Image by Cédric Dhaenens.
Warplane practice over the civilian countryside is reckless endangerment of anyone intent on recreation, schooling, research or spiritual practice in remote areas where peaceful activities are not only a way of life, but an economic anchor. There’s little incentive to fish, hunt, birdwatch, study or pray in once pastoral wild lands where fighter jets weighing over ten tons can maneuver as close as one hundred feet from the ground, unexpectedly crack the speed of sound, or ignite a forest with 2000°F flares. Our Defense Department doesn’t think so, and is using subterfuge to get what it wants at home.
America has entered the last two months of a historically turbulent presidential election amid an eruption of global crises and new international arms races. Production of U.S. weaponry is escalating at an unprecedented rate; including development of autonomous bombers, jets, and other combat aircraft, a remake of the country’s land-based intercontinental ballistic missile system and passage of the largest U.S. defense procurement budget in history.
Leading up to an official declaration by the Air Force to “Reoptimize” for an era of “Great Power Competition”, recent years have been punctuated by our Defense Department’s appetite for major expansions of combat aircraft practice in domestic airspace. Examples include an attempt by the Air Force to seize over a million acres from the Desert National Wildlife Refuge for enlargement of its Nevada Test and Training Range (which was rejected by Congress after opposition by conservation groups, local tribes and rural communities); as well as a similarly controversial effort to more than double the proportions of Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center in Michigan, the badly contaminated and largest training facility for the National Guard.
Despite the tremendous consequences of such operations, the sometimes dubious process by which they are authorized happens largely outside public purview, at the confluence of conservation, climate action, arms reduction and the autonomy of Native and Sovereign Nations. The most recent example is a case in point. It targets the American Southwest, where the U.S. military controls more land than in any other quadrant of the country. Throughout the Southwest, despite claims at this month’s White House Summit on Environmental Justice in Action, tribal lands continue to be treated as military-adjacent operating areas with activities from chemical dumping and deadly mining of ore used in nuclear weapons, to habitual practice with combat aircraft, bombs, and other munitions more than a century after being stolen and colonized. The need for specifically military redress on this issue is compounded by the fact that the record of service in U.S. Armed Forces by members of Native Nations is five times the national average.
When the Defense Department attempts to expand operations as consequential as training with warplanes in civilian airspace through negligent opacity, the required NEPA process can provide leverage over a fulcrum of imminent arms trade, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental injustice. The Southwest case in point is precisely such a situation.
As compelled by NEPA, an Air Force Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the modification of airspace in AZ and NM was released August 9, 2024. The USAF states that the modifications address “existing and future training deficiencies” due to insufficient airspace for aircrews at Air Force and National Guard bases in Arizona. Warplane flyovers in vast civilian areas are expected to double, with lenient authorization for sonic booms, and release or incineration of chaff and flare countermeasures which risk per-/poly-fluoroalkyl (PFAs) pollution and wildfire ignition; plus combat aircraft training as low as one hundred feet from the ground. The impact statement fails to present serious analysis of risks to safety, serenity, economy, wildlife and scientific fieldwork; although the authorizations are proposed in the single region of inland North America internationally classified as a Biodiversity Hotspot.
A pair of imminent proposals to modify regional airspace and refocus Davis-Monthan Air Force Base at Tucson AZ for Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) global “Power Projection”, would move operations which push combat aircraft to their limit, from the 2.7 million acres of Barry M. Goldwater Range to rural towns, Native communities and protected lands of Arizona and New Mexico.
Being buffeted by a warplane dangerously buzzing a country road, or the shock of windows in your home being shattered by a sonic boom, are terrifying childhood memories with no recourse for many who grew up near the Goldwater Range. The range borders the Tohono O’odham Nation from within the Military Operating Area (MOA) Sells, which in turn engulfs the Nation’s tribal land. Rerouting existing training from Goldwater would make that range available for new operations the Air Force has only described as “more hazardous”.
Although the proposal to transform Davis-Monthan highlights the advantage of regional airspace, correlation between the two proposals and their pending impacts is nearly absent in public literature provided by the Air Force. The combination of these proposals would also make Tucson AZ a more prominent target for opposition to the United States’ internationally disputed arming of contentious conflicts overseas.
AFSOC has considered the transformation of Davis-Monthan to advance development of unmanned aerial vehicles and Special Operations growth, since October 2005. After that round of selection, AFSOC’s first choice for transformation was Cannon AFB NM, now embroiled in legal battles for extraordinary levels of groundwater contamination from PFAs, otherwise known as “forever chemicals”.
A Defense Department five-year vision for restructuring operations in Arizona and featuring the current plans was endorsed by Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03), and Representative Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ-06), April 6, 2023. However, the public is barely aware of the plans, and a ten week period allotted for their participation in the correlated changes to airspace is nearly over.
While the looming election transfixes America, the public has only two weeks remaining to comment on this severe expansion that would support transformation of Davis-Monthan into one of three hubs for elite air combat armament overseas, specialized in autonomous weaponry and unconventional warfare. These plans would fundamentally redefine outdoor life in enormous swaths of the Southwest.
Peaceful Chiricahua Skies, an all-volunteer community group based in Cochise County AZ and Hidalgo County NM, has responded with civic engagement in opposition to the proposed airspace changes, since they were first announced in 2022. They have rigorously documented hundreds of military combat training flights flagrantly breaking existing rules over rural communities in Arizona and New Mexico. Should the drastically more permissive rules be authorized, there is low community expectation they will not be surpassed.
“I have read the entire 800 plus pages of the DEIS and accompanying appendices. This document and the process that surrounds it is an embarrassment,” says Karen Fasimpaur, an administrative volunteer for Peaceful Chiricahua Skies, “It is dishonest, deceptive, and dismissive to the spirit of NEPA and to the residents of our country. I am frankly shocked and disappointed – I thought our government was better than this.”
Fasimpaur goes on to explain, the 6,667 public comments submitted in 2022 during scoping by the Air Force, were largely dismissed and ignored. The USAF chose not to disclose either the comments or who submitted them. Citizens spent thousands of hours making substantive and well-researched comments, few of which were addressed in the DEIS. When the DEIS was released, public hearings were announced. These were scheduled for remote, difficult to reach places. No hearings were located in tribal lands. Citizens requested both during scoping and subsequently, to have these hearings in more impacted and populated areas. Those requests were denied.
When citizens asked to have recordings of the hearings made available, the USAF declined. At one hearing, USAF staff tried to prevent citizens from recording, which is allowed under open meeting laws in both Arizona and New Mexico.
Fasimpaur continues to describe the community’s experience thus far. Comments from other government agencies the USAF purports to be consulting with, such as the US Forest Service, the National Parks Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, are not included in the DEIS. When she reached out to those agencies to ask their viewpoints on the proposal, she was quickly told to “Get a FOIA.” FOIAs were filed. After initially being told they would be able to get the information requested quickly and easily, time went by, and the stories changed. To date, the agencies involved have not disclosed the information requested.
Says Fasimpaur, “The supposed facts and research cited throughout the DEIS are an insult to the intelligence of its readers. Old and irrelevant studies are cited. Concerns are hinted at and then broadly dismissed… We have asked to have conversations with the decision makers in this process to try to work out these issues. Again, we have been denied. These are not the actions of a free and transparent government. The current situation is unsafe and could result in a serious accident, as well as devastation to this area’s unique biodiversity.”
As the hundreds of nuisance flight reports filed by citizens were receiving little or no response from the Air Force, information about USAF and ANG (National Guard) flights violating current FAA rules were requested both informally and through FOIA, by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit membership organization which protects endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, media and activism. Those requests were all denied, resulting in the Air Force being sued by the Center for Biological Diversity for failing to release public records related to the proposed airspace authorizations.
Peaceful Chiricahua Skies is now working with the Center For Biological Diversity as part of a broad coalition that opposes the modification of regional airspace. Although some other locals are unconcerned and characterize the imminent changes only as “sounds of freedom”; dozens of regional, Western and National organizations are signing related letters of opposition. Southwest cities and counties are passing vigorous resolutions against the expansion. The opposition coalition asks that the USAF and ANG investigate and analyze current violations of FAA rules and MOA boundaries, that the public comment period for this DEIS be extended, and that public hearings be held on tribal lands, in Cochise County, in Phoenix and in Tucson.
Facing the unprecedented escalation of U.S. armament for “Great Power Competition” in place of restorative investments toward international peace talks and domestic economy, there is building momentum to challenge the impunity of military-related operations and industries throughout the Southwest, from contamination of water and unlawful exploit of deadly ore used in nuclear weapons, to militarization of civilian skies by habitually pushing combat aircraft and other arms to more extreme limits.
Broad public comment on the DEIS for modification of airspace in AZ and NM would be needed to protect sweeping expanses of the American Southwest, and to reject redefinition of this region as a primary incubator of experimental arms and unconventional warfare for the global projection of power. The public can submit comments at the official website for the U.S. Air Force Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Optimization of Special Use Airspace in Arizona and New Mexico, from any state or other location, until October 9, 2024.
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