The US Navy lost $136 million worth of jets in an air show crash. Why risk it?

By Brad Lendon, CNN

(CNN) — The crash of two US Navy jets at an Idaho air show last weekend is raising questions about why the Pentagon risks multimillion-dollar warplanes – and their crews – for entertainment.

“Those calls are almost always part of the noise surrounding an accident,” said John Venable, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a former US Air Force fighter pilot.

Sunday’s accident during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show at Mountain Home Air Force Base involved two Navy EA-18 Growlers, an electronic warfare aircraft based on the F/A-18 fighter jet platform.

The jets were assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 129 from Whidbey Island, Washington, and crewed by members of the Growler Airshow Team, according to a Navy statement.

After the two jets collided mid-air, the four air crew ejected successfully, with only one requiring hospital treatment for non-life threatening injuries, the statement said.

Growlers cost around $68 million apiece, according to a 2021 Navy fact sheet, but replacement costs would be much higher. Production of the EA-18 jets has ended, although Boeing still has F/A-18s under construction.

Operating costs for jets in the F/A-18 family run about $20,000 an hour, according to a 2022 Boeing press release.

So why burn through that amount of money while risking multimillion-dollar hardware and the lives of skilled crew simply to delight the crowds?

Feats of daring

The Growler Airshow Team is just a small part of the US military’s lineup of demonstration teams, who perform daring maneuvers at air shows year-round.

The most well-known are the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds, which have headlined dozens of events each year for decades flying with their distinctive liveries.

Annual budgets for each team are not publicly disclosed, and the Pentagon did not provide figures after several CNN requests.

But, according to a 2012 cost-benefit analysis by three Navy officers attending the service’s post-graduate school in California, the Blue Angels budget was about $98.6 million. That amount covered personnel, travel expenses, aircraft and equipment maintenance, operations and support costs.

Congress in 2024 required the Pentagon to perform a new cost-benefit study, but to date the military has not released any public figures.

The 2012 paper found an extremely lopsided cost-benefit balance from the Navy’s Blue Angels team.

For more than $98 million spent on the Blue Angels in a year, the Navy came away with less than $1 million in recruiting benefits, a negative 99% return on investment, the officers concluded.

If “goodwill” – things like the economic benefit of air show spending to nearby communities – the cost-benefit ratio narrows considerably, but still yielded a negative 41% return on investment, the study found.

“The costs outweigh the benefits,” the study said.

The tens of millions spent by the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are only part of the Pentagon’s community outreach though.

Venable said the two teams combined can only do around 70 of the 325 to 350 air shows put on in North America every year.

That’s where demonstration units like the Growler team come in.

“Both the Air Force and the Navy really value smaller venues that can’t get a major jet team, which is why teams like the EA-18G Growler Demonstration Team exist,” Venable said.

“The services have created small demonstration teams that, when requested, can serve those communities” that otherwise wouldn’t get to see military flying, he added.

Though the Thunderbirds were on the program for the Mountain Home show, the military will sometimes add smaller demonstration teams like Growlers, if the schedule allows, Venable said.

Uniting communities

No matter if it’s the full-time demonstration teams or smaller teams like the Growlers, air show flying involves risk. The aircraft fly close together – formation flying – and close to the ground while traveling at hundreds of miles an hour.

Deadly accidents have occurred, including the infamous 1982 “Diamond Crash” in Arizona, when four Thunderbirds pilots were killed during a practice flight while rehearsing for their upcoming show season.

In 1994, a B-52 bomber crashed during a practice flight for an air show in Washington state. An investigation concluded the pilot tried unsafe maneuvers not suitable for an eight-engine bomber.

More recently an Air Force major was killed during a practice session in 2018, and in 2016, a Blue Angels pilot was killed in a crash before a show in Tennessee.

Despite the dangers and the numbers shown in the 2012 study, Venable said the military sees the demonstrations as worth the risk.

“Most (people) can’t see or heavily discount the public affairs and recruiting benefits, but both are sizable,” Venable said.

Air shows can draw tens or even hundreds of thousands of spectators on a weekend. That can provide “connective tissue” between the community and the services, and an appreciation of the work military members do, he said.

“The real purpose of a military air show is to give people a sense of the precision and professionalism of the military to people who wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to see it and, in a special few, spark the urge to serve,” Venable said.

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