Originally Posted by
Onfinal
For my own edification on the subject. Do you (or anyone else) believe that there are any modifications that could be made to those warning areas, that would still provide ample training space for the DoD and yet provide about three to five more north-south offshore jet-routes in the FL 200 to FL 450 range to the commercial sector?
Onfinal
Speaking only from experience flying in W122 off the Virginia/NC coast, it would really crap on some important training to run an airway through the middle of it. Above 390 it would probably not be a problem, though.
The Whiskey areas are the only places we can do full-up no restrictions combat maneuvering. Supersonic, chaff and flare, up to FL500...that's valuable training that I can't get in the 7,000-240 standard MOA block over the CONUS. In the Whiskeys you can have big, multi aircraft air-to-air engagements with 80+ mile setups, which is also very unique.
As is, the W122 airspace is all ready shared by jets from Langley AFB, NAS Oceana, Seymour Johnson AFB, MCAS Cherry Point, MCAS Beaufort, and probably some more I'm not thinking of off hand. It's very heavily used.
So, I don't know...there is probably a tradeoff in there somewhere, it depends on how that corridoor would actually help congestion. It would be a huge tragedy to lose big chunks of airspace for 5 flights a day or something.