news-record.com

PENSACOLA NAVAL AIR STATION, Fla. — The Navy’s Blue Angels have been thrilling audiences for more than six decades with their acrobatic flying in fighter planes, but a new era of federal budget worries and proposed deficit cutting has some inside and outside the military raising questions about the millions it costs to produce their shows.

Some want the popular shows grounded, and some readers of the Air Force Times newspaper — most of them active or retired service members — recently listed eliminating the Blue Angels and similar programs as one way to cut defense spending.

The Pentagon spends $37 million for the Blue Angels, whose mission is to enhance recruiting for the Navy and Marines and to be their public goodwill ambassador. That’s a fraction of the Pentagon’s $926 billion annual budget, but that’s not the point, critics say. They argue that lots of smaller programs will have to be eliminated to meet required spending reductions.

Automatic cuts triggered by the collapse of the debt supercommittee in Washington this week combined with spending reductions previously hammered out by President Barack Obama and Congress mean that the Pentagon would be looking at nearly $1 trillion in cuts to projected spending over 10 years.

The Air Force’s Thunderbirds and the Army’s Golden Knights paratroopers also perform big public shows.

“It goes to show the scale of the Department of the Defense budget; the Defense Department always goes big,” said Laura Peterson, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The money could be better spent on other programs, she said.

“The point is to look at all federal spending,” she said. “We can no longer afford the wants; we have to look at the needs.”

But Capt. Greg McWherter, the Blue Angels’ commander, said his team fills a vital national security role by improving morale, helping with recruiting and presenting a public face for the nation’s 500,000 sailors and Marines.

The Navy says about 11 million people see the squadron’s F/A-18 fighter jets scream and twist overhead during each year’s show season, from March through November.

“We still live in a country that has an all-volunteer force,” he said. “Everyone that signs up to join the military does so because they were motivated and inspired; maybe it was an aunt or an uncle, maybe it was a teacher or maybe it was the Blue Angels. You never know.”

“It is difficult to put a price on that and on the number of young men and women inspired by a performance.”

But, he said, it helps ensure “that the Navy and the Marine Corps is strong 10 to 15 years from now.”

Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the conservative think tank Lexington Institute in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, said it is unlikely anyone in Congress would specifically target the Blue Angels because the team is so popular.

But he said it is possible spending for the Blue Angels, Air Force Thunderbirds and other military promotional programs could be curtailed under a larger umbrella bill as Congress and the administration look for ways to cut federal spending.

The Navy demonstration team began after World War II when Adm. Chester W. Nimitz wanted to continue support for naval aviation during peacetime and spotlight the Navy and Marines for potential recruits who live far from Navy bases.

The 2011 budget funded 70 performances at 35 cities across the United States .

The blue and gold jets twist, turn, drop from the sky and roar into the clouds in perfect formation for 45 minutes.

More than 100,000 people attended the Blue Angels end-of-season performance Nov. 11-12 at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Blue Angels are important because they show the incredible skill of the U.S. military.

He said he thinks of the Blue Angels as “ambassadors for not just the Navy but for the entire American military across this country and around the world.”

“We get way more than our money’s worth for what they do,” he said.