By extending VTANG's lease at the airport the Burlington mayor and 8 of the city councilors gave a stamp of approval to the F-35 abuse.

Burlington had a solid chance to put the brakes on the F-35 terror in a city.

The city council had the power to vote down the 25-year extension of the lease requested by the Vermont Air National Guard (VTANG) for its 281-acre base at the city-owned airport. By doing so, the city council could not only have prevented $51 million of federal funds from going to Guard Commanders for greenwashing projects. It would have effectively initiated what is long overdue: putting the brakes on F-35 training flights at BTV.

The mayor and city council could no longer claim to be powerless. They never were powerless. Under FAA regulations and grant assurances, the city has long had authority to put a stop to the F-35 training at the city-owned airport: See, for example, “City Council: Adopt this ordinance to set a uniform noise standard for all aircraft using BTV.” But with Guard commanders requesting an extension until 2073 nobody could deny that the city had a powerful card to play.

In addition to the power to adopt an ordinance that would be fatal for continued F-35 training at BTV, the city continues to have free reign to demand compliance with the Guard’s own military discipline. This Guard discipline effectively prohibits 115-decibel F-35 training in any densely populated area.

Though points about military discipline were made at the public forum at the October 23 city council meeting (4:32:20), neither the Adjutant General nor the Wing Commander responded. VTANG has never explained how F-35 training in a city complies with the military discipline these commanders have a duty to enforce.

Military Discipline

Military discipline prohibits indiscriminate assaults on civilians. Blasting 6,663 civilians whose homes are within 500 yards of the sides of the runway in South Burlington or within 2 miles of the ends of the runway in Burlington, Winooski, and Williston with the 115-decibel F-35 noise indiscriminately assaults civilians. Including children. See especially the remarks at the October 23 council meeting by Winooski City Councilor Aurora Hurd at 4:33:40.

Military discipline prohibits intermingling dangerous military operations, like F-35 training, with populated areas. It’s impossible for F-35s to train from BTV airport amidst densely populated cities without repeatedly targeting thousands of civilians with its injurious noise, in violation of distinction.

Military discipline prohibits using a weapon in a manner for which it was not designed that causes unnecessary suffering. The F-35 was designed for supersonic flight, not city life. Now using the 115-decibel F-35 for routine training thousands of times a year in a city location causes unnecessary suffering as its foreseeable result.

Military discipline requires a military necessity before any military operation may be launched. But no one has identified any necessity for conducting F-35 training from a runway in a city full of children. The city location is merely a matter of convenience for military recruiters and Guard members; not a military necessity.

Military discipline also requires commanders to refuse to conduct any military operation that causes harm to civilians or civilian property disproportionate to the military advantage from the operation. But there is no military advantage to conducting the F-35 training in a city compared to conducting the same training remote from populated areas. Much less, an advantage toward quickly winning a war.

Military discipline also requires feasible precautions to be taken before initiating the military operation. Feasible precautions to protect civilians. Here, the noise-insulation promised to dampen the noise in thousands of homes in the F-35 intense noise danger zone has not even begun 4 years after the F-35s arrived. And it will take 50 years to complete.

Volume I of the US Air Force Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) admitted to disproportionate impact on low income and minority populations in Winooski and South Burlington.

Everything about the F-35 training in Vermont cities is in violation of military discipline, justice, and human rights. Everything about it is a dishonor to the political and military leaders who are responsible. Which itself is yet another violation of military discipline.

Department of Defense Directive 2311.01 requires compliance with this military discipline in all circumstances. With no exceptions. Federal law 32 USC 501 requires members of state national guard units to comply as well. The daily assault on the 2,963 families, including the 1,300 children, who live in the oval-shaped extreme F-35 noise zone violates all five of the law of war principles in Directive 2311.01. The rule of law is annihilated by the failure of commanders and the Inspector General to enforce the Directive. Impunity prevails.

Regarding children, Volume II of the 2013 US Air Force Environmental Impact Statement said that noise at even lower levels than that of the F-35 would impair reading, concentration, problem solving and memory. For children and adults, the EIS cited studies showing that repeated exposure to military aircraft noise at 114 decibels can cause permanent hearing loss. In addition to those adverse effects, more recent studies show sharply increased rates of heart disease and stroke and higher rates of dementia for people exposed to such noise.

VTANG is knowingly and deliberately inflicting pain, injury, and suffering on children and adults in densely-populated working-class sections of the Vermont cities that immediately surround the airport by taking off and landing two dozen times a day for training with the F-35.

In view of these facts, VTANG commanders have no basis for claiming that they are entitled to a reward of $51 million and a lease extension to 2073 while continuing to conduct such criminal activity. Instead DoD Directive 2311.01 requires commanders to “implement effective programs to prevent violations of the law of war.” It lists programs starting with “law of war dissemination and periodic training” and extends up to and including “instituting criminal proceedings.”

An independent and impartial investigation must be opened now, and if the facts show violations, the commanders must be subjected to due process of law, as required by DoD Directive 2311.01. Not showered with money for greenwashing.

FAA noise safety standards are blatantly violated at BTV

Since the 1970s the FAA has gradually been setting quieter and quieter standards for civilian aircraft to protect public health and safety from the increasingly well-established adverse effects of aircraft noise. Those FAA efforts were successful: the implementation of quieter and quieter civilian aircraft decreased the number of people living in extreme aircraft noise zones by well over 90%.

One exception is the Burlington airport, where the number of people exposed to extreme aircraft noise sharply increased in 2008, with the reconfiguration of the F-16’s external fuel tank to require use of its afterburner for takeoff. The number of people exposed to such noise sharply increased again with the arrival of the even louder F-35 in 2019. The F-35 without afterburner is just as loud as the F-16 with afterburner

Under long-existing FAA standards, such high-noise aircraft have long been banned everywhere in the US to protect public health and safety.

But the FAA has no authority to regulate military aircraft. The lack of any regulation at all is the reason civilians in the flight path are suffering.

Instead, the FAA provided over $50 million in grants to the Burlington-owned airport to purchase and demolish two hundred desperately needed affordable homes. The 44 acres facing the airport on which those homes stood have remained vacant ever since.

Notwithstanding the accumulation of evidence of severe harm since the arrival of the F-35 jets, this mayor and the 8 city councilors who voted to reward commanders are not persuaded that a policy change is needed now. When handed an unexpected power by VTANG, instead of using that power to require a change in VTANG mission, these city authorities obsequiously granted all that VTANG wanted by an 8-4 vote. The only thing for certain they got in return for that vote is the delivery of more pain, more injury, and more suffering to the working-class population living nearest the airport.

Greenwashing

The gross display of depraved indifference to the suffering was exceeded only by the level of hypocrisy: The expensive projects touted by VTANG have less than a minuscule effect on climate when considered alongside the massive greenhouse gas emissions of their squadron of 20 jet-fuel-guzzling F-35s that each burns 22 gallons per minute of flight. Next to F-35 training flights, the VTANG projects are inconsequential greenwashing: A sugar coating to impede and delay meaningful climate action.

The best way to enforce the city’s climate plan and protect from climate catastrophe is to stop all the F-35 training flights now.

Crash Catastrophe

In the face of numerous F-35 crashes, including the recent runaway F-35 in South Carolina, to protect city dwellers from the catastrophic crash of an F-35 in a Vermont city, an immediate end to the F-35 training flights from the runway at the city-owned airport must be accomplished now, before the crash happens.

Inequality

Not one of the wealthy neighborhoods, including Summit Street, where the mayor lives, is within the oval-shaped extreme noise danger zone centered on the runway where volume I of the US Air Force EIS says 6,663 Vermonters live. Karen Paul and Joan Shannon, the two candidates on the city council running to succeed him as mayor, both live even further outside the 115-decibel zone than the current mayor. Their votes to reward commanders demonstrates that neither of them, as mayor, will do more than express concern before continuing to extend the F-35 torment for those living within the intense noise zone.

People living in districts substantially outside that extreme noise zone are merely inconvenienced by the F-35 noise. Many can live with it. But within that narrow oval-shaped strip of land that surrounds the runway children of the 3,000 working-class families are physically hurt and subjected to lifelong impairment from the 115-decibel noise. The mayor’s proposal and council vote to extend the lease is class-and-race-hatred on steroids.

No-cost solution

Vermont cities spend tens of millions of dollars on police and fire departments to protect their citizens. But sometimes protecting citizens can be accomplished without spending any money at all: Simply by local government officials standing up to state and federal political and military officials who act in depraved indifference. As is the case here.

Economic benefits not

The 115-decibel F-35 training in a city causes considerable economic losses in addition to the pain and suffering inflicted on 1,300 children. One example: Restoration of housing on the 44 acres of land in the Chamberlin Neighborhood of South Burlington, that is now devoid of housing because of the 115-decibel F-35, is a project worth more than one hundred million dollars. Hundreds of units of affordable housing can be rebuilt on this city-owned land, unlocking massive economic benefits for the region.

The airport is required by its FAA grant assurances to sell this land for housing once the noise of the F-35 training stops. Amazingly, the FAA grant assurances do not require the city to repay the FAA any of the tens of millions of dollars the city will receive when the land is sold for housing. The FAA allows airports to keep and use that money to fund other airport noise compatibility projects. Therefore, real economic benefits to Burlington, its airport, and surrounding communities come when the F-35 departs.

Conclusion

By approving the lease extension to 2073, the council allowed the Guard to reap tenure and money rewards while continuing to abuse our children, degrade the climate, inflict gross inequality, pose a grave crash risk, and block restoration of affordable housing.

The shocking willingness of the council to accept knowing and deliberate harm to civilians, the city’s failure to use the powers it has to protect its own citizens from a military unit that stepped outside its own military discipline, the city’s eagerness to endorse transfer of federal funds to greenwash a military unit that is causing climate catastrophe, the city’s collaboration with this greenwashing—which can’t begin to cover up the massive climate destruction of the F-35s, all this demonstrates a very deep corruption in the Burlington city government.

Opportunity for new leadership

The city has no valid reason for failing to unwaveringly demand that commanders comply with their own military discipline. The city must repeatedly and persistently push the demand for compliance all the way up the chain of command. Nor does the city have any valid pretext for failing to use its FAA-provided powers to act on its own behalf to protect its citizens, just as the FAA itself does at ordinary civilian airports.

The abject failure of the present city government provides a huge opportunity for a new leadership to step forward as candidates for mayor and city council. Candidates who will campaign vigorously for justice, equality, rule of law, affordable housing, and abolishing the F-35 in a city.

Candidates who will campaign for using powers the FAA delegates to all municipal airport owners to set a noise safety standard that applies to all aircraft owners using the airport. Especially in a case, like the one at BTV, where the FAA lacks authority to regulate military aircraft—but the city has that authority, and the city must use this authority to protect its citizens.

A municipally-established noise ordinance standard at BTV would not affect any civilian aircraft; it could be written to require all aircraft owners using the airport to comply with the identical FAA aircraft noise standard that civilian aircraft already observe. Setting the noise standard for all aircraft using BTV identical to the FAA standard would require the sole abuser at BTV, the US Air Force, to replace the F-35 with a flying or a non-flying mission for the Vermont Air National Guard. A mission that is compatible with the location in a city.

Candidates who continue to foist the F-35 on Burlington, a city that voted to cancel the F-35 at town meeting, must be voted out of office. The 2018 town-meeting vote showed 55% support for such a policy of cancelation, and opposition to the F-35 has only increased since the jets arrived. Candidates who refuse to make abolition of the F-35 at BTV for the sake of the children a central part of their campaign must not be supported.

Candidates who can articulate a path to abolishing the F-35 at the city-owned airport to bring health, safety, and justice to all our citizens have a wide-open lane to victory.

Write or call your public servants and demand an immediate halt to F-35 training in cities.

Governor Phil Scott 802-828-3333 Chief of Staff <Jason.Gibbs@vermont.gov>

Submit your report & complaint to the online F-35 Report & Complaint Form: https://tinyurl.com/5d89ckj9

See all the graphs and in-your-own words statements on the F-35 Spring-Summer 2021 Report & Complaint Form (513 responses): https://tinyurl.com/3svacfvx.

See links to the graphs and in-your-own words statements on all four versions of the F-35 Report & Complaint Form since Spring 2020, with a total of 1670 responses from 658 different people plus 77 more so far on the form that remains active now.

Senator Bernie Sanders 800-339-9834 <Senator@sanders.senate.gov>

Senator Peter Welch 888-605-7270 Chief of Staff <patrick.satalin@mail.house.gov>

Rep. Becca Balint <RepBeccaBalint@mail.house.gov>

Burlington City Council <citycouncil@burlingtonvt.gov>

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger <mayor@burlingtonvt.gov>

Winooski Mayor Kristine Lott <klott@winooskivt.org>

S. Burlington City Council Chair Helen Riehle <hriehle@sburl.com>

Williston Selectboard Chair Terry Macaig <macaig@msn.com>

VT Senate President Philip Baruth <Philip.Baruth@uvm.edu>

VT House Speaker Jill Krowinski <jkrowinski@leg.state.vt.us>

Attorney General Charity Clark <Charity.Clark@vermont.gov>

States Attorney Sarah George <Sarah.fair.george@gmail.com>

Vermont’s Federal Prosecutor <usavt.contactus1@usdoj.gov>

Adjutant General Brig Gen Gregory C Knight <gregory.c.knight.mil@mail.mil>

Major J Scott Detweiler <john.s.detweiler.mil@mail.mil>

Wing Commander Col Dan Finnegan <daniel.finnegan@mail.mil>

Vermont National Guard Inspector General Lt. Col. Edward J Soychak <edward.soychak@us.af.mil>

US Air Force Inspector General Lt. Col. Pamela D. Koppelmann <pamela.d.koppelmann.mil@mail.mil>

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall <Frank.Kendall@us.af.mil>