National Security

Air Force War Planning 90210

By Mark Thompson | @MarkThompson_DC | November 15, 2010 | +

The Air Force sure knows where to plot its future. Later this week, the Air Force Association, the service’s independent lobbying arm, is conducting a so-called Global Warfare Symposium to delve into the challenges of “the nuclear enterprise, cyberspace, expeditionary forces and space.”

Better plotting Air Force war plans here, at the Beverly Hilton...

(Military types have begun referring to the nation’s nuclear forces as “the nuclear enterprise” after those embarrassing lapses involving nuclear components that led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to cashier a pair of top Air Force leaders. It’s not to be confused with the nuclear Enterprise, the world’s first atomic-powered aircraft carrier still sailing after nearly 50 years.) Keynote speakers will include Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and General Norton Schwartz, the service’s top officer.

The Air Force Association isn’t holding its warfare symposium in some drab, suburban Washington Marriott or an out-of-the-way Air Force base on the Great (but frigid) Plains of this county where our ICBMs and bombers are actually based (Wyoming or North Dakota anyone?). Instead, the Air Force brass and their boosters will be forced to fly to sunny Beverly Hills, California, to spend several days cooped up inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

...than at a cold Air Force base / Hilton, DoD photos

“Smartly situated at the intersection of world-famous Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards and a mere three blocks from Rodeo Drive, The Beverly Hilton is just minutes from Hollywood, Downtown and the beaches,” the hotel notes on its website (and you thought beaches were a Marine mission). “It’s the only way we can get people to come,” an organizer says of the posh locale.

The symposium begins Thursday morning and ends mid-day Friday in plenty of time for the evening’s Air Force Ball (“The cost for a table of ten, 10, is $3,000,” the Air Force Association notes on its registration website. “AFA will seat FOUR guests at each table. DoD guests will be seated randomly at our industry tables. Final selection, invitation and random seating process will be administered solely by the Air Force Association”…sounds like some wedding receptions I’ve known.) Following the ball, attendees have a weekend in L.A. to deepen that California tan enough to engender familial jealously over Thanksgiving.

The Beverly Hilton knows all about the challenges posed by airpower. Conrad Hilton hired the Goodyear blimp to float above the place at its 1955 opening. “The blimp attempted to sprinkle small golden starbursts onto the community below,” the hotel’s history notes. “However, the concept did not actually work – the pieces of confetti got stuck together.” The Air Force Association, assuming it has a blimp at this week’s confab, will probably avoid that problem by using GPS-guided confetti.

Related Topics: Air force, National Security

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  • michaelfury
  • conversets

    Fifty years. Has it really been that long since the first Star Trek episode?

  • grape_crush

    the Air Force Association, the service’s independent lobbying arm…Air Force brass and their boosters…”It’s the only way we can get people to come”…

    Maybe a little bit more detail as who generally would attend a soiree such as this and what is accomplished?

    “The blimp attempted to sprinkle small golden starbursts onto the community below,” the hotel’s history notes.

    Shades of WKRP in Cincinnati‘s famous (and hilarious) ‘Turkey Drop’ episode…

  • gysgt213

    “Shades of WKRP in Cincinnati’s famous (and hilarious) ‘Turkey Drop’ episode…”
    .
    Almost time to repost that youtube video. Yay!

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    The mind kinda boggles at the idea of a taxpayer funded line item in the US government budget for a large agency that says “Lobbying for more taxpayer funds.”
    .
    Leave aside that it turns out that lobbying for more taxpayer funds entails conferences at 5 star Beverly HIlls hotels. Does the Park Service have a line item like that?

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    Hmnm. Tried teh Google on the NPS question.
    .
    Got this:
    .
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-national-park-serviceinterior-scandals-retirees-tell-hill-of-illegal-lobbying-push-bush-campaign-related-travel-by-mainella-and-norton-74970192.html
    .

    In the letter, the NPS retirees said: “When Coalition members were active
    employees, we were told that lobbying the Congress about an introduced Bill by
    Executive Department career employees was a violation of law and policy.
    Indeed, the Chief of the Park Police, Teresa Chambers, was removed from her
    position after having been accused of doing precisely what this Assistant
    Director instructed the superintendents to do. Isn’t it strange that Director
    Mainella encourages superintendents to lobby on behalf of specific legislation
    yet urges them not to tell the truth to the public about the reductions in
    visitor services and cuts in NPS personnel occurring this summer in parks
    across the nation?”
    .
    The Coalition memo continues: “Even though the Assistant Director’s
    memorandum was subsequently revoked, the implications are clear. If an NPS
    employee lobbies for something that the Director and the Administration
    support, he (or) she is practicing good management. If it is something of
    which the Director does not support, that same employee is guilty of lobbying
    and potentially subject to reprisals. Is it any wonder that many senior
    active employees tell Coalition members that employee morale in the NPS is the
    lowest that they have ever seen it?”

  • 11charlie

    “However, the concept did not actually work – the pieces of confetti got stuck together.”
    .
    Sounds more like a design flaw. Insteading of dumping the confetti all at once, they should have used multiple ejector racks that would have released the individual confetti pieces separately..
    .
    It’s always the little things.

  • herby002

    Confetti MIRVs?

    (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle)

  • herby002

    “The cost for a table of ten, 10, is $3,000,” the Air Force Association notes on its registration website.

    Do they get to take the table home?

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