Visiting the Air National Guard
183rd Fighter Squadron, 6-12-2000
Springfield, IL.

This is our group in the Mess Hall

Our model building is complete, we watched two movies and now we are at the real thing.  It was very nice for General Rezac to allow our group to visit the 183rd Fighter Squadron in Springfield Illinois.  From left to right is Captain Neely, our tour guide, Airman Deni Mornez, Stephanie, Lorri, Tabby, Libby, Becca, Joe, Ben, Jeff, Airman 1st Class Ryan Scott, Nicholas and Paul Young.

The mess hall was the first part of our visit.  We saw a movie showing the present and future mission of the United States Air Force.  We saw the different types of aircraft and spacecraft used today and will be used tomorrow.  The movie was a very great leader to our tour of this Air National Guard Squadron. 

After the movie Captain Neely lead a question and answer period.   Eleven year old Joe asked a very good question about the use of these expensive, million dollar smart bombs.  He asked, "Is it sensible to use a one million bomb to destroy a two-hundred thousand dollar target."  I thought this was a great question and it is important to everyone to know this.  The answer was, "YES."  because that two-hundred thousand target may be a very strategic piece of equipment for the enemy.  Also, using an expensive smart weapon is an almost guaranteed hit where using the less expensive bombs may and many times do miss the target.  This target may also, if not destroyed, destroy one or more of our much more expensive pieces of equipment. 

There is one more thing about using smart weapons as opposed to using a standard bomb that was very interesting.   Using the smart bomb requires only one airplane where using the standard bombs require many more planes which means much more logistics are required to support these aircraft.  The require more fuel, more mechanics, more pilots, more mess halls, more toilets, more transport aircraft to get everything there, more, more, more.  A whole lot more of everything just for a small increase of aircraft in the field of operation.

I liked Captain Neely because he treated all of us, the kids included, like important professional people.