Posted on 10/16/2018 3:16:15 PM PDT by llevrok
I am no military vet, so this is perhaps a naive question -
A number of planes at Tindall were left on base and suffered partial or full damage. Some were F22's, no small loss.
Why were not all planes flown out the day before when it was obvious this was going to be ground zero for Hurricane Michael or near it?
Were they hanger queens and not flight ready? Or were there not the crews ready to fly them out?
It seems strange to me so many flying assets were left back.
combination of deadline aircraft, shortage of pilots, and loss of ferry time (ie...fly an f22 to LRAFB. 8 hours mandatory sleep, take a slow c130 back ...8 hours sleep, ferry another).
Should have been an EO putting all that safety shit on a wartime/national security footing to unass the AO with assets like that, IMHO, however, I’m thinking they had good reason. Mayhaps not. Hell if I know.
It is a way of life with the peacetime military attitude politicians have. They expect the military to do "More, Better with Less" until they reach a point where they have to do everything with nothing.
All branches need re-equipping and rejuvenation like the kind experienced under President Reagan.
Thanks for including the only factual link in the thread.
It will be interesting to see if anyone takes the hit for having to leave four F-22’s to the fate of the storm. Pretty expensive decision, with really no recourse due to what can and can’t fly. Frankly, IMHO Tyndall looks like it should be abandoned and save the inordinate cost of rebuilding. Especially since the scenario could be repeated short of storm hardening all of the hangers.
They could have been trucked out! If they had been 100 miles west they would have survived intact. Someone should be fired.
Probably being maintained at the time without enough warning to get them air worthy.
It is very possible that a joint base with the Navy may emerge at NAS Pensacola in the short term and may also be the long term solution.
There were 4 F-22's left behind in just one squadron.
Tyndall is home for a whole wing of F-22's.
And right on the beach in Florida.
Normally you hurivac all flyable aircraft to a safe haven. Hangar queens you ry to move to the “safest” area and hope for the best.
How come you can say ‘spokeswoman’ but not spokesman?
....
That is my though also. Of course you move to a
different location and find differing obstacles.
Sounds like Trump needs to go crack some skulls. It is unacceptable that nearly half of the top of the line very expensive fighters at this base are inoperable.
good photos, thank you.
The damaged f22s were a command failure. If a naval officer let that much damage occur to equipment he signed for, it would be the last day of his command.
I’m not saying the wing commander was necessarily incompetent, or that he didn’t do everything in his power to minimize loss. I will say that the wing commander better hope there is a good amount of evidence proving he executed a sound disaster preparedness operation and exhausted every opportunity to protect that equipment.
A fighter aircraft like the f22 isn’t easy to strap onto a pickup and drive off the base, but if there was no plan in place for a fighter wing based in florida to absorb a big hurricane, that’s a big freaking problem.
I do not know the condition of the planes in the maintenance hangers, but an aircraft getting periodic maintenance is literally a totally disabled aircraft.
In civil aviation it is called a 100 hour inspection. Were you to look at one, you would wonder if it will ever fly again.
I suspect that military aircraft are maintained under a “progressive” method, similar to the airlines, but still the airplane is unflyable until put back together.
I doubt they had the manpower or the parts to restore 20 or 30 aircraft to flyable condition in a 3 day or so notice.
Don’t forget that this started out as an ordinary Florida type storm and only turned into the monster in the last few days.
We all learned a lesson from this storm. Here in Piedmont North Carolina, we expected a tropical low pressure system that had wound down to a heavy rain area with some flooding.
Instead we had a train wreck.
Silly comment. Trump said yesterday because the planes were under repair and the engines were off the jets and couldn’t be flown out. The storm developed so fast that there was no alternative. Unions...lol
That was a direct quote from the link I provided. Not my wording.
Some of the threads on this post are ridiculous.
No commander, no pilot, is going to order, or fly, a jet that is not safe.
Naturally, the F-35’s are taken to safety first, and maybe there weren’t any trained pilots to take the others away.
In the Navy, during emergencies, or wartime, planes damaged to non-flyable condition are routinely jettisoned over the side, into the deep blue.
There are always some planes down for maintenance, awaiting parts, or grounded otherwise. With a major hurricane bearing down, you don’t have the time to repair them. So they got the ones that were in flyable condition off the base by the time “Michael” hit the base.
Planes, in emergencies, are expendable...no matter what the cost.
The F-22’s are long-since paid for; There’s a good chance that some of them can still be put back into service, but once the storm is 30 miles off shore, and there are no parts, it’s just a little late for that.
Past jets, such as the Century F-series jets, were just as expensive in their day, but the ones that are not on static display, in museums, or at the “Boneyard”, were converted to remote control drones and used as targets.
Trump promised a lot of things, and he’s kept most of his promises, but he did not “promise” (or cause) the hurricane.
It’s not about unions, it’s not about any of that...it’s about an uncontrollable storm and the things that were caught in it’s path.
How about the rest of the area, how about Mexico Beach? Did Trump do that, too, for the “builders” unions?
Grow up people, shit happens.
Based upon other stories, most of the planes that were NOT removed from the base were undergoing repairs.
The world is full of clueless people. They all, it seems, have an internet connection. Take care of the people first, and then do whatever you can about the equipment. I would love to see one of these bozos playing a Wing Commander. More than likely, they couldn’t manage a paper route.
The storm isn’t the problem. The fact that so many planes are unflyable and no contingency for the storm is the problem.
If you are on the coast you will have a hurricane eventually. If the loss was a couple of planes, oh well. Twenty planes is a whole different case. The time to do something isn’t when a hurricane is bearing down on you.
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