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Surely the ranking officers of the U.S. Air Force have their hands full with bombing runs to orchestrate and the lives of enlisted men to worry about, but they wouldn’t be the brass without something that sets them apart. So while the enlisted men cram into tattered, cargo plane shit-heaps, the Air Force insists that what the U.S. military needs most are lavish, flying hotel rooms for transporting higher-ranked officers and civilian VIPs, and have been trying to divert $16.2-million from counterterrorism spending to make it happen.
Originally dubbed the Senior Leader Intransit Comfort Capsule (SLICC) by the Air Force, each 18-by-9-foot capsule is designed to be “aesthetically pleasing” and pimped with beds, a couch, a 37-inch flat-panel with stereo speakers, auto-adjusting ambient lighting and a full-length mirror, the latter presumably so the officer can watch himself striking a fearsome battle pose or, perhaps, jacking it to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” E-mails obtained by the D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight showed a preoccupation with extreme luxury, from leather colour and upholstering to wood types. Built to fit into several different transport planes, the capsules offer numerous upgrades to everything except military usefulness.
by SCOTT SAXON |
