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The first two F-35s in the Vermont Air National Guard’s new fleet of fighter jets are scheduled to arrive in Burlington by next Friday. But a coalition of protesters who have fought the basing for years continues to press the military to change its mind.
NBC5 first reported that Guard pilots expect to bring the jets to Vermont by next Friday. Their arrival follows more than a year of messaging from Guard and Pentagon officials reaffirming the F-35 mission for Vermont’s 158th Fighter Wing.
In 2018, city councils in Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski all voted for resolutions that requested the Air Force substitute a quieter plane. F-35 opponents have long voiced concerns over the safety and noise effects of the new jet.
But since those resolutions, military officials have consistently refuted that an alternative aircraft was an option. In May 2018, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told Sen. Patrick Leahy that it would be “highly likely” that the Guard would lose its flying mission if it didn’t receive F-35s.
That’s left opponents with fewer options in attempting to impact the military’s plans. With the arrival of the jets looming, they’ve organized new protests and staged a series of sit-ins at Sen. Leahy’s office, working to draw attention to his role in the basing decision. But those efforts have not led to any changes from the military so far.
On this week’s podcast, Jasper Craven discusses why last year’s vote in Burlington — and the protests since then — haven’t moved the Guard to change course.
[Podcast transcript]
This week: The first two F-35 in the Vermont Air National Guard’s new fleet of fighter jets are scheduled to arrive in Burlington by next Friday. Meanwhile, a coalition of protesters who have fought the basing for years continue to press the military to change its mind.
Roseanne Greco: The plane is an immorality in and of itself. It causes immoral consequences to human beings. We know Senator Leahy is a good moral man. And we are hoping by pointing out the immoralities of this, that will prompt him to do the right thing.
Reporter: And how long are you prepared to wait inside today?
Greco: As long as it takes.
Every day this week, retired Air Force Col. Roseanne Greco has organized sit-ins at the office of Senator Patrick Leahy, who was instrumental in making Vermont one of the first locations for the F-35 program.
Greco: So we’re prepared to wait as long as it takes for the senator to sign that demands paper.
On Monday they pressed Leahy’s Vermont Director John Tracy to have the senator sign a list of demands that would delay the arrival of the planes.
Greco: But we will sit here until he signs the declaration.
Tracy: You understand that Senator Leahy is not in the state of Vermont.
Greco: We’re in an electronic age, so I can send you this in an email or you can scan it. It’s one page, two sides.
Tracy: I will read it. I doubt the senator is going to sign it.
Greco: But we’ll stay here until he does.
Tracy: OK, we close at 5:30, so we’d appreciate it — you’ve been very respectful…
Greco: We will be respectful.
Tracy: I’d appreciate that, when it’s time to close the office, you will allow us to do that.
Greco: We will stay.
Greco and retired Lieutenant Colonel Roger Bourassa were ultimately arrested for refusing to leave the office. Greco told police that she was ready for this to happen.
Greco: When people take an act of civil disobedience, it elevates that conversation. Some people are willing enough to be put in handcuffs for something.
But the move was just the latest in a years-long local campaign against the F-35 over concerns about safety and noise. In one demonstration in 2013, activists blasted noise at the governor’s office in Montpelier to simulate the jets.
Activist: We have to bring the sound of the F-35 to our leaders here in Vermont.
Since then, opponents have held rallies and filed lawsuits against the military. But last year they made their final major push for local politicians to take action.
Jasper Craven: In March 2018, 55% of voting residents in Burlington oppose the F-35. And there had been a lot of discussion, advocacy, protest, leading up to that day — really years of work.
Jasper Craven wrote an investigative series on the F-35 called “Rough Landing” in February of last year.
Craven: When I first started researching the F-35 and the basing process in Burlington, I just found that there had been so much reporting that came before me and so much work done by activists in the state to stop this. Before the record of decision was announced in December 2013, many Chittenden County residents flooded the Air Force with comments, advocating that the planes not come. There was a lot of deep analysis by Roseanne Greco and some of her fellow activists in analyzing this very dense, hundred page Environmental Impact Statement to point out some of the serious impacts of this should it come.
But March 2018 was sort of the best chance to stop this thing.
Greco [at 2018 protest]: The facts prove that military aircraft basing decisions can be reversed…
Craven: As soon as the record of decision was handed down in 2013, pretty much every politician in the state said in a chorus together that nothing could reverse this decision.
Gov. Phil Scott: I’m all in for the F-35. I think it’s extremely beneficial for Vermont in its entirety. It’s part of our economy.
Craven: The Air Force, the Pentagon, this behemoth agency, the largest in government, had made its decision. ‘The work was commencing, and therefore, you know, a small group of angered activists could do nothing to stop it.‘
Lt. Col. Daniel Finnegan, Vermont Air National Guard: The preparation has been and continues to be very significant at all levels of Air Guard and the Air Force at large. It has been ongoing for 10 years, and we’ve taken it very seriously.
Craven: Over the years, there’s been significant activism in other communities against the basing of loud fighter jets. And much of this activism has been successful. You can find instances from Alaska to Florida in which local lawmakers pressured the Air Force successfully to either stop a basing, to create a new, perhaps more accurate or comprehensive environmental impact report, or simply reduce flight operations and cede some of the community’s demands. But after the 2018 vote, politicians pretty much stayed with this narrative that nothing could be done.
Mayor Miro Weinberger [in 2018 mayoral debate]: I believe, and I think my colleagues believe, that the Air National Guard has been an important part of the landscape here in Vermont for decades, and if they did not secure the F-35 basing, the future of the Air National Guard and its mission was very much in doubt.
Craven: When I spoke to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger shortly before the vote, I raised some of these previous instances where the basing had been altered or scrapped. And he kept the window open to action, should his constituents vote overwhelmingly against the plane in March. But after the vote came down and 55% of Burlingtonians oppose the plane, Miro then announced that in fact, he would not support the resolution and not sign off on it, which was the first instance in his mayoral tenure where he did not put his pen to paper and sign off.
After this vote in Burlington, what happened next?
Craven: Pretty quickly afterwards, two other towns chime in, to also oppose the F-35.
Tim Barritt [South Burlington City Council]: The point source of the noise is that plane. So I think it’s a very pragmatic thing to do to say, why can’t you replace the mission with another airplane? I think that’s a very simple request to make. And I think that we’ve seen other communities make the same request. And it’s been voted on in Burlington, and it passed. And that’s all I’m going to say. Because to me, it’s pretty simple.
Craven: By the end of 2018, the three cities most impacted — set to be most impacted — by the noise have pretty overwhelmingly expressed their desire that the planes never land. This work continues, but really, there’s no action by any major political player who hasn’t already flipped over to the anti F-35 stance.
And what do we know about why? Why have local officials here not had the same motivation that they’ve had in places like Alaska or Florida to really press for changes to this plan?
Craven: I think a lot of it is influenced by the economy and the Guard’s role in supporting it. Democrats and Republicans for years now have raised serious concerns about Vermont’s economy. There have been a number of high profile cases in recent years where large employers, whether it’s Keurig Green Mountain or Burton Snowboards, have either packed up or greatly reduced operations, which has cost hundreds of Vermonters their jobs.
Frank Cioffi [Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation]: It can take one minute to lose 1,000 jobs, and essentially, what the City of Winooski, and moreso the city of South Burlington, have asked for is a base closure by their resolutions.
Craven: One major economic driver in Chittenden County is the Vermont National Guard. It employs hundreds of people, some from out of state, some part time, some full time. It’s a real eclectic mix of soldiers, airmen mechanics, administrative officers, press people. And so the state’s political class really values that economic aspect of the Guard. And so, there is a belief, which some have questioned as not entirely legitimate, that should the F-35 not come, the Guard would really sort of fold in on itself, that perhaps even the air unit could shut down or reduce operations to the point where hundreds of Vermont Guard members lose their jobs.
By statute, every state must have a guard unit. And so by no means would the Guard shut down should these planes not come. But I think there’s a lot of concern that if this plane didn’t come, the unit might be hurt in some way.
Sen. Patrick Leahy [during May 2018 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing]: Madam Secretary, we are proud, as I’ve told you many times, of our Air National Guard. They do make a lot of sacrifices to serve our nation…
Craven: In 2018, after Burlington voters called for a quieter plane, Leahy made contact with Air Force officials and assured them that basically, those opposing the planes were nothing more than a group of perennial protesters.
Leahy: I’m concerned that a group has circulated some misinformation in Vermont. Let me ask a couple questions just to clarify the public record.
Craven: And during a hearing regarding the Air Force budget, Leahy brings up, sort of out of the blue, the F-35 basing in Vermont.
Leahy: And some have claimed that, well, there’s going to be another mission for the Vermont Air Guard other than F-35 basing. That’s not a fact, is it?
Wilson: No, sorry, it’s not.
And Heather Wilson, the Air Force secretary, makes quite clear that the F-35 is coming and that no alternative mission, and by that I mean as a quieter plane, is planned.
Wilson: And as Senator Udall knows all too well, there are now states that do not have flying missions. If the F-35s don’t go to Vermont, the F-16 would eventually age out, and it’s highly likely that Vermont would no longer have a flying mission for its Guard.
Craven: Senator Leahy has been involved in the F-35 basing and really the operations of the Vermont National Guard for decades ahead of the initial decision in December 2018. Leahy and his team were intimately involved in the entire process. They were discussing things as specific as the noise modeling software used to map out how loud the planes would be and where the noise would go.
Vermont Adjutant Gen. Steven Cray [in 2013]: This morning, I’m pleased to announce that the secretary and the chief of staff of the Air Force have selected Burlington as the first Air National Guard base of the F-35, congratulations!
Craven: Days before the Air Force announced their record of decision, Leahy meets personally with top Air Force officials to lobby them on Vermont being the best place, the best unit, the first unit to receive the F-35. And that work did not end after the record of decision was made.
This year, after the Air Force has kind of clarified its position, we see the opponents shift gears from noise and safety to this issue of nuclear weapons.
Ben Cohen: You know, now that it’s been revealed that the F-35 is a nuclear bomber, it requires us all to understand our country’s nuclear weapons machine…
What do you think was behind that strategy?
Craven: Sometime during the basing process, the Vermont Air National Guard created an internal memo that included a list of questions that “we hope we don’t get.” Most of those questions they did get, and quite often. Those dealt with safety concerns around the planes, and the fact that the F-35 is four times louder than the F-16s they’re replacing. But one of them is, and I quote, “where are you planning on storing the nuclear weapons that are part of the F-35 arsenal?”
Now this document does not acknowledge or say that the F-35s coming to Burlington will have nuclear weapons. There is no evidence out there that the planes, when they land here in Vermont, will be stocked with nukes. Yet it raised a lot of questions about the future mission of the F-35. And opponents of the planes really seized on that one document.
Cohen: The trillions of dollars wasted on these weapons of mass destruction could be used to improve our quality of life here at home instead of preparing to kill hundreds of thousands of people like us in other lands.
Craven: They also pointed to public documents from the Air Force and the Pentagon that show the F-35 is considered a key tool in the nuclear arsenal moving forward. It really gets into a lot of detail, but some of the planes will be equipped with a type of software that can handle nuclear weapons, while others simply will not. It’s unclear if the F-35 is coming to Vermont will eventually be upgraded to that software.
It should also be noted that should the F-35s in Vermont become nuclear-capable, there may be no public announcement, but there would likely be a separate environmental impact process ahead of a beefed up security storage depot should the weapons be housed in Vermont. They can also be housed somewhere farther away and Burlington planes could go pick them up. But opponents have seized on the far out possibility that the planes could one day be nuclear equipped. And they started a separate group that highlighted in press conferences and lobbying efforts the fact that these planes one day may have nuclear weapons.
Cohen: Maybe we can’t stop the federal government yet. But we can stop it here in Vermont. [applause]
Craven: That message didn’t really stick and saw a lot of, I think, well-earned skepticism, because there’s just no information publicly that these planes will be armed. However, the group they created had some significant figure: Ben Cohen again, a key Bernie Sanders ally and ice cream man was on this group, as was Bill McKibben, the noted environmentalist.
And it seemed like also they were arguing this broader point that, as the Air Force has stated, this is our fighter jet. You know, any unit that’s going to have a fighter jet is going to have F-35s. And that all that means is that going forward, there could be changes made to that program down the line that we don’t know about yet.
Craven: Absolutely. And part of the reason these activists are able to make these sorts of points is that the military has been incredibly withholding throughout this whole process. There are a lot of ‘unknown unknowns,’ in the parlance of Donald Rumsfeld, here. And so with that lack of information, activists have tried to fill in the narrative themselves.
One of the major concerns about the F-35 has always been noise, and how noise is going to affect the people in the surrounding areas of the airport. This May, we finally got updated data about what those noise contours are going to look like around the airport. Will you tell me a little bit about what we learned when that came down?
Craven: Yeah, noise has really undergirded almost every discussion about the F-35 since they were raised as the potential next plane for the Vermont Air National Guard. And according to environmental impact statements, the planes will be interpreted as four times as loud by the human year as the F-16s, which long sat at the Burlington International Airport. For a time, the Vermont Guard promised that F-35s would come to Vermont so that residents could hear the noise in person, that there would be some sort of formal demonstration.
Brig. Gen. Joel Clark: Yes, we definitely want to be transparent. And we feel that we should get a couple of F-35s here and show them to the community.
Craven: That never happened. However, earlier this year, shortly ahead of these new noise maps, a fleet of F-35s from Hill Air Force Base in Utah were diverted from a mission and landed in Burlington by chance.
That was the first real moment where the public heard the noise for themselves. And depending on who you ask, the planes were much louder. They were much more disturbing. You know, some folks said that they couldn’t tell the difference.
But weeks later, maybe even days later, the science came in from the noise experts which showed the sort of number of homes exposed to dangerous levels of noise were expected to triple. By 2021 or so, the number of homes around the airport will grow from around 850 or 860 to more than 2,000 homes.
This raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is how these homes will be soundproofed and otherwise insulated by the government so that residents aren’t woken up at night and suffer other associated impacts of this loud noise. It’s incredibly expensive to insulate these homes. There are also significant concerns about the value lost on these homes. And many of these homes are occupied by middle-income folks, new Americans, people who don’t necessarily have the resources to just pack up and go should this noise really have a significant detrimental impact on their quality of life.
The noise maps again sort of restarted this conversation that’s been going on now. I was told that three new groups were actually formed in opposition to the planes. These groups, I believe, are largely composed of folks who are now in this new noise zone and are expected to be dealing with these planes very shortly.
But all these things that you’ve mentioned, from this key vote in Burlington, to resolutions passed by councils in the surrounding towns, to this conversation about nuclear weapons, to these new opposition groups and the new noise maps that show a whole lot more people affected by the noise from the F-35s — none of that has changed the plans coming down from the Pentagon whatsoever.
Craven: Nope.
Where does that leave us? What happens now?
Craven: I don’t think much does happen. I mean, we recently reported that at other bases that have recently received the F-35s, afterburner use is much higher than initially predicted. For those who are not gearheads. afterburners are basically auxiliary jets that help the planes take off and give extra thrust and extra noise, a lot of extra noise. Before the F-35s came, the Air Force said that afterburners would be used about 5% of the time, but at other guard bases, it now appears that they are being used as much as 50% of the time. So that in itself has sort of re-stoked fears and frustrations about the planes. There may be another legal challenge to the environmental impact statement and maybe, maybe if that challenge is accepted, the planes will be delayed.
But as best I can tell, they will land any day now. There is a ceremony planned for October 19, a welcome ceremony for the planes, which will feature a number of elected officials who have long supported these planes. I think they will land, and I think that the Air Guard will continue their mission.
This is a true David and Goliath story. If the amount of activism and the number of ballot resolutions and the Senate resolution — I mean, if there had been as much concerted effective organizing for a local or state issue, it’s my guess that whatever they were requesting to get done would be done.
I was talking to Roseanne on Monday and trying to press her on this question of: why keep protesting? At this point, it seems so unlikely that the military is going to change course, that the Guard is going to change course, that state officials are going to change course. What are they realistically going to accomplish with the sit-ins and these protests that are still going on?…
What makes the difference now, why would it change?
Greco: Well, you know, never give up on people, right? I mean, that’s sort of jaded… If you give up hope, then you stop doing anything.
…I’m curious, as someone who’s reported on this for a while, what do you see as the reason to keep fighting on something that seems so unlikely to change?
Craven: Well, I think Vermonters are a unique breed of protester. I mean, there’s long been someone at the frickin Montpellier post office holding a sign against the wars in the Middle East, just sort of alone, solitary, sometimes with another person or two. But there seems to be this sort of spirit in the state that just protests and protests and protests, and is sort of unyielding in that work. And that’s sort of my best explanation here.
Vermonters really pride themselves on running their own communities, on having autonomy. Town Meeting Day is this really cherished tradition in which the folks living in a town get to decide its budget, get to influence the way the water pipes run and the way that the roads are paved. And so here comes this much larger project to town. And despite all of the activism, all of the signatures, all of the letters written, the comments submitted, the sit-ins, the arrests — I mean, for crying out loud, Ben Cohen took a speaker on Church Street and blared the sound of jets and got arrested — they’ve tried everything. And it hasn’t worked.
But I think that the people fighting against the planes deserve a lot of credit. They have not given up, and they have fought tooth and nail. They have adapted. They have cultivated sources inside the Pentagon. They have done everything. They have assisted with reporting in The Boston Globe, in The New York Times, here at Digger. They have done so much to try to understand why these planes are coming and really to build up a legitimate argument for why they should not be there. And I think they’ve done a good job.
I think that there are many unanswered questions as to why the planes are coming, why they weren’t instead put in some podunk town in the middle of Iowa. This is the most densely populated part of Vermont. Why is the F-35 coming here? There are questions that the delegation has never answered. And so because of that, I think there is also just sort of a deep yearning to understand what is happening and what happened.
Patrick Leahy, the senior senator, who was very involved in this whole process, often tells the story of, you know, pumping his gas and being approached by a constituent with a question about the farm bill, or an idea for a policy, and I think the protesters are really frustrated that they haven’t had that access — and that they haven’t been able to have those same sorts of conversations with the leaders dictating what is an incredibly significant policy that will have ramifications on Chittenden County for decades.
Thanks, Jasper.
Craven: Thank you.
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