Jacksonville air base hosts military expo

Public event back after 4-year hiatus

People watch a T-6 Texan airplane in flight Saturday during the Arkansas Military Expo at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/galleries.
People watch a T-6 Texan airplane in flight Saturday during the Arkansas Military Expo at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/galleries.

Little Rock Air Force Base opened its gates Saturday for its first public expo in four years.

photo

Cameron Pratt, 10, (left) punches Benjamin Moore, 9, with oversized gloves Saturday in the kids zone of the Arkansas Military Expo at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville.

Aircraft traced the sky with vapor trails and dipped in and out of the clouds as onlookers ooh'd and ahh'd under the visceral rumble of military engines.

It was the return of the Arkansas Military Expo to the base in Jacksonville after federal sequestration budget cuts in 2013 scrapped air shows across the nation. In the four years of the event's absence, base commanders were feeling the loss of a critical public relations element.

"One of the easiest things you can do is cut air shows and cut conferences. But what we realized is that we were losing recruiting and community outreach," said Col. Charles Brown, commander of the 19th Airlift Wing. "When you go back and see what that dollar is getting me, it's buying community outreach, it's getting me recruits -- it's training a new generation of airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines."

As sequestration cuts ratcheted down public outreach, recruitment numbers fell in tandem. In fiscal 2014, the Air Force thinned its ranks by nearly 7 percent to 308,000 active-duty airmen, according to Air Force data. Now, the force is working to rebuild to 317,000, and in that effort, Brown said, the air show "is worth every penny that we're spending."

"We're looking for that active-duty capacity to come back, so this is a great opportunity to look for young people in the community," he said.

On Saturday, an estimated 30,000 guests wandered the tarmac, inspecting the cockpits of Black Hawk helicopters and vintage warplanes and crawling through the bowels of several colossal transport planes. By midafternoon, airmen were assembling an MQ-9 drone aircraft in front of a gathering crowd.

To the west stood the air base's fleet of four-engine C-130s -- one of the military's most versatile and reliable transportation aircraft. Little Rock's base is the largest C-130 wing in the world, Brown said, and is the C-130's largest training facility.

In the crowd was Airman 1st Class Jordan Pinson, 25, of Texas, who could be found appreciating the innards of the C-17 cargo plane -- "the newest, nicest airlift in the Air Force," he said. Pinson is a student of the C-130 aircraft and has spent the past six months in training at Little Rock Air Force Base.

He's been a member of the Air Force for a year and a half and is proof of the air shows' effectiveness as a recruiting tool.

"I went to the Oshkosh air show when I was younger -- my first Oshkosh air show," he recalled, speaking of Wisconsin's EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, one of the largest air shows in the world. "They had one of these [planes] opened up, and we'd walk around in it."

"I kind of had the bug from then," he said.

Also on the tarmac was a C-130 variation, the LC-130, covered in conspicuous orange paint. Arriving from upstate New York, the plane and its five- or six-man crew were in town for inspections -- a momentary break from regular trips to the north and south poles.

As described by Master Sgt. Dylan Hassis, who works as the aircraft's loadmaster, the aircraft often serves as a bus for researchers of the National Science Foundation going to and fro on Antarctic ice cap missions.

But this year's air show was missing one crowd favorite. Grounded by the sequestration cuts in 2013 and again after a fatal crash earlier this year, neither the Navy's Blue Angels nor the Air Force Thunderbirds made a roaring entrance into Arkansas skies.

During the base's previous air show in 2012, in which the fighter jets were the main act, the event drew 100,000 folks in two days. And in Brown's terms, "the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are the No. 1 recruiting tools."

The popular flight teams are expected return for the base's next expo in 2018, officials said.

Metro on 09/18/2016

Upcoming Events