By Kevin McCallum April 3, 2020 Commercial air traffic at Burlington International Airport has taken a nosedive, but across the runway, the Vermont Air National Guard continues to send its new F-35s roaring into the skies daily. The juxtaposition of the recent plunge in civilian air traffic with an increase in the number of F-35s […]
By Elizabeth Gribkoff Mar 31, 2020 PFAS contamination has been found in groundwater and surface water — including a stretch of the Winooski River — near the Vermont Air National Guard base in South Burlington. The findings come in a draft report released last week by the Guard on the extent of the contamination by […]
Below is the full pdf response to complaint regarding GBIC involvement in the 2018 Burlington ballot item on F-35 basing:
By Jasper Craven Feb 16, 2020 On Jan. 5, Col. David Shevchik Jr. took command of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing. A native Vermonter, Shevchik replaced Col. David Smith, who retired after more than 30 years in the organization. Shevchik was born in Springfield and grew up in Essex. He graduated from […]
By Sean Kennedy March 2, 2020 Members of Congress have done their utmost to ignore the mounting problems in Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II program. In the fiscal 2019 Department of Defense Operational Test and Evaluation Annual Report, released to the public Jan. 30, it was revealed that testers consider the “accuracy of the gun, as […]
By: Aidan Quigley for VTDigger, Nov. 11, 2019 South Burlington officials are worried their city might have to foot some of the bill for noise mitigation after the arrival of the F-35s, reviving a decades-long debate about airport governance. While the Federal Aviation Administration is funding 90% of the noise mitigation programs, the funding source for […]
By: Dylan Brogan for Isthmus, Nov. 7, 2019 On this October afternoon, Carmine Sargent’s living room is as bright as the autumn leaves falling in South Burlington, Vermont. Sargent introduces “the folks from Madison” to nine of her neighbors. Wisconsin Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) and Madison Ald. Rebecca Kemble are here on a fact-finding mission with […]
By: Dan Grazier for POGO, Nov. 1, 2019 Pentagon leaders are likely reveling in the news that they have negotiated an agreement with Lockheed Martin that they claim drives down the unit cost of the F-35 joint strike fighter to below $80 million in the next few years. While any reduction in costs for the most expensive […]
By: Joel Banner Baird for the Burlington Free Press, Oct. 27, 2019 SOUTH BURLINGTON – Ear-plugs? Heavier curtains in the living room? How about a moving van? No easy fix for noise accompanied the arrival last month of Vermont Air National Guard’s first two F-35 fighter jets. Nor did a consensus over the planes’ roar. Still, efforts are underway […]
By: Aidan Quigley for VTDigger, Oct. 1, 2019 WINOOSKI — The F-35 jets housed at the Vermont National Guard took off and landed Tuesday, in a first training run. One jet took off around 9 a.m. and landed around 10:15 a.m. during an overcast day in the Burlington area, and a second flight took off […]