The Vermont Guard has a new leader — Brig. Gen. Steven Cray, who was overwhelmingly elected adjutant general by a vote of the Legislature on Thursday.

Congrats, dude! Now about that whole F-35 thing…

After winning with 140 votes, Cray faced a scrum of reporters outside the House chamber eager to learn more about the guy succeeding Michael Dubie as head of the 2600-4000-member Vermont National Guard.

Cray is a fighter pilot and 30-year Guard veteran who reportedly commanded a squadron of F-18s over Ground Zero on 9/11. He’s also an American Airlines pilot and served in Iraq.

Cray easily beat three other contenders, including anti-F-35 candidate, Jimmy Leas, a South Burlington lawyer who is not a Guard member. Another candidate dropped out last month after an anonymous letter accused him of failing to adequately address allegations of sexual harassment in the Guard.

During Cray’s first impromptu press conference, it didn’t take long for the subject to turn to the potential basing of F-35 fighter jets on the Air Guard base at Burlington International Airport. Asked if he thinks the Air Guard will have a future if the F-35 doesn’t come, Cray said, “I do. It will be different.”

Cray said the Guard could find nonflying missions to sustain it, should the Air Force base the F-35s elsewhere, but he’s not sure what they would be. That’s a slightly more optimistic picture than former adjutant general Michael Dubie painted last June, when he told reporters “there is no plan B” for the Vermont Air Guard base if the F-35s aren’t based at BTV.

Andy Bromage was a Seven Days staff writer from 2009-2012, and the news editor from 2012-2013.

4 replies on “New VT Guard General: Base Won’t Close If F-35 Doesn’t Come, But It Will Shrink”

  1. Just give up the quality of life for local residents in Winooski and South Burlington for dangerous profit driven weapons of war! A few close plane crashes in Europe and Australia should be a warning. How expendable are neighborhoods? Living off a war economy continues the arms race that we lead in by far. Paranoia added into the social paradigm makes people afraid of the “enemy”, including us as citizens who question. I’m most worried about our government, not other countries.

  2. You use the word “paranoia,” and then you say “I’m much more worried about our government . . .”
    Irony, much?

  3. Martin Luther King said that the US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. You could do worse than to reread his Beyond Vietnam speech, 1967, Riverside church, NYC. (http://www.informationclearing… Then let’s talk about irony.

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