Everybody– DUCK!

Those little buggers are flying low around here! These are the new E-3 AWACS (see that black and white disc sticking up from the body?). They are radar-equipped planes for detecting other aircraft, and are flying our friendly Upstate skies, of late. My daughter spotted this odd-looking beast in the sky which barely avoided scratching our treetops, and she freaked out.

We live near an old air force base, Griffiss AFB, in Rome, NY. It was closed down during the Clinton Administration, but it remains very active as a military training area and business park. We visited it last year, you can read about it here.

Rome, NY, is also the home of NEADS. Yes, that NEADS– the Northeast Air Defense Sector, a governmental bureaucracy in charge of defending the eastern section of the United States, the same NEADS that *oopsie* failed to defend the country when planes were crashing into buildings on September 11. (They scrambled only two jets and *oopsie* sent them east across the Atlantic Ocean– the opposite of where they should have been sent).

We’re suddenly seeing a whole lot of action up here: strange planes, helicopters, etc. It’s not unusual at all to see men walking around in tactical gear in the local grocery stores. We are told, by our local media, that it’s all training exercises.

Well, anyway, our house seems to be a part of the favorite path for planes to fly over. And– by golly– these planes fly so low that you can see the whites of the pilots’ eyes, almost! I used to live near Hancock Airport in Syracuse, so am accustomed to the noise of planes, but this is unreal. Have you ever heard a plane descending so quickly that it screams, and in the back of your mind you wonder if the plane is going to crash on the ground next to you? That’s what these babies sound like. It’s unreal. Woke us up out of bed with a jolt, this morning. ooo as I blog this, there goes another!……..

Photo from Wikipedia.