As has become something of a tradition, an F-16 will fly over the UNC football home opener vs. Georgia Tech on Saturday. I hate to sound so fuddy-duddy, but:
- Do we really need to reinforce the link between a sp0rting event and militarism; and
- How much does it cost, in terms both of money and of natural resources, to fly a supersonic military plane over the campus, both several times as practice today and then during the real thing on Saturday?
4 Comments
1. Link? They’re practically the same thing.
2. Probably a negligible marginal cost. They were probably going to be flying that day anyhow as part of training.
The University of Arizona and its surrounding neighborhoods are on the Davis Monthan AFB flight path. A-10s would fly training sorties daily (heading out to the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range, no really), and other aircraft — F-16s, C-130s, and C-5s mostly — would go by pretty regularly, too, doing various things. You’d have some visitor at the brownbag trying to make a subtle point about the vagaries of cultural meaning or the interpretation of a multinomial logit and then she’d be drowned out by the sound of giant turbofan engines roaring outside. During the buildup to the Iraq war the volume of flights went up substantially, especially for the F-16s. I swear the A-10 pilots looping around on approach would idly eye-up local houses, vehicles, and immigrant social science faculty (possibly that was paranoia on my part) and pretend to blow them to smithereens with that monster gatling cannon the plane carries around under its nose.
So, you know, one F-16 a year is pretty good, all things considered.
or they could have actually nailed you. a few years ago a National Guard F16 got lost on a training mission and strafed a school in south Jersey. (the school was empty and nobody was hurt).
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E3D7143CF936A35752C1A9629C8B63
I hate this connection too. I love, love, love football and feel a little dirty whenever militarism is invoked around my favorite game.