Revealed: the reason the city location was chosen for F-35 training
Nobody can any longer dispute that the F-35 training in densely populated Vermont cities hurts and injures black, brown, immigrant and white working-class families. In Volume II of its Environmental Impact Statement, the Air Force itself wrote about the injuries to civilians in Winooski, Burlington, Williston, and South Burlington that it anticipated from repeated exposure to the noise of the F-35. Since the F-35 jets arrived in September 2019, data has accumulated confirming pain, injury, distress, and suffering on a mass scale.
The Air Force said in Volume I of the EIS that the city location for F-35 training would inherently make more than 6,600 people prime targets, including 1,300 children, because they live in an oval-shaped area 5.2 miles long by 1.2 miles wide centered on the runway. The Vermont Air National Guard announced that 115-decibel F-35 jets are taking off and landing hundreds of times a month from that runway.
Airmen are well aware of how damaging such military aircraft noise can be—they wear two layers of hearing protection themselves. The Veterans Administration says “Hearing problems—including tinnitus, which is a ringing, buzzing, or other type of noise that originates in the head—are by far the most prevalent service-connected disability among American Veterans.”
Accumulating F-35 training flight hours, of course, could equally well be accomplished from a runway remote from any populated area. The use of a runway in a city location seeks to solve a training problem separate and apart from accumulating flight hours. The problem is that while US and allied forces are responsible for many of the millions of civilians killed, wounded, and tortured in wars in Korea, Vietnam, and in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, the US public and airmen themselves are increasingly aware that much of the immense toll on civilians violates human rights and the military’s own law of war regulations.
Vermont commanders and statewide political leaders appear to believe they can counter the effects of that growing awareness. Their present scheme involves compromising airmen long before overseas deployment: By conducting F-35 training in densely populated cities in Vermont where the noise inherently hurts and injures thousands of civilian families—but without visible blood and gore. The training scheme, instead, injures internal bodily organs: Hearing damage, learning impairment, degraded cognitive development; heart disease and stroke; as well as pain, distress, anxiety, and trauma. Locating F-35s where airmen would inherently blast thousands of civilian families with 115-decibel F-35 noise hundreds of times a month also serves to foster in airmen the requisite depraved indifference to the suffering of civilians so they will carry out orders to bomb populated areas when called up for the coming wars.
What cannot be erased from the consciousness of the public is the fact that few things are more shameful for a military unit than a record of targeting and assaulting peaceful families in their own homes. Whether during US wars abroad or for training here in Vermont, targeting cities, towns, or villages full of civilians is well established as a crime. Especially when commanders and politicians talk about pride, service, heroism, bravery, and self-sacrifice, the hypocrisy is extreme.
Today, Armistice Day, is the ideal time to also remember the hypocrisy and lies that got us into past and ongoing wars. To hold Vermont commanders and politicians to account for their continuing crimes against civilians. And to hold them to account for their abuse of Vermont Air National Guard members who joined with a genuine desire to serve.
Write or call your public servants:
Governor Phil Scott 802-828-3333 Chief of Staff <Jason.Gibbs@vermont.gov>
Vermont National Guard's Complaint Line: 802-660-5379 (Note: the Vermont Guard told a reporter that it received over 1400 noise complaints. But the Guard won’t release what people said).
Add your own report & complaint to the new online F-35 Fall 2021-Winter 2022 Report & Complaint Form: https://tinyurl.com/5d89ckj9
See all the graphs and in-your-own words statements on the just-completed 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.
Senator Patrick Leahy 800-642-3193 Chief of Staff <john_tracy@leahy.senate.gov>
Senator Bernie Sanders 800-339-9834 <Senator@sanders.senate.gov>
Congressman Peter Welch 888-605-7270 Chief of Staff <patrick.satalin@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 Becca Balint <bbalint@leg.state.vt.us>
VT House Speaker Jill Krowinski <jkrowinski@leg.state.vt.us>
Attorney General TJ Donavan <DonovanTJ@gmail.com>
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 David Shevchik david.w.shevchik@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>