The bone-yard will be around for another thousand years. The remainder of the base? It’s hard to say. The town has encroached the base now on all four sides. I was stationed there for 3.5 years and can say that Tucson is a miserable place from May to October. But from a standard of living...it is fairly cheap there.
I agree, I do not see the boneyard going away.
I spent a summer in Tucson back in the 70s and I thought it was nice.
Every day the clouds would build up around the mountains until sundown when we got a thunderstorm which dropped the temperature way down.
Every sunset was post card perfect.
It’s six hours from San Diego.
It’s six hours from Guaymas, Mexico and great fishing/boating/diving.
It’s next to an incredible saguaro forest.
It’s 45 minutes from a mountaintop pine forest.
Looks like Gabby Giffords and the Rat successor were really minding the store while the Pentagon looked for ways to slash the budget—and Air Force capabilities.
I was once a member of the 355th Wing, assigned to Stan/Eval in the operations group, though the aircraft I flew was retired a decade ago. The capabilities and value of the A-10 have been frequently cited on this board. But relatively few people know about Compass Call (EC-130H) and its mission. BTW, in my day, Compass Call was a part of the 355th at Davis-Monthan, but the three squadrons belong to the 55th Wing at Offut.
The EC-130H is, essentially, the only airborne communications jammer in the U.S. inventory; with a mission crew of electronic warfare officers and linguists, they can identify enemy comm nodes and suppress them. There is also a secondary collection capability with the platform, augmenting systems like the RC-135 Rivet Joint.
The idea that you can replace such capabilities—and experience—by hanging another pod on a Growler or one of the Marine Corps’ remaining Prowlers—is ludicrous. It’s akin to putting the HARM targeting system on the F-16 and calling it a true SEAD platform. What made the F-4G such a great SEAD asset was the APR-47 and the experienced EWO in the backseat. I’ve been retired for more than a decade, but the last I heard, the HTS still couldn’t match the APR-47/EWO combination in terms of frequency coverage and analysis.
Once you lose a capability like the F-4G or the EC-130H, you’ll never get it back. But other platforms keep soldiering on, despite their declining value. Case-in-point: the EC-130E Commando Solo PSYOP platform. Does a great job broadcasting propaganda broadcasts over the AM, FM and TV bands. Only one problem—and we saw this as early as Operation Allied Force over Kosovo and Serbia in 1999—if you’re operating against a modernized enemy, most of the people targeted by your broadcasts will never see or hear them. That’s because much of today’s audience watches TV by cable or satellite and listens to audio on-line.