David is a free-lance reporter, but seems to have some pretty solid contacts and overall does a pretty good job for such a "young" guy in the business IMO.
His trip reports and other writings can be viewed here if you are interested SC...
After re-reading his other posts on the CG on the Wired site, I'd have to say he seems to have it in for us. His post on the CG and Arctic ops left me with an icky feeling...he sounded too full of liberal whine about how unprepared we are.
I don't think he has it in for the CG, or for that matter anyone else other than a good story. If that were the case, his "insider" USCG sources wouldn't be speaking with him.
For how we have let our Arctic capablities diminish since the end of the Cold War, there's plenty of blame to go around IMO: USCG, USN and NSF were all parties there. The good thing is that the leadership recognizes this and is at least now taking steps to overcome it - the CG's seasonal Arctic Ops this past summer are a good example:
Ironically, the Russians probably did us all the biggest favor by giving us all the wake-up call we needed by planting that flag on the seabed of the north pole.
We were offered the NSF mission to the South Pole back a few years ago, but I'm not sure the CG "wanted Aviation to grow anymore" as one story told. We also had the Hurricane Hunter Mission offered to us, but unlike the USAFR getting new hardware with the deal, we were just offered the 60s WX birds.
The Icebreaker mission seemed about to die when the big melt popped up. Interesting to see what will happen next.
Yeah, you might or might not know this, but they, in their indefinate wisdom, disestablished ATC Mobile POPDIV about 2-3 yrs ago.
HEALY tends to get civilian contracted helos now And for this years arctic ops w/ the POLAR SEA, they had to embark a helo from AIRSTA Kodiak...taking the bird and the aircrew out of the District's hide.
Too bad about the CG not picking up the airlift part of Operation DEEP FREEZE when the Navy was getting away from it. SF has had the opportunity to go to NZ before and it sure would have been GREAT duty for the C130 crews to stage that mission out of Wellington.
