http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypgPtDnAjT8&feature=youtu.be
War planes, bombers and jets soared, ducked and maneuvered above crowds of thousands at the Holloman Air Force Base open house on Saturday.
For many nearby businesses and residents in Alamogordo the scale and distinction of the event foreshadows cities own strength and resilience.
Despite a day of deft aerial displays Wing Commander Colonel Andrew Croft says the instability of military spending in the last few years all but grounded their warplanes.
“We still stopped flying airplanes for 3 or 4 months, civilian employees we laid off for a few days last year. There is a lot of second and third order effects of those budgetary cuts” he says.
In fact it is the first time in more than two years that Holloman Air Force base has put on an air show for the public.
"We canceled all of them last year in an attempt to save- as much money as possible” Croft says.
Alamogordo resident Al Pasquarell was sitting in the shade underneath the wing of a stealth fighter with his family. He went to the air show a few years ago and says the affects of the cuts on this years open house were obvious.
‘It was ten times larger than what it is now. There was a lot more aircraft"
he says.
Before Pasquarell retired, he was working for a construction company in Alamogordo. He says even though he wasn’t employed by the base most people that work around Alamogordo have job because of it.
“I laid out all this concrete out here”
According the latest economic impact statement from the office of military public affairs, the base feeds as much as 1.3 million dollars into the Alamogordo every single day.
Alamogordo Mayor Susie Galea explains how the bases different missions and daily operations fuel jobs and finance community infrastructure.
“Any thing the construction company pays for in gross receipts tax revenue; materials supplies that all comes back into the community. The construction companies are paying their staff, they are eating at a local restaurants and staying at our local hotels” she says.
She says cut backs and tighter military budgets in recent years put the local economy into recession.
"We had a hard time trying to provide the same level of services to our local community as well as the Holloman Air Force base community”
Since Alamogordo has been looking into diversifying their economy to soften the impact of slimmer military budget cuts in the future.
“Alamogordo naturally is a wonderful place to explore solar and wind technology for green energy.’ Galea says
But the shear expanse and the nature of the bases operations limits opportunities for diversification.
“The wind farms with the electrical magnetic pulses would interfere with the radio technology of the jet planes that fly out here. So that is nothing that we are going to pursue” Galea says.
She says although the city and the base are evaluating additional areas for development, for her and Alamogordo residence like Pasquarell, military cuts have more than anything been a blow to morale.
“Without this base this town would shut down, there wouldn’t be anything here for them” Pasquarell says.
Earlier in the year budgetary restrictions were eased a little with the base's integration of an 800 airmanstrong F-16 fighter wing.
Mayor Galea anticipates a corresponding boost in city revenues and construction projects.