It would seem to me that these "Elephant Walk" photo opportunities are nothing more than incredible wastes of fuel and opportunities for catastrophic damage on these runways.  No way does the operational cycle of take-offs and landings require that airfields be jammed full of incredibly vulnerable fighters, transport aircraft, bombers, or even light utility planes. 

 

This is emphatically not any sort of exercise structured to improve necessary pilot or ground crew skills. 

 

When a carrier deck crew spots such a ship's aircraft complement all over the flight deck, the accomplishment of that display serves a reasonable secondary purpose in that efficient, certain, and precise placement of such equipment is a necessary capability for all those plane handlers, who deal with the most congested kind of "airport" in the history of aviation.

 

Just what the hell is served by these Air Force "elephant walks" by comparison? How the hell far does public relations and ostensible "morale building" go to justify the costs and risks of this kind of crap?