See "National Guard Training Flights" and "Recruiting" for budget details.

and the flying time would probably be considered training. Just a guess though.

A lot of it comes out of the Air Force's training budget - pilots are required to log a certain number of hours in the air every year, and if a flypast gives them an excuse to spend one or two up there that falls under "okay, why not?" There's a big purse for that sort of thing in the first place, as with any large organization that has a lot of skill-upkeep stuff going on, and the part of it that goes to events like that would be pretty small.

Other times the event organizers foot some or all of the bill. I'm not sure of the rules governing who pays what and when.

I have a friend that organizes a yearly airshow at one of the local airports. He told me once that they sometimes pay for military aircraft to refuel if they show up, but this really only happens in the few instances where the military unit itself can't find the money for it and that's the only way they can participate. Most of the time the military is footing the bill.

Gist of it is that it is good for recruiting, acquaints people who don't leave near AF bases with the type of planes they have, counts as training for pilots among other things. The article also talks about costs, which government form to fill out and what events qualify.

http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_761b5e22-77a5-5e5e-a2f5-3d003fc23a52.html

http://science.howstuffworks.com/military-flyover.htm

I just looked at Google Maps for Las Vegas Motor Speedway...the east end of Nellis AFB's north runway is pointed right straight at the speedway's flagstand. I knew they were close but not THAT damn close.

But yeah, if seven pilots need a couple training hours each, there's really nothing wrong with sending them up on Sunday and giving them a course that puts them over the top of a NASCAR track. It doesn't cost any more to fly over a track than it does to have them fly around a swamp somewhere, and the public seems to like it.

The primary B-2 Stealth Bomber base in the US is Whiteman AFB in Knob Noster, MO.

As an example of how far away from home they do these events, B-2's have done flyovers at the Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena as well as the 4th of July festivities in Boston.

Of course, they have also made appearances as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq, but not so much for sporting events.

If you're going to go bomb something in a B-2, you are not going to stage it in the forward area where terrorists can try to destroy it on the ground. The closest I'd want to be is Ramstein AFB, Germany...and some of the B-2 missions in the Iraq War were flown out of Missouri. Long training flights are required (they have simulators but there's also the need to get in a real plane for a certain number of hours every year.)

It's good for PR, the crews like doing it and it doesn't actually cost anything because the Air Force has to do the training anyway.

You want to get enraged about military spending? Start with us contracting out service support functions. Shrub knew he needed more infantrymen than he could get under endstrength considerations (there can only be a certain number of troops in the army, and Congress sets the number) to fight the war. He also knew if he asked for more troops he wouldn't get his war...so he did the old 'find every man who can carry a rifle and put him on the line' trick. It got a lot of our troops killed; in twenty years when we finally see the lessons of OIF, one will be "combat service support NCOs should not be retrained as infantry NCOs." But back to the real Atrocity: because our truck drivers and cooks were now on the line, KBR and DynCorp were offering $85,000 per year to go to Iraq and cook, drive or do laundry. When they were talking about Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal the RWNJs who'd never been in service and consequently knew everything about the army said it was going to destroy morale if there was the slightest suspicion of there being a gay guy in the company. Gee, it couldn't have hurt it any more than knowing the cooks in the mess hall were earning more than your colonel.

Then there's the F-35 you can't even see out of, the Littoral Combat Ship they can't make work, the Joint Tactical Radio you need a forklift to install...oh, trust me, if you made a list of the thousand worst ways the military wastes money, flying planes over sporting events would be about 985.

And FWIW, B-2's forward base out of Guam as well as Diego Garcia. If you Google Earth DG, you can see the shelters they installed for them. And the one that crashed in Feb of 2008, happened in Guam;

It is the second of a two ship sortie;

No, what REALLY pisses me off these days about the spending we do on the military is the salaries and the net worth of the CEO's of the largest defense contractors. Jay L. Johnson, a former Admiral and recently retired from General Dynamics (the 5th largest defense contractor that makes exactly ONE product that you and I can buy without a DOD purchase order - Gulfstream Jets) has a net worth of well over $150,000,000 in just GD stock alone, ALL OF IT....every single penny as a result of the largesse of the American taxpayer.
Similar numbers for the head of Lockheed Martin.

If you are the head of a company that gets more than 75% of its revenue from military contracts, it should be illegal for you to make more than the president.

I took the BART train to see a Oakland A's game. The train is on an elevated track. Looking out the window of the train, you see city block after city block of urban decay. This goes on for miles. Before the start of the game, military jets flew over the crowd.

It was America in a nutshell. Spend billions on defense toys that never or rarely get used while our cities decline.

I have attended msny nascar races over the padt 20 years and weather permitting everyone of them has had some sort of military flyover. Thr sport has always been deeply patriotic and always will be. What i get mad about is the yahoos who are either too drunk or too stupid to take off thier hats when the national anthem is played. There are many things that i do nit like about the culture that surrounds nascar but this isnt one of them.

Google RQ-1 Global Hawk. It's the size of a small airliner.

Reserve pilots need to get their flight time in to stay current, and, well, it good PR for the Air Force.

how much of their money is being stolen from them by their rulers.

So are you implying that all nascsr fans are morons? I am a motor racing fan and a democrat down to the last bone in my body. Yout generalization of all nascar fans is something i would expect from FR. Oh well i guess timrs sre really changing st DU.

A person that grosses $36K with overtime, that willingly forks over $200 to watch a three hour long left-hand turn, believes it is a sport, while his kids eat Mc Donald's because he's too broke to buy real food is a moron. If this describes you, then yes, I am calling you a moron.

If this does not describe you, you're just whining.

Would you prefer that person NOT spend the $200 at all?

Or would you prefer he spend it on an activity you approve of?

While I am by no means the worlds biggest NASCAR fan, your generalization is absurd and quite frankly, insulting. No NASCAR fan makes more than $36K?

You've been here almost a year. One would think that in that length of time, you might begin to understand just how diverse this board is, and take at least a moderate amount of effort to avoid insulting a significant portion of the membership.


BTW, I am not alerting on either of your posts, even though they both deserve it.

I live about 5-10 miles from a major NASCAR track. I hate NASCAR and would never go to a race, but I see who does go. While there might be quite a few of the cheap beer swilling teabagger types showing up, there's also a very large number of people who have money to spend. Take any major NFL stadium and multiply that crowd by a factor of 4 or 5 and you'll be in the ballpark. All of the hotels within 20-30 miles are booked solid months in advance. The closest airport and one or two farther out have their entire ramp filled to capacity with private planes with helicopters shuttling people to the track constantly. All of the nearby restaurants from McDonalds to those that charge $50 per head are full for 3 days straight. After the race ends, the interstate is gridlocked for hours. I know some very progressive people who have season passes to the track. It ain't all toothless hillbillies.

Why not at these events? We'll be paying for the fuel and such no matter where the aircraft goes.

Fans showed faux poutrage about them cancelling it here in Jax for a team that only won 2 games all year. They said it was due to the sequester. Good riddance to a waste of money sequester or not.

You let them sit around and shit starts breaking/getting crusty...


Just like a car you don't drive

It is scheduled with a normal training flight. Takes all of a few minutes then we continue our training flight. Cheap recruiting and visibility.

The AF likes to show the toys and they need to get their flight time in.

Those things are not toys. Why do you hate our glorious empire?

When they fly over they should drop a bomb. That would be real practice. And it would put the 'Shock and Awe' back where it belongs.

The Army and Air Force have cancelled the rest of this year's schedules.

The Navy's Blue Angels have cancelled the Spring calendar.

The National Guard spends $26.5 million to sponsor Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s car.

" $72 million from next year’s $608 billion defense spending bill slated for professional sports sponsorships used to help with military recruiting. The military services sponsor a wide range of professional sports, including bass fishing tournaments and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but it was the National Guard’s sponsorship of Earnhardt’s car that drew all the attention."

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/house-says-military-can-keep-nascar-sponsorships/

Your taxes subsidizing the UFC, NASCAR, and Bass Pro

They all pretend that they are all about cutting waste from the government but it is really more like they want to cut any program that helps anyone not making a million dollars or more.