Posted on 10/16/2018 2:01:55 PM PDT by Beave Meister
The U.S. Air Force is assessing what damage more than a dozen F-22 Raptor fighters suffered when Tyndall Air Force Base sustained a direct hit from Hurricane Michael. Up to $2 billion in fighter jets were trapped on the ground because of maintenance issues and forced to ride out the Category 4 hurricane. Photographs show the hangars where F-22s were parked suffered severe damage.
First, the good news: Although Tyndall Air Force Base took a hard hit from the hurricane, all 3,600 military personnel and their families living on the base were successfully evacuated beforehand. The 93 Air Force personnel who stayed behind to keep an eye on the base are all safe and accounted for.
On the other hand: Up to 17 of Tyndall’s F-22s might have sustained damage or been destroyed during the storm. The aircraft, each of which cost $150 million, were unable to escape with the rest of the base’s F-22 fleet to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The jets left behind were parked inside hangars and officials hoped for the best.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
It’s called a natural disaster for a reason. Winds were close to 155mph when it hit Tyndall AFB dead on, on the verge of Cat5 storm. Some of you guys don’t have a grip on the amount of energy contained in 150+mph winds. Mexico Bch a few miles down the road looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off. If the planes weren’t flight worthy, they had to be left. You can’t plan for every aspect of every disaster.
17 is roughly 10% of the total number built.
Why were that many unflyable? Not even in good-enough condition to be ferried “day VFR under 10000 ft”?
That’s why heads should roll.
Cant i bet all the tooling has been destroyed
Yep....................
If anyone, I would like to think the military would know how to build hangars in a hurricane zone a lot more resistant than these. Other than a concrete bunker, sure, but not like this does not happen now and then.
This is what happens when your military is run by political generals whose top priority is same sex marriage and drag queens rather than warfighting.
This is what happens when your military is run by political generals whose top priority is same sex marriage and drag queens rather than warfighting.
no one is blaming the hurricane, FFS. they’re blaming the usaf brass hats who have an unlimited budget, but couldn’t get $5 billion worth of irreplaceable aircraft out of the way of a hurricane.
Don’t know about heads rolling. But, I do think this should
be a lesson to get such facilities moved inland. Now you can’t
stop all natual disasters but you can at least plan to avoid
some of them.
If, and I emphasize IF, the planes were unflyable due to political decisions under Obama, why would you punish the commander? If this was poor military planning, then I agree. But if the commander had no choice due to political and budgetary concerns, I vehemently disagree.
Ssssh...it's because the F-22 is a hugely expensive turkey that has never lived up to its billing. One can easily believe that many in the the Air Force would be glad to be rid of it - and think 17 at one blow is a good head start.
One of the things I always valued about the military is, when the chips are on the line and someone says “We need to get this done. How do we do it?” there is almost always someone who has an idea that involves hard work and scarce resources, and says “Can do! I’ll need this...and this...”
I cannot believe, with that money on the line, that precious resource of those planes, that someone didn’t say “Okay. we have two days to get these planes out of here. Where can we get oversized flatbeds? We will need a crane to hoist them. Get working on it...”
Zero leadership. I have this mental image:
OFFICER: “Sir. That hurricane inbound is forecast to hit in four days and we have 17 F-22s we can’t fly out. What do you want us to do?”
FLAG OFFICER: “Well, not much we can do. Let’s put them in a hangar, tie them down, and hope for the best.”
I don’t know. When it is $50 million or even $100 million at stake, you might. But 2.5 BILLION?
For GOD’S sake, couldn’t you get bulldozers, dig large ditches, put the planes in them and cover them?????
ANYTHING? Damn, that is OUR money out there just pissed away.
Most all planes “age out”.
When I was USAF, the F-102, F-106, were the “hot” items. When newer ones came out, the
“Deuces” and “Sixes” were either decommissioned and sent to museums, static displays, or converted to drones to use as target practice and blown out of the sky.
The state to which the military had fallen under obama had no money to repair planes, so they just sat, dead in the water, and then along comes a hurricane and they get damaged. They’ll just do a bit of body work on them, and send them to museums, as well.
They’re just trying to angle this around to blame Trump...won’t work.
Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
Yes. Or in the case of the US Navy, paying more attention to same sex marriage and drag queens at the expense of watchstanding procedures, resulting in ship collisions and dozens dead.
Boy, does this stuff just piss me off.
“Why would heads roll? This hurricane went from nothing to a Cat 4 in about 4 days. You don’t just put an airplane together at the last minute and fly it out.”
No; but (not knowing anything about it, in particular) it would seem like you could tow any plane still on wheels out of a hangar and anchor the daylights out of it on to tiedowns on bare open tarmac, so it doesn’t get lunched by falling girders and sheet metal. That a hangar would come apart in a strong storm is a virtual certainty.
Just remember that government procurement and construction is governed by the rule: “lowest bidder wins the contract.”
The big issue in restarting production would be dealing with the now aged avionics suite. A redesign would fix that.
You are right on hugely expensive, but you are wrong on the "living up to its billing".
The F-22 is still the premiere air superiority fighter in the world even with the maintenance issues.
Enough time to truck them out if they couldn’t fly..... several billion dollars of aircraft should have been protected......
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