There are 5260 Military flights over the US, everyday!

I was doing some research for another thread, and I found this.

On any given day, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies in the United States. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights (Federal Express, UPS, etc.). At any given moment, roughly 5,000 planes are in the skies above the United States. In one year, controllers handle an average of 64 million takeoffs and landings.

For every one flight you see listed on an airport monitor, two you don't see show up on air traffic controllers' screens

National Air Traffic Controllers Association Website

Wow, the military has twice as many flights as there are cargo flights?

This is just over the US. Not counting overseas and ship bases flights.
Not counting chartered aircraft, and soldiers flying on commercial aircraft.
Not counting aircraft used for experimentation.

Why so many? There around 900,000 soldiers in the US. That's .009 flights per soldier, per day. (5260/900000) Source for amount of miltary

That doesn't seem like a lot.

But, do that same number crunch for civilians (28537/299,000,000) and you get
.000095 flights per civilian per day.

These numbers are disturbing to me. Why so many?
And how many of these are being kept up their for long period through refueling.
The military just ordered 176 KC767 tankers. These are huge tankers.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4f5d282403e1.jpg[/atsimg]

This research, couple with the research I did in the other thread
Currently there are 2795 UN-IDENTIFIED aircraft in flight
shows, to me at least, that there is no doubt something is going on in our skies.

I call it Chemtrailing.

[edit on 2-9-2009 by Udontknowme]

I wonder if the high fliers have ids that we can request.
I mean they are plenty obvious leaving a trail.
I saw one the other day.
With a GPS cell phone if I could call traffic control and ask who
was flying over my neighborhood would be cool.
Im sure the black triangle has some phony military number.
Well the last trail maker I saw was black in front and no sparks
showing as it went into a big cloud.
I didn't wait for its reappearance.
It would be interesting if it went into hover.
That seems to be a problem for a craft with instantaneous speed.
The control to stop it seems critical.

The military has not ordered 176 tankers. The KC-X deal keeps getting delayed because "Boohooing" cried when the A330 based tanker was chosen instead - so the entire deal has to be redone. They need them to replace the 40 year old KC-135 aircraft which are in dire need of replacement - i.e. there is a reason why no airlines fly the similar 707 anymore.

[edit on 2/9/2009 by C0bzz]

reply to post by C0bzz


I should have said, the military wants 176 tankers

He estimates savings of about $16.6 billion just for the first 179 tankers, according to a presentation of his study.
...
The Air Force was forced to scrap a previous $23.5 billion sole-source deal with Boeing to lease and buy 100 tankers after a procurement scandal that sent a top Boeing executive and former senior Air Force acquisition official to prison.

Some of those military flights, at least on an Army post, may be very short distance. A total number of military flights doesn't tell you much. It can range from 2 pilots on a helicopter gunship for 10 minutes, to 120 paratroopers in a C-141 for hours.

Training the troops in airmobile operations, they don't need a lot of practice on riding in the helicopter, the training is getting on and off safely and in a tactical enviroment. A 10 minute flight gives the Infanrtymen as much training as an hour flight. Also in a total number of flights counted are post-maintenance check flights, flights to and from refueling points, etc.

Actually i would expect more. If you think about all the logistics flights, training flights, proficiency flights, test flights, maintenance, and regular mission flights, i would expect more.

Chemtrailers attempt to talk about military aviation with the ensuing hilarity of misinformation.

Comparing # of military flights to the number of cargo airline flights? That is the biggest apples/oranges comparison I have ever seen. Last I checked, Fed Ex and UPS do not do initial pilot training, do air refueling, fly fighter aircraft, put on combat exercises, fly helicopters, or strategic bombers either.

Just more of the same grasping at anything, hoping desperately to find something to prove their conspiracy/hoax. Sort of like a blind man throwing darts, just hoping to get a hit somewhere.

I know the chemmies find air refueling of aircraft to somehow be suspicious, even though it has been going on since the 1950s. KC-135 and KC-10 aircraft refuel not just USAF aircraft, but also USN, USMC, and aircraft from other NATO countries too.

And the newest KC-135 is 44 years old, and others are probably 50 years old. Its much more expensive to maintain and fly a KC-135 than it would be a newer aircraft. The current tankers are being worked hard, and running out of life.