents who must actually live with the product of their ambitions.  

Business interests are putting their money where their (collective) mouth is:

In recent weeks, Pomerleau has purchased, through his company, Pomerleau Real Estate, seven paid stories in the Burlington Free Press that highlight the stories of Air Guard members. An eighth so-called advertorial will be released in the near future.

Cioffi’s GBIC is also doing its part to pitch the project and dismiss  voices of opposition as little more than cranks:

GBIC has produced numerous reports promoting the F-35 in recent years. In 2012, it commissioned a study that projected no decline in home values from the F-35 basing, a claim that was challenged by real estate appraiser Steve Allen. He said the data set used was “extremely small” and therefore “statistically unreliable.” In addition, the study included home purchase data by the Federal Aviation Administration, which offered top dollar to residents.

A week before Scott’s Pentagon meeting, GBIC sent a detailed memo to Air Force Secretary Wilson providing background on the F-35 basing in Vermont. The GBIC memo appeared to downplay the state’s opposition to the planes, characterizing F-35 opponents as “a core group of perennial protesters, many of whom are longtime anti-military political activists.

“Vermonters overwhelmingly support the Air National Guard,” the report reads. 

“We are proud to have been selected for the basing of the F-35A.”

Say what?

Beyond all the legitimate issues about process and quality of life, which continue to roil  the community at large, there remains an overarching question  that has yet to be answered.  It is likely to remain unanswered for strategic reasons, but the people of Chittenden County, and indeed all of Vermont, should not be expected to accept the siting without an answer. 

That question has many parts: ie. what role will nuclear weapons play in the Vermont deployment of F-35, should it ultimately come to pass; will nuclear weapons be stored at or near Burlington airport; if so, how many and in what state of readiness; how will they be transported to and from the base;  what is the likelihood that armed nuclear weapons will fly through Vermont’s airspace on a non-emergency basis; and what provisions will be in place for dealing with an F-35 crash in Vermont, even, heaven forbid, a “dirty” accident (nuclear radiation release) in the beating heart of Chittenden County?

I would say that there is a 100% chance that we will never have answers to these questions, but will be expected to simply accept the Air National Guard’s greater wisdom on the nuclear issue.

Well, I for one, do not.