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Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

The Super Bowl fly over was kind of random. My son said it was f18s, f35s, and f15s. I was able to make out the two b1bs. It was like the air force forgot about the flyover and just scrambled whatever was on the closest tarmac.

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They had several days in advance of training together. It was all planned in advanced.

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4384084/air-...

The soldier recognition events are actually paid advertisements by the US military. I think flyovers are too?

This seemed like a standard flyover. What struck you about it being random?

Caveat: A non-trivial number of air assets are currently stationed or assigned on the other side of the world right now.

Citation: I used to be involved with flyovers.

USAF also has a pilot shortage. Could have just been whatever the available pilots were certified to fly.

coming back to this way too late. I was half joking, it just seemed like an odd mix of planes. Like i would expect a B1 + 4 F18s, or like a B2 and 2 F-22s or maybe just a group of 5 F-16s. The variety of aircraft from the variety of eras was just kind of amusing to me. Plus the one B1 that was behind a few seconds with afterburners as if it was trying to catch up to the group almost made me laugh out loud.

Given your description, its good to see the USAAF are clearly on the ball when it comes to security. If, say, all your B1s overflew the nutjob bowl then certain planners across the world might decide to act in a certain way. A random assortment leaves everyone guessing.

You could have a 9 plane fly-by of just B2s, and you’d still have less than half our operational stock committed (disregarding maintenance/readiness issues).

Using a few planes for a fly-by, particularly of anything other than B2, wouldn’t possibly “give away” any info.

B2s have made the trip from Whiteman AFB to perform flyovers at the past 20 or so Rose Bowls fwiw

Yup, that's why I chose the B2 for my example: the only fly-by suitable plane that is even close to "resource constrained".

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