Militarizing the Sky: A Q&A with Laiken Jordahl
Militarizing the Sky: A Q&A with Laiken Jordahl
The Center for Biological Diversity’s conservation advocate talks about a military attempt to increase supersonic flights and trainings in the borderlands and how the public still has time to comment.
When thinking of the U.S. borderlands, you might first imagine walls, surveillance technology, and armed agents tasked with stopping migrants. But the region also has a long history as a testing and training ground for U.S. and foreign militaries. Now the U.S. Air Force wants to significantly expand its flights in the region, as explained here by Laiken Jordahl, the Southwest Conservation Advocate of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. As Jordahl says in this interview with The Border Chronicle’s Melissa del Bosque, the plan would cause tremendous environmental damage.
Since January 2022, the U.S. Air Force has sought to expand its flights over thousands of acres of land in the Arizona and New Mexico borderlands with more scope to do earth-shaking sonic booms with lower-elevation flights, increase its use of dangerous flares, including in areas particularly susceptible to wildfires, as well as to deploy chaff—clouds of aluminum-coated silica fibers designed to throw off radar systems.
In May, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Air Force for failing to release public records related to this proposed expansion, which would take place in areas that have already been environmentally degraded by border operations and infrastructure.
Now, however, the public has a chance to respond. In August the Department of Defense issued an environmental impact statement and is accepting comments until October 9. Jordahl tells The Border Chronicle that there has been significant opposition to the plan, including from other environmental groups like Peaceful Chiricahua Skies. But there is a need for more pressure. “There’s no excuse for sacrificing more of our public lands, our tribal communities, our national park units, and our wilderness areas to the Air Force for this,” he says.
What is the Department of Defense planning, and what does it want to do in terms of combat aircraft and training testing?
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to modify existing training areas that they call military operations areas, or MOAs. And those areas stretch across southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
They want to authorize thousands of additional low-elevation combat-training maneuvers. They want to lower the ceiling of supersonic flight training from 30,000 feet to just 5,000 feet, so [there will be] substantially louder sonic booms that will terrify communities, shock wildlife, and can actually cause structural damage to buildings and archaeological sites. And in some areas, they’re authorizing combat-training flights at just 100 feet above the ground, so a host of pretty horrific things.
And that’s actually not all. They’re also, in some areas, almost doubling the number of flares that they’re going to drop. They use flares in their dogfight training, and lower the elevation that they drop those flares, which is a significant fire risk, especially in more mountainous areas in Arizona, like the Tombstone MOA, which is where the Chiricahuas are.
Why does the Air Force say they need to do this?
In the environmental impact statement [EIS], they have to justify purpose and need, and they give you all the typical, extraordinarily vague language about combat readiness without actually explaining why they need this massive expansion. The Air Force already has huge swaths of public land to train over. They’re already training over all these areas, and they have specific bombing ranges for high-intensity combat training, where they actually use live missile fire, like if you go to the Barry Goldwater range, they’re already engaged in supersonic flights, flare drops, using chaff, and doing these crazy low-elevation maneuvers.
They already have huge swaths of Arizona desert that they’re effectively blowing up. And what came out in the hearing process is they want to move some of these flights to the other MOAs because they want to do more intense, more dangerous training at Barry Goldwater. We also don’t want to see that, because Goldwater itself is home to endangered Sonoran pronghorn.
It’s an incredible piece of Sonoran Desert habitat that should also be protected.
Folks across the country are familiar with the sound of F-16s buzzing above their heads. They already have free rein to train. There’s no excuse for sacrificing more of our public lands, our tribal communities, our national parks, and our wilderness areas to the Air Force for this.
And so the Air Force, they’re also training foreign countries, right?
Yeah. So they don’t talk about any of this in their EIS. We don’t know which pilots are training here. I do know that the last F-16 that crashed, that was training in one of these MOAs, was a Singaporean pilot. So I think, in many ways, this is just another example of the military-industrial complex. We are training pilots, at times from foreign countries, so we can sell them our military equipment, and we’re doing all of that at the expense of our public lands and tribal communities.
So that’s interesting, because in Tucson, in Arizona, there are a lot of military corporations. Do these trainings and demonstrations benefit them? A way for them to show how their products work?
In the border region these government agencies are accustomed to sacrificing the landscape with the justification of national security. In the EIS, they actually state that some of these areas have already been degraded due to border wall construction, and they say we should probably look at that in terms of cumulative impacts.
I think a lot of this just goes back to the government’s flawed impression that deserts are lifeless places, when in reality, our deserts, our Sonoran Desert sky island mountains are some of the most biodiverse, breathtaking places that are so worthy of protection. They are not throwaway zones. They are not areas where we should allow flights, military flights, just 100 feet above ground with dangerous flares and supersonic booms. These are designated wilderness areas and wildlife refuges and tribal communities.
We write a lot about border militarization at The Border Chronicle, but I never thought about it from the sky, border militarization from the air.
I think it’s all part of the same system that does not value this land.
When do they want to start this? When would they implement this if it’s approved?
This is still the draft EIS. So they will come back, after reviewing all comments, with a Record of Decision. They will choose an alternative. They will try to implement that, I believe, in 2026. That, of course, depends on any potential litigation that will seek to stop them from implementing.
In the current training and testing they’re doing now, they are using flares, right? How do these flares hurt people and hurt the environment?
The EIS seeks to completely glaze over and minimize the very real threats of these flare drops. They say there’s an extremely remote risk of fire when we have receipts of dozens of fires being caused by U.S. Air Force flares in the EIS itself. There is a letter enclosed from the San Carlos Apache Nation, and that letter says that they’ve documented 10 different fires caused by military flares just on that nation alone, and that 21,000 acres had been burned of their sovereign tribal nation. And as of 2022, when they wrote that letter, the Air Force still had not compensated them for those damages.
Flares also caused the massive Telegraph Fire in 2021, which burned almost 200,000 acres in Arizona. Those were almost certainly caused by F-16 planes strapping flares in an extremely remote area where there’s almost no other explanation for how a fire could start on a day where there was no light and no humans in that area.
Also, there is a truly horrific story about a woman in Graham County who found an unexploded flare, so a flare that didn’t go off in the air. She poked it with a knife because she didn’t know what it was, and it blew up and burned something like 49 percent of her body. She almost died. She was in the hospital for weeks. She was in a medically induced coma for a week. But imagine those unexploded flares landing on tribal nations outside an elementary school. I mean, it’s just outrageous to be using these flares anywhere other than the existing bombing ranges.
What are the flares even used for? What do they need them for?
I’ve been doing my best to learn about flight simulation, but I think they’re actually supposed to be shot out to disrupt missiles that are inbound. This is so they can confuse heat-seeking missiles by shooting up a flare and making the missile follow the flare instead of the airplane.
So they’re basically practicing?
Dogfighting, yeah, like if they were fighting other jets in the air.
So what types of species and environment could the flares, the sonic boom, all of this impact?
The analysis that the Air Force provides is absurd. They categorically exclude analyzing the impacts on most endangered species in the area. They don’t even look at impacts to any herps or amphibians, despite there being a lot of science out there that shows that lizards and reptiles and amphibians are actually quite sensitive to noise disturbances.
We’re extremely concerned about the impact of these sonic booms and lower-elevation flights on Mexican spotted owls, who in numerous studies have shown that they do respond to noise disturbances. They have far more sensitive hearing than us humans do. Studies show that they change their behavior. They become more alert, which likely indicates that they would have a harder time reproducing if there’s more noise disturbance. There’s a large swath of critical habitat for Mexican spotted owls directly under some of these military training areas.
We’re also really concerned about the Sonoran pronghorn at Organ Pipe National Monument, who are sensitive to the sound, and will interrupt foraging when there is noise present. So every overflight is going to disturb and confuse these animals. It’s going to stop them from doing whatever they’re doing, whether that’s eating or reproducing or looking for water. It’s just like with humans, if a giant sonic boom happens right over our heads, we’re going to get a little confused, and our heart rates will go up. Our physiology will change. We’ll have a stress response. That’s exactly the same thing that happens with wildlife, and some species of wildlife have a much more severe stress response than us humans do.
They also want to expand over more tribal territory. Is that correct?
It’s shocking when you look at a breakdown of land. Tribal nations are by far the single largest landowner affected by this proposal. There are 4.6 million acres of sovereign tribal nations under these MOAs. The next most prominent stakeholder is the U.S. Forest Service, which has 3.6 million acres.
Has the Air Force interacted with tribal communities to get their thoughts or their input?
The Air Force has refused to hold even a single public meeting or hearing on tribal land, so they are completely silencing the voices of these tribal communities. The Air Force says that they’ve been consulting with tribal councils, but that’s just one part of tribal consultation. They’re flying over all of these affected communities, and they’re refusing to meet face to face with the residents who are going to bear the brunt of the harm. And it’s interesting, because they said, oh, we’re having two virtual hearings so people can join those. I don’t think they’ve spent much time out on the nations, because it is rare to have an internet connection strong enough to join the Zoom call, if you have internet at all. So they have been systematically silencing the voices of tribal members, which is a huge flaw in this process.
What tribes are impacted?
This impacts a number of tribes, the San Carlos Apache, the White Mountain Apache are hit extremely hard, and the Tohono O’odham are also hit. It takes up almost the entirety of the TO Nation. But yeah, the Apache nations, when you look at the increases of flights, are actually hit the hardest in this proposal.
So there’s a public comment period right now? Are there more virtual public comment sessions? How can people express their concerns and find out more about what’s happening.
There aren’t any more presentations. The Air Force did post their 15-minute video that is publicly available. They use an AI-generated voice-over, which is so creepy and so emblematic of the process where they’re refusing to meet face to face with the public. In that video, they acknowledge a lot of these impacts but then just glaze over them. So people can watch that. People can comment through their comment portal. You know, we’re working with a large coalition of groups to oppose this through formal, written comments as well, but we encourage everyone to voice their opposition to the proposal and tell the Air Force how this will affect them personally.
What’s the end date for public comment.
It’s October 9, so there’s some time.
.
There was just this week a meeting/hearing in Silver City, NM, attended by upwards of 200 people, unanimously showing opposition to and speaking out against projected training flights over the Gila Wilderness. Even the Grant County Commission--which includes Republican members--passed a resolution against it.
How can we simultaneously destroy the lands of Indian tribes, and all of the natural species belonging there? It's ecoterrorism.