Terrible editorial with little to no information. Does anybody have any further information? A man claiming to be an FFDO posted a comment over there that claims this is helping the program because requalification for the 10,000 existing FFDOs was underfunded.

Ed Stone:

The existing program was bad enough that the Times is likely correct, although it might have been more persuasive if they'd rehashed some of the existing history. Participation has been low by pilots, in part because of the intrusive and redundant psychiatric exam, in part due to only having one (remote) training facility in the country, and in part due to general bureaucratic foot-dragging and hostility. Requalification may well be under-funded, that's plausible, but stealing funding from new training looks an awful lot like shutting off the trickle of new trainees without the political cost of officially cancelling it.

70% of commercial pilots are ex-military. Does anyone believe only ten to twelve thousand wanted to be armed after 9-11? The program was a poison pill from the beginning. Even the Bush administration coddled liberal mandarin sensibilities. It's not jumping at shadows to think they'll tighten up even more under an Obama (and Holder, and Emanuel) administration.