FYI Air Force Museum cutbacks

[GregS]

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local-military/air-force-museum-cuts-tours-due-to-sequestration/nW9h4/

[bugs3144]

More government BS. We can spend $100 million to map the brain but have to stop white house and air force museum tours. Something smelly in Washington.

Frank

ATL

[Lodewijk]

More government BS. We can spend $100 million to map the brain but have to stop white house and air force museum tours. Something smelly in Washington.

Frank

ATL

Mapping the brain is a lot more important than a tour.

[Litvyak]

Yeah, I'm with Lodewijk there.

[GregS]

only posted to let people know that are planning a visit after May 1st

[B-17 guy]

So ******! I was planning on going down this summer! And the restoration hangar is the number 1 reason I want to go there! Damn government and the stupid cutbacks! Yet you never hear about them cutting salaries for congressmen and senators, or the obama's frequent vacations on the taxpayers dime!

Greg, thanks for the heads up, I didnt hear this, now I'll save the gas and not go.

[Bigasshammm]

I don't understand what the F a museum has to do with the federal government. Didn't WE already PAY for everything in said museum? I understand cutting air shows and such because those are active personnel using active hours and receiving pay. But what exactly does a museum have to do with any of this? Are they restricting and cutting back on all the museums in Washington as well?

Obviously this has pd me off.

Maybe it's time to get my passport card and start giving my money to the Canadian museums and air shows. They apparently still value the American dollar.

Edited April 3, 2013 by Bigasshammm

[phantom]

We do!!!! Couple nice shows with in a days drive for you in June. Hamilton being the biggest..

/ < link.

[B-17 guy]

Hamilton is expensive from what I hear and I've also heard you cant get close enough to the touch most of the aircraft, such as the lancaster.

Edited April 3, 2013 by B-17 guy

[Recon]

I am going next week to the IPMS Region 4 convention and of course spending some time at the museum. I am going on the restoration tour.

Mike

[B-17 guy]

the restoration tour makes it or breaks it for me, I'm not spending time and gas to go down there if I cant go through the restoration tour.

[fulcrum1]

It'll be rough for awhile, but my hope is some outside the box style thinking will cut through the budget tape that is affecting everyone. What I don't like seeing is airshows, museums, tours, etc getting canned. It's the taxpayer's base and equipment not to mention the amount of money that flows into the local economy through these venues. There is so much waste within the military that to cancel public events in the name of sequestration is garbage and **** poor management. We are already losing the trust of those that serve by cutting critical programs, but when you start affecting the public and losing the trust we have built up since Desert Storm we’ll lose much more in the long run.

[Old Dog]

"I don't understand what the F a museum has to do with the federal government. Didn't WE already PAY for everything in said museum? I understand cutting air shows and such because those are active personnel using active hours and receiving pay. But what exactly does a museum have to do with any of this?"

In this case the Air Force picks up the tab for the utilities at the museum and I believe provides the buses for transport to the restoration and presidential / experimental area. As it is the Friends of the Museum will be picking up one months worth of the utilities as well.

[gonzalo]

the restoration tour makes it or breaks it for me, I'm not spending time and gas to go down there if I cant go through the restoration tour.

The museum is still worth the trip

[Bigasshammm]

"I don't understand what the F a museum has to do with the federal government. Didn't WE already PAY for everything in said museum? I understand cutting air shows and such because those are active personnel using active hours and receiving pay. But what exactly does a museum have to do with any of this?"

In this case the Air Force picks up the tab for the utilities at the museum and I believe provides the buses for transport to the restoration and presidential / experimental area. As it is the Friends of the Museum will be picking up one months worth of the utilities as well.

Cutting busing and utilities is really going to save a lot of money.

What a farce.

[Les / Creative Edge Photo]

Give me a P

Give me an O

Give me an L

Give me an I

Give me a T

Give me an I

Give me a C

Give me an S

What does that spell?

POLITICS!

YEAH POLITICS!

Political and bureaucratic shills, cronies and idiots at work here folks.

[11bee]

So ******! I was planning on going down this summer! And the restoration hangar is the number 1 reason I want to go there! Damn government and the stupid cutbacks! Yet you never hear about them cutting salaries for congressmen and senators, or the obama's frequent vacations on the taxpayers dime!

Just as a heads up, the previous president (you know, the person who was actually responsible for most of our current fiscal problems) took much more vacation time than the current guy in office.

Pretty sure he set the record for time away from the White House. If you are going to take us down the political road, do at least try to keep things "fair & balanced".

If you want to get angry, save it for the military brass. They are deliberately cutting programs that will hurt the most people (airshows, museums, tuition reimbursement for troops, etc), in hope that this will result in a tidal wave of public outrage, which will in turn get their funding restored. The savings from these cuts are negligible compared to the waste associated with the big ticket programs.

Edited April 4, 2013 by 11bee

[Lt Col James Rhodes]

Cutting busing and utilities is really going to save a lot of money.

Um, the article says this action will save them $120K of the $374K mandatory cut they took under sequestration. So this action doesn't even save them half of the budget they need to reduce in order to meet their required reduction in operating budget. So it certainly seems possible to save $120K by stopping bus operations...to include paying the drivers and eliminating fuel costs...and turning off the lights/heating/cooling for a while in the outlying hangar. It's a hangar, they ain't exactly known for efficiency.

Political and bureaucratic shills, cronies and idiots at work here folks.

You seem hell bent on the theory that these reductions, to include the airshows, are all a massively orchestrated political conspiracy being orchestrated down to the lowest museum administrator. I can assure you, the US Federal Government is neither so unanimously monolithic nor cooperatively capable of pulling off such a conspiracy across all branches/departments/agencies of the government. Sadly, most of these difficult budget decisions are being left up to relatively low to mid ranking administrators to figure out how they can implement reductions to their total budget for categories A-D, when they're prohibited from touching categories B through D. They're doing the best they can, but the options they have to meet the requirement they've been given frankly suck.

I'm also somewhat bemused as to why, as a Canadian, you even care so much. But hey, heat up the sake and vent away if it makes you feel better.

[Lt Col James Rhodes]

If you want to get angry, save it for the military brass. They are deliberately cutting programs that will hurt the most people (airshows, museums, tuition reimbursement for troops, etc), in hope that this will result in a tidal wave of public outrage, which will in turn get their funding restored.

And another one...what makes you so sure that there is this great conspiracy by the military to make things painful for the public? It's simply not true. Maybe you missed the part where the Air Force recently cancelled multiple Red Flags at both Nellis and Eielson? Last time I checked, those aren't for the public, those are for combat readiness and training. Things have to get pretty rough before you start cancelling your crown jewel of an exercise. Or maybe you missed the part where multiple squadrons parked their airplanes at the start of this month, and won't be flying again until next Fiscal Year? Or where the Navy is tying some ships up to the pier and putting the keys away until October? How about the furloughing of Guard members, and the cutting of Man Days and cancelling of Guard and Reserve Drill weekends?

It ain't just your beloved airshows and tuition assistance being cut. Those were cut because they frankly have nothing to do with military readiness...unfortunately, they weren't enough. And now everybody can get ready for "Tiered Readiness," where if you aren't scheduled to deploy, you don't get to train. At all.

[Tony Stark]

Lt. Col. James Rhodes ladies and gentlemen. And remember, the 11:00 show is completely different from the 7:00 show. Enjoy the veal.

[Wayne S]

And another one...what makes you so sure that there is this great conspiracy by the military to make things painful for the public? It's simply not true. Maybe you missed the part where the Air Force recently cancelled multiple Red Flags at both Nellis and Eielson? Last time I checked, those aren't for the public, those are for combat readiness and training. Things have to get pretty rough before you start cancelling your crown jewel of an exercise. Or maybe you missed the part where multiple squadrons parked their airplanes at the start of this month, and won't be flying again until next Fiscal Year? Or where the Navy is tying some ships up to the pier and putting the keys away until October? How about the furloughing of Guard members, and the cutting of Man Days and cancelling of Guard and Reserve Drill weekends?

It ain't just your beloved airshows and tuition assistance being cut. Those were cut because they frankly have nothing to do with military readiness...unfortunately, they weren't enough. And now everybody can get ready for "Tiered Readiness," where if you aren't scheduled to deploy, you don't get to train. At all.

It is not a conspiracy, it is reality.

You write of training and a few squadrons. If a budget is cut by a percentage, then a percentage of classes and other things like squadrons etc. Would be cut or closed, correct? after all it is a percentage of a budget.

In around about way knowingly or not. What you are implying is,,, museums, airshows and the like, are not budgeted items, since there is no percentage of that budget gone, it is an entirety. If they are not Budgeted items, where does the money come from? Indulgences? they come after a budget is used. Fudging numbers of another Budget? thought the days of the 2000$ toilet seat/ Budgetary price gouging were gone?

Tiered Readiness, is something many countries have, some might call it a War budget.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Wayne S

[Lt Col James Rhodes]

@Wayne - if you're attempting to communicate, it certainly would help if you could write in complete, coherent sentences. I'm quite certain English is not your second language. I'll attempt to answer your questions, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you are trying to say.

What you are implying is,,, museums, airshows and the like, are not budgeted items, since there is no percentage of that budget gone, it is an entirety.

Actually, if you look back, you'll see that the AF Museum does indeed have a budget, and they are required to reduce their budget by $374K this year. Their budget is not gone in its entirety. That is, $374K is the dollar equivalent to the percentage of their budget which has been cut. They opted to do this by reducing a percentage of their operations, namely The Presidential and Research and Development Galleries. Eliminating the bus tour operations and the infrastructure support to that hangar will allow them to use the remainder of their budget to keep the main museum exhibits open.

Airshows do not receive their own budget. There is no line item called "airshows" in the DoD or Federal Government budget. Airshows and open houses are funded through a base's annual operating budget. The military participants must support airshows using their annual flying hour program. As such, when the flying hour program is reduced to a point where one must choose between training/readiness or airshow support, it makes logical sense to keep a squadron prepared to go and execute its primary mission, be that air defense of the CONUS, deployed ops in support of Overseas Contingency Operations, etc. The AF at large took such a huge hit to its flying hour program (in order to cut the percentage of the remaining annual budget....remember, we're already halfway through the fiscal year), it elected to stop supporting airshows using the remaining flying hours, and give what was left to those squadrons which are scheduled to deploy. Once there was no military aviation support to the airshows, many opted to cancel. For base open houses/airshow events, some wing commanders decided they would rather spend their remaining (cut by a percentage) operating budget doing things like keeping the lights on, or paying government employees/contractors who were deemed essential to operations. Saving money by not expending portions of their operating budget on airshows/open houses helps them do this...although they'll still have to make other reductions.

Tiered Readiness, is something many countries have, some might call it a War budget.

Contrary to popular belief, the US Department of Defense has NEVER maintained a "war budget." When the DoD gets its budget, it is spent in 3 major categories: acquisition, personnel, and operations & maintenance. Very little of that money is discretionary. For example, health care, veterans affairs, and acquisition couldn't be touched under the terms of sequestration. That means O&M took a big hit. O&M does not mean "war budget," it means ensuring US military forces are able to meet a certain level of readiness to execute their primary mission. The American public expects its military to be ready and able to respond...if it's not, I suspect there will be serious hell to pay the day it becomes necessary but the DoD is unable to respond. However, even when we do respond, it requires an additional budgetary insertion to pay for operations. That's ANY type of operations: humanitarian relief, disaster response, or, yes, combat operations. Congress either has to fund those or they have to scrounge the money from other budgets (read training and readiness) to pay for ongoing ops.

So while "other countries" might operate on tiered readiness, that's NOT the way the US operates. Maybe it should, but that would require changing the way the laws governing DoD operations and how the US military can be used are written. Certainly a draft, with rotational readiness of front line units, could prove a cheaper way of maintaining a ready source of military power. But as an all-volunteer, all-professional military, that's not how the US system is currently set up.

"Tiered Readiness" has had another name in the past: hollow force. Frankly, it's the road we're headed down. It certainly doesn't have to be that way. A smaller US military could work, if the scope of taskings/missions it is being asked to support were reduced commensurately. If the President would actually publish a National Security Strategy with a Guidance for Employment of the Force that summarily reduced the number of US taskings, we could probably accept a smaller US military footprint and reduced readiness. But as long as the GEF says that forces throughout the world need to "Be Prepared To" execute a huge range of missions worldwide, tiered readiness will simply mean we're SAYING the US military is capable of doing a bunch of stuff that it likely is not very well prepared to do.

[skidbuggy]

Let me see....

It's okay to cancel white house tours to school kids and close down museums while "Royalty" goes and smacks whitey with Tiger for 3 mil?

We are so doomed.

For the uneducated: Smacking whitey is another term for playing golf..... so pull your skirts down!

[Tony Stark]

And people complain about my double entendres?

Edited April 4, 2013 by Tony Stark

[wookieefood]

The real issue is that people want everything, but don't want to pay for it. Ask any tea partier, or any normal person what specific program they want the government to cut and they will all give you the same answer: _____________ and give you a blank stare while they think for a minute or two.

Most of our financial problems can be fixed by very simple solutions, but the lobbyists and corporations who control the politicians are getting insanely rich off of gridlock so that is what we have now. If we want our republic back, we have to take it back.

Edited April 4, 2013 by wookieefood