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Sunday, October 3. 2010

The Sound of Freedom

This is the weekend of the Miramar Air show. All types of aircraft have been buzzing and roaring overhead, shaking the building and rattling the windows. It’s kind of unnerving because I’ll have to sit for a minute to determine if it’s the flock of CH-53 cargo helicopters flying over head in formation — or an earthquake. It could be either, but usually it’s the flock of CH-53’s. Someone at Sikorsky, don’t know who (and I don’t care), named the helicopter the “Sea Stallion.” Now, 40-plus years later, we have the “Super Stallion.” In the Marine Corps we called it the “Green Monster.” Sikorsky should have commissioned enlisted Marines to find a name for their bird.

At any rate, I was reading a whiney thing about the noise coming from MCAS Miramar and not just during the air show, which is an awesome — and free — experience. Oh the noise, it’s pollution and shakes the buildings, especially those damn helicopters! Not to mention, helicopters are unsafe for use in populated areas, like what are found in and around MCAS Miramar.
 Okay, to be honest, some of this “argument” I read a couple years ago, but just recently listened to someone complain about how the air show disrupted their business! Not to mention the whiney complaining in Letters to the Editor! I exhibited some self-control and didn’t say, “Fuck you!” Okay, I did drop an f-bomb while reading the paper.

So, this is where the argument against having a Marine Corps Air Station located at Miramar went awry and still leaves me laughing. The noise and danger everyone opposed to MCAS Miramar griped about would no longer be a problem for the residents in and around the air station should the Marines of El Toro relocate elsewhere. At first glance, that makes sense. Get rid of this airport, develop all the land into commercial and residential property and all that air station noise will go away, to be replaced by the noise and congestion of having another 50 to 100 thousand people living, working and shopping in the area.

But that was never the thrust of the opposition to the air base being changed from a Naval Air Station to a Marine Corps Air Station.

A little history here. Back in the early years of the Clinton Administration we had the inaugural installment of BRAC: the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which decided which military bases to close and where to move all the units to accommodate the closures. Miramar used to be the home to the Navy’s “Top Gun” school, immortalized in the 1986 Tom Cruise movie of the same name.

Heresy of heresies, the BRAC shipped Top Gun off to Fallon, NV, the location of an existing Naval Air Station with bombing ranges, and replaced Top Gun with the combined units from Marine Corps Air Stations El Toro and Santa Ana. And closed those two busy, busy air stations.

Interestingly enough, the Cobra gunship squadrons once located at Santa Ana relocated to Camp Pendleton. The rest of the helicopter squadrons from Santa Ana came to Miramar with the fixed wing squadrons from El Toro.

This was the BIG bugaboo about bringing the Marines to Miramar — never mind the frightening spectre of Marines coming to the nice, upscale neighborhoods surrounding Miramar: Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch and La Jolla. They’re cocky, they’re always looking to get into drunken brawls, and they have that infamous distain for authority drummed into them during boot camp. Although Marines have a reverence for the Chain of Command and military courtesy and protocol. We know how to salute!
 Granted, much of that frightening reputation is self-created and generated and that distain for authority goes only so far as lip service will carry it, but it plays well in Hollywood blockbusters and recruitment offices — off the record of course!

The helicopters were going to amp up the noise level — they have — and helicopters are notorious for crashing. That was a new one for me. Maybe it’s true. But in the 12-plus years the Marines have been at Miramar, not one has crashed and that’s a pretty good record, as far as I can tell.

Many of the accidents, if you wish to call them that, have been in the places where we are fighting our wars, geographical Hellholes known as much for their inhospitable weather and terrain as for their importance in geopolitical matters. Sand and dust are murderous on helicopter technology.

In the suburban world surrounding Air Station Miramar, not so much of a threat to helicopters.

The BIG bugaboo about moving the Marines to Miramar had nothing to do with noise and aeronautical safety, it had to do with development, both commercial and residential. See, surrounding the air station are miles and miles of undeveloped land, like a big empty scab of nature in an otherwise perfect layer of developed geologic skin. There’s billions of dollars waiting to be had in those dusty hills around Scripps Ranch, Tierrasanta, Clairemont and that jewel, Miramar.

The real reason for opposing the Marines at Miramar — and having them move to March Air Force Base instead — had to do with making Miramar San Diego’s next international airport. And there are people who still harbor that dream. Two runways, maybe three, lots of space for development to support an international airport, it was and remains every developer’s wet dream.

You think the noise from Miramar is bad now, especially this past weekend with the air show? Go spend a day down in Ocean Beach, Point Loma and the Midway area, when we have at least one plane a minute taking off from Lindberg International Airport. Of course, I can understand why the residents of those places would like to see the airport move.

So, today, when I listen to someone gripe about the noise generated by the air show, about the helicopters coming into Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, especially those giant CH-53’s, the alternatives to a military installation come into my thoughts. Make no mistake, that area would not remain undeveloped if the Marines did one day leave.

When people complain about the noise coming from the air station and I’m feeling froggy, in a fuzzy sort of way, I remind them that sometime in the next 12 months many of those men and women will be in Afghanistan and possibly in and around Iraq. And some of them might not return alive.

That noise they hear, it’s the sound of freedom. Commercial airports don’t make that sound.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Social Responsibility at 12:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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