Wow, that's actually correct according to wikipedia
In FY 2017, the Congressional Budget Office reported spending of $590 billion for defense, about 15% of the federal budget.[1] For the FY 2019 president Donald Trump proposed an increase to the military to $681.1 billion. [2]
Please cite the media outlet which has asserted that these aircraft have been damaged beyond economical repair.
From the article: “We anticipate the aircraft parked inside may be damaged as well, but we won't know the extent until our crews can safely enter those hangars and make an assessment,” the spokeswoman said.
Anecdotally, a former life once allowed me the privilege of directing flightline ops during several hurricane evacuations. This isn't anything new to me, and I've seen far worse than what this article (and others) have depicted--to include an entire squadron of F-15s engulfed in storm surge saltwater flooding up to their cockpits during Wilma, none of which resulted in airframe loss.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to imply anything here, I was just curious about the average cost to tax payer and then tried to get a more accurate picture.
Since this amount of money lost isn't outrageous to the Air Force, what was keeping them from moving the planes we paid for, and spending the ~billion dollars on us and our pursuit of happiness, liberty, and life?
From the article: "The F-22s left behind could not fly for either mechanical or safety reasons, said a spokeswoman, who also said all the hangars on base were damaged."
From the article: ““One of them was scheduled to leave but GABed [ground aborted] after an issue prior to taxi. The other three were jets that couldn't be spun up in time to fly.” Two had been cannibalized for parts, he said, and the others had “issues that couldn't be fixed. They were in hangars that [they] are usually put in according to hurricane plans.””
Your line of commenting here is unreasonable and does a disservice to any valid criticism of military spending.
Planes cannot be fixed instantly. I would hope that is obvious.
This was a powerful storm that did a huge amount of damage to more than just these planes. You could take a more generous and broad view of the events and ask if saving these planes would have been worth the opportunity cost to other resources that would have then been left in the storm's path.
I appreciate your last two sentences because they made me pause, and realized I hadn't thought about this much living on the left coast.. (waiting for a decent earthquake).
I guess my point from the beginning is that these planes didn't need to exist in the first place, so the money spent could have been provisioned differently, like for programs to possibly help tax payers that just got given the finger.
edit: Your first sentence sounds like it's meant to dissuade criticism about military spending, because your opinion mandates it.
My first sentence does nothing of the sort. As I clearly state this kind of rhetoric will undermine any valid criticism of military spending. I have said nothing that should suggest to you my personal beliefs on the state of military spending.
It's common practice to use a small number of planes as spare part source to keep a larger group flying while you wait for spares to be delivered. Better 3 planes with lots of bits missing than 10 with one piece broken each.
These planes require many man hours of maintenance for each flight hour. So it isn't unusual for them to be in a state where maintenance isn't complete.
A certain percentage of these planes are always on the ground being repaired. They rotate in and out of flight readiness. What's important is that enough planes are ready for their missions at any one time, not that ALL the planes are ready.
Sure, if they had made any preparations or advance plans to save our billions of dollars worth of equipment. Instead, they write articles about how we just don’t know how hard it is to not waste $4 billion.
Look at it this way - climate change is making the job of keeping a functional military harder and harder - something that may help focus minds as much as IPCC reports.
Losing a billion dollars of planes because of weather? I know it is only a billion (a drop
in the ocean for the military) but if a adversary had knocked out three F-22s they would be considered a national threat.
Treat the weather like a potential national security threat is what I am saying.
I really love the statement from the colonel in charge of the base; it's clear, concise, and conveys his message perfectly.
> Wing Command Col. Brian Laidlaw said in a statement Friday the base was "better than yesterday, and that is how it is going to continue to be. We will continue to persevere."
I like it so much that I really just want to make it a motto to live by: "things are better than yesterday and that is how I will continue to make them."
There was an state re-election campaign here in New South Wales, Australia 10 or 20 years ago run under the slogan
More to do but heading in the right direction
which was widely mocked for being particularly uninspiring. I still quote it all the time - hardly a week goes by when it can't be amusingly slipped into conversation hehe. (Usually to helpfully complete someone's attempt to describe the state of a situation they're working on.)
Statements now aren't worth that much. The person in charge should have thought of these things, at least someone should have. It's not like the hurricane happened in Colorado so at least shelters should have been hurricane proof.
If they wanted to significantly increase the budget for preparing for damaging storms, someone higher up in the command chain would have to admit, officially, that climate change is real and that it threatens national security.
The appropriately-cheap hanger built for cheap trainer aircraft may get repurposed to store expensive aircraft. Somebody (who?) needs to notice that the more-valuable aircraft are worthy of a more-expensive hanger.
Stuff corrodes, and somebody has to notice it. Hangers built near the ocean will corrode faster than normal.
The military doesn't deny climate change, and recognizes the security implications. Not everybody outside of HN is an idiot, try and leave your bubble once in a while.
This was pretty much our slogan in Puerto Rico last year in my company.
Someone would ask, "How's it going?" and I'd reply, "Today is better than yesterday, so we can't complain. We just have to keep making it better than yesterday."
Tyndall didn't lose $1bil in F-22 assets; the HN title of this article is pure clickbait.
No other state takes hurricane evacuation more seriously than Florida. This article[1] posits that Tyndall has 55 F-22s divided between two training squadrons. If only 4 were left behind, that's 93% brought to NMCM Airworthy status or better, which is mindblowingly effective.
It is correct English grammar to say that an asset which has been damaged beyond economical repair has been "lost", this is used in the shipping and aviation industries all the time. "Hull loss" incident, "airframe loss", etc. See for example the delightyfully 1997-vintage-looking website of cargo loss:
Most commonly encountered when talking about an insured asset. In the case of military owned equipment, there is no insurance company, so the DoD takes the loss themselves.
To be sure, your remark is directed towards a 10-year U.S. Air Force veteran who holds intimate familiarity with active duty military flightline operations. Until full damage assessment has been completed and Class A incident reports filed, asserting that these aircraft have been lost is utter bullshit.
The products are 'out of warranty' and effectively antiques.
The article states how much it would cost to get the tooling back to make more of the planes and you would be looking at spending billions to make replacements.
There is no 'series production' going on and therefore that means that 'maintenance' is more like 'restoration' with these dubious machines.
I wonder if it would make more sense and provide as much utility if the Air Force just settled for a fleet of classic concept cars. It wasn't as if the Air Force was of any use whatsoever on that day seventeen years ago when action stations was actually needed.
No the F22. $350 MM per plane for something that will never see its, admittedly impressive, capabilities needed or used. Very much like the B2 in that respect.
A deterrent is "used" just by being deployed. The point of deterrence is to demonstrate that you have the capability, not necessarily putting it to use in combat.
Deterrence is a peacetime activity intended to preserve and extend peacetime as long as possible. One could argue that the fact that no two major powers have engaged in direct combat since ww2 is an existence proof of the power of deterrence.
That’s revisionist history. Its intended role was nuclear strikes deep in the heart of the Soviet Union. It has certainly not been used to great effect or otherwise for that.
Likewise, we will never go to conventional war with those “geopolitical rivals”. Instead we go to war with countries like Syria and sub-national actors like ISIS neither of which have similar tech entering service, to put it mildly.
The B-2 was always a long range bomber capable of deploying both nuclear and conventional weapons. It needed to have the capability to reach and bomb Russia but that was never the only intended role.
It was also the first plane to drop JDAMs which are useful regardless of the tech level of the enemy.
It’s a long range bomber that was designed to fly long distances and drop bombs that entered service and flew long distances and dropped bombs.
No part of that history is “revised”.
Furthermore, maintaining military parity with geopolitical rivals is why we do not engage in conventional warfare with them. The MAD doctrine has proven to be effective for decades.
I’m happy to hear reasoned criticism of American foreign policy but the B-2 and F-22 are both performing exactly the jobs they were designed for. Both as combat vehicles and as deterrents.
I am curious what reasons there could be for the planes to be immovable by road. F22 has a 13.56m wingspan. Would it make sense to build trucking platforms for such contingencies?
PS: I have no knowledge in the subject, just curious.
Throwing jets on flatbed trucks? People don't realize how large of a flying machine a Raptor is. They are roughly 44 feet wide, 62 feet long, and weigh over 43,000lbs. They are not something you just throw on pop's flatbed and skidaddle out of dodge. Nor are they made to be transported that way in the first place. And to where? You are talking about a highly sensitive asset packed with classified material. Its skin treatment alone presents a national secret risk. These aircraft are supposed to sit in last minute hurricane traffic heading somewhere as they hog up multiple lanes? The whole notion is ridiculous. And if they can't seek refuge in time, you have a flying machine strapped to a flatbed. Good luck with that.
No, these planes aren't just Lego sets that you can take apart and pour into a C-5. Removing wings on an F-22? That is a massive undertaking, let alone getting a C-5 in and loading it up to fly away to someplace. Once again, limited capacity in a limited timespan, and that is a long-lead type of project.
idk, if the shelter can take the hit, then leave the plans there and come back. Otherwise drop fuel and break out the plasma cutter.
If these planes were so borked they couldn't be made airworthy then maybe putting new wings back on ins't that much extra considering you've risking the whole engine by leaving them behind.
but a moot point. I'm sure they will just build concrete hangers for next time.
The main article says that several of these air frames were already cannibalized for parts. It also sounds like they were earlier models used for training and may have more wear than the rest of the fleet due to their proximity to the ocean.
Even once destroyed it's still within the base that is presumably still guarded. Once out of the base on a flatbed the risks of losing any part of it are much greater.
The options are stupid because they have themselves stupid options. Then, write articles describing and defending how out of all the idiotic options they left themselves for this even which would obviously happen eventually, they chose the least stupid. I’m not even remotely impressed.
Yes, exactly. Classified material remains protected and it's just a very very small portion of your fleet. Information has much higher price than the aircraft itself.
US Freeway lanes are 3.7m wide in general. It's probably hard to move oversize loads during a large-scale evacuation.
On top of that, the Air Force has a less than an infinite supply of trucks and drivers. If you have more resources to move than logistical capacity then surely it makes sense to move the most value within the constraints.
At some point maybe a cannibalized, corroded F-22 fuselage is less valuable than whatever else the Air Force decided to put on a truck.
Apart from what metaphor quoted, even if you had such a hypothetical trucking platform, the trucking platform itself has to be maintained and manned. No point in having a special trucking platform as a contingency if they're not available when the hurricane comes, because of deferred maintenance (due to other maintenance priorities) etc.
Considering that being in the eye of such a powerful hurricane is a freak occurrence, the cost of the risk contingency probably would not be worth it if you ran the numbers.
Lots and lots of concrete.
Which isn't that expensive if you've going to rebuild a state.
The bigger problem for Florida is that it has no high terrain to absorb the hit.
Britton Hill is a mere 345 feet above sea level. Which makes Florida a big sand bar that storms just roll over.
I would start with using screws/bolts instead of nails holding the wood to the foundation. It takes a lot to pull that loose. The other problem is the roof being lifted off from suction. I would bet that bolting it to the frame would stop a lot of that.
With relatively minor changes like that, an ordinary wood frame house should be considerably stronger.
All that stuff exists, you can get re-enforced roof and truss connections and hurricane ties to upgrade existing buildings.
The issue is as always cost, people operate on a "why spend the money it may never happen" risk model generally and are averse to dealing with a problem til it punches them (personally) in the face, I mean this isn't new, as a species we don't deal with things until it gets to the brink.
If you want a fascinating example of this in the general case read up on the Clean Air Act in the UK.
This has been the building code in Florida for a quarter century.
Most people do better. Typical construction in Florida is concrete block. There is no "ordinary wood frame house" in Florida. That would be out of place. We have termites, but not concrete-eating termites.
To me it feels like the houses are about 5% wood frame, 90% concrete block, and 5% solid poured concrete that could stop a truck tossed by a tornado.
If I was an architect, I'd be headed to Florida first to survey the damaged and undamaged and see what design elements worked and what failed. Then hang out my shingle to offer this expertise for the rebuild.
Tyndall AFB is right on the water. Say you can survive 150 mph winds. Now your problem is the seawater 15+ ft deep filled with debris and driven by 150mph winds rushing in and back out.
Yes, but everything inside is still ruined and has to be torn out, often including the wall. Any home filled with water has to be completely gutted.
You're also talking about a very serious wall. Fast moving water is extremely powerful and heavy - and it can also wash out the earth beneath you. And it's carrying all manner of debris. It can drop concrete bridge pilings on your house, for example.
I cleaned up after Katrina. There's really nothing we can practically build for these types of situations. Most houses will survive the winds, unless they're hit by a tornado, a tree falls on them, they're especially unlucky, or have unusually poor construction. A lot of people on HN seem to have this idea that we just need better building codes. That is not my experience.
You're assuming you know more about evacuation planning and base design than the US Air Force. I think that's an unreasonable assumption.
Some possibilities:
1) Nuclear hardened bunkers exist on base but were already full.
2) Nuclear response planning does not require planes to be stored in hardened bunkers.
3) The threat model for a nuke is different than a hurricane.
72h is a lot of warning? It's not like they left everything behind. There was a large scale evacuation and a significant amount of hardware was moved without being lost. Do you have any indication that the evacuation was poorly planned or executed? Or that the base design was lacking?
I'm not offering excuses. Hell, I'm not even suggesting the base design was satisfactory or that this damage is acceptable. I am offering possible explanations for why this amount of hurricane damage was sustained and why these specific air frames were not in "nuclear hardened bunkers".
"I saw some bunkers somewhere" is a pretty poor excuse for criticism of a military installation's design, or anything really.
It's not 72hours, but probably since ~ 1492 they knew that FL is hurricane country. They also know that x% of planes are always on maintenance and a certain amount of planes cannot evacuate to a safer base. And while not cheap, it's possible to make hurricane proof hangars. Someone dropped the ball and a lot of money was lost.
It is completely obvious to everyone else that this outcome was predictable and that they did a bad job which will cost a lot of money. USAF is incompetent.
Not all hurricanes are equal. This was the most destructive hurricane to hit that region in recorded history (yet still weaker than the storm that took out Puerto Rico a year ago). The Florida panhandle has mostly been an infrequent target for slow and rainy cat 1 hurricanes every 20 years or so. Those storms take down some trees and power lines, and sometimes cause minor flooding.
This was a strong cat 4 with heavy forward momentum and a significant storm surge, a 200+ year storm for the area. Nobody builds for highly unlikely events like this, they buy insurance.
hurricanes happen every year. air base on coast of Florida. only a moron would design things so they dont have a reasonably hurricane safe place to protect aircraft on site. not hard. bumbling incompetence if not planned for.
It seems disingenuous to me to criticize the US military for massive budgets while also expecting bases to be built to withstand a 200 year storm.
Neither of us knows the detailed cost benefit analysis that went into hurricane preparedness at this base. No lives were lost and most of the F22s made it out, presumably a lot of the other assets did as well. Overall I’d say that’s a success.
If our plan for a 200 year storm is “rebuild” I’m ok with that if the alternative is “spend more than rebuild costs to hurricane proof the base”.
This is the most powerful hurricane to strike the Florida panhandle in recorded history.
So, uh, yeah, it’s news.
It’s disingenuous to claim there was a huge failure in preparedness in an area with frequent storms while ignoring the efforts involved to evacuate and the severity of the storm. This evacuation successfully saved every person on base and a significant amount of hardware from a 200 year storm in... 72 hours.
It's easy to find better solutions given that we now know the hangers would fail. It's cheating to know that.
For example, a probable solution would be to place the aircraft far from things likely to become flying debris, then add sandbags... lots of sandbags. Park the planes on the runway, then add enough sandbags to divert the wind over the top.
I'd take that chance if I knew that the hangar would fail, but again, that is cheating.
I agree with you but maybe we're missing some facts? I don't know if Delta lied to me but the excuse they gave me one time or flight was delayed was that some lights in the cabin were not working so they have to do electrical inspection. They eventually gave us all alternative flight on American (after having us wait until 4 PM with an initial departure if 9AM).
Point is, we don't know if the planes were in flight ready state, do we? It could be something simple but I'd not risk my officer's life just to save a plane.
My apologies if the planes were indeed flight certified.
I wonder if a fighter jet would be damaged by the wind alone (ignoring debris) as long as it is tied down. Naively a fighter jet is already designed to cope with high speed air flow.
It takes a lot to make me furious, but I'm furious.
These morons built an Air Force base with billions of hardware in hurricane territory, and were caught flat-footed by a hurricane because apparently there were no adequate plans for what to do when a hurricane approached?
Jesus christ. Those planes are irreplaceable. F-22 production has ceased, so it's not like they can order up some more. And considering the problems with the F-35s, those F-22s are some of the only capable 5th-gen fighters we're likely to have for a longggggggg time.
(I understand that most of the places were apparently evacuated, but it's tough to swallow any significant loss of those very expensive pieces of hardware due to inadequate planning)
Seeing as you've had the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate Tyndall's emergency hurricane evacuation procedures, the airworthiness of 55 aircraft divided between two squadrons, O&M/MILCON budget of a training base, and logistical impediments arising from 72-hours notice coupled with a swarm of evacuating civilians from surrounding areas, please do take the time to enlighten us all.
Are you saying that their plans were adequate? Clearly they weren't; they lost at least a handful of irreplaceable planes.
Or are you saying that there was just no way to predict or prepare for a hurricane hitting an airbase right in the middle of hurricane country? I mean, a lot of hurricanes roll through that part of the country.
the airworthiness of 55 aircraft divided between two squadrons,
My "evaluation" is what the article says. Namely, that the planes left behind weren't airworthy. If you know otherwise, let's hear it.
I'm no military brain genius, but it seems obvious to me that at any given time less than 100% of the planes at any given airbase would be airworthy and that perhaps some provision should be made for sheltering or evacuating these planes if a hurricane rolls through this base which, again, is located in a very hurricane-prone region.
O&M/MILCON budget of a training base
I'd think that the cost of making sure you don't lose a billion dollars worth of fighters every time a hurricane rolls through a hurricane-prone area probably costs less than, I don't know, a billion dollars.
That you've summarily dismissed the efficacy of planning for which you know precisely zero of is baffling.
That you presume to parade your decision making as superior to the dozens of career field officers and senior enlisted members with real skin in the game--let alone the hundreds preceeding them who have earned their keep--is even more baffling.
That you continually insist $1bil in F-22 assets was lost to this hurricane is quite telling of both blatant ignorance and inexperience in matters relating to military aircraft maintenance operations.
Admittedly, I'm rather insulted by the magnitude of sheer narcissism and narrow-minded hubris in your remarks.
I angrily said "these idiots" as if everybody involved was an idiot.
What I should have acknowledged is that the folks on that base are insanely talented (I know enough about the military to know that the folks trusted with these aircraft are very elite) and in all likelihood pulled off a freaking miracle to save as much hardware as they did with (more importantly) zero loss of life. I have no doubt that they spent 72 hours stretched to their limits and performed admirably.
Whatever else we disagree on, at least we agree on that.
What I am angry at is the design of a base that had inadequate structures and/or procedures in place to enable those assets to be fully protected and/or evacuated in the event of a hurricane. Clearly those (or the budget allocated) were not adequate to fully handle the situation. The results attest to that.
This was the most powerful hurricane to hit the Florida panhandle in recorded history. The base has withstood previous hurricanes and storms. So yeah, the structures were inadequate to protect some of the planes from the storm of the century (or two?) but should we expect or desire the base to withstand that? Of the dozen planes left behind so far only four are suspected to have been destroyed and even that isn't actually known yet. It is still possible the base did protect the planes at least in part from this extreme outlier event.
The lifespan of the planes is only ~30 years. Losing a few of them to a total freak storm doesn't seem as outrageous as you are making it out to be, especially when much more of the fleet was evacuated than should be expected based on typical readiness.
You're acting like the USAF had no hurricane plan at all when in reality they obviously did. Not all the F-22s were lost and a bunch of the other assets made it out too.
I did read the article. Admittedly the article seems to contradict itself. In the opening sentence it says "more than a dozen" but later on it talks about "four."
From the article:
> The F-22s left behind could not fly for
> either mechanical or safety reasons, said
> a spokeswoman, who also said all the hangars
> on base were damaged.
It seems pretty clear that on any base, not all planes will be airworthy at any given time.
It also seems pretty clear that in prime hurricane season, in prime hurricane territory, that... I don't know, man, hurricanes might roll through.
Seems avoidable to me. Obviously, making every single hanger hurricane-proof is probably not feasible. How about, having some kind of smaller reinforced hangar for the planes which cannot be evacuated? Jet fighters are really not that massive; we're probably not talking something the size of a football stadium. Seems cheaper than just losing up to a billion dollars worth of irreplaceable fighters.
"More than a dozen F-22s were left behind as Hurricane Michael bore down on the base Oct. 10. Now, in Michael's wake, many of those are damaged, and some beyond repair, at a cost of more than $1 billion, Air Force officials said."
So of the ~12 planes left behind a subset were damaged and and even smaller subset (apparently four) were potentially damaged beyond repair.
The arrogance on display here is staggering. You think the USAF is not aware of hurricanes in Florida? Since you are obviously an expert please tell me how many category 4 hurricanes have hit the Florida panhandle in the time the USAF has existed or in the time since we started recording them. How many have hit Tyndall directly? How many times has it successfully withstood tropical storms and hurricanes?
Please share the credentials that qualify you to provide detailed guidance to the USAF on how to design and run an air base.
138 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 85.5 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18211632
In FY 2017, the Congressional Budget Office reported spending of $590 billion for defense, about 15% of the federal budget.[1] For the FY 2019 president Donald Trump proposed an increase to the military to $681.1 billion. [2]
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
I assume you are being downvoted for failing to actually include your footnotes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=avi...
From the article: “We anticipate the aircraft parked inside may be damaged as well, but we won't know the extent until our crews can safely enter those hangars and make an assessment,” the spokeswoman said.
Anecdotally, a former life once allowed me the privilege of directing flightline ops during several hurricane evacuations. This isn't anything new to me, and I've seen far worse than what this article (and others) have depicted--to include an entire squadron of F-15s engulfed in storm surge saltwater flooding up to their cockpits during Wilma, none of which resulted in airframe loss.
$283 for top 1% highest-earners
$21 for remaining top 10% highest-earners
$4 for remaining top 50% highest-earners
¢38 for bottom 50% lowest-earners
If this cost was covered by income taxes.
Source: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-20...
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to imply anything here, I was just curious about the average cost to tax payer and then tried to get a more accurate picture.
Planes cannot be fixed instantly. I would hope that is obvious.
This was a powerful storm that did a huge amount of damage to more than just these planes. You could take a more generous and broad view of the events and ask if saving these planes would have been worth the opportunity cost to other resources that would have then been left in the storm's path.
I guess my point from the beginning is that these planes didn't need to exist in the first place, so the money spent could have been provisioned differently, like for programs to possibly help tax payers that just got given the finger.
edit: Your first sentence sounds like it's meant to dissuade criticism about military spending, because your opinion mandates it.
As sung by Tom Jones.
Losing a billion dollars of planes because of weather? I know it is only a billion (a drop in the ocean for the military) but if a adversary had knocked out three F-22s they would be considered a national threat.
Treat the weather like a potential national security threat is what I am saying.
> Wing Command Col. Brian Laidlaw said in a statement Friday the base was "better than yesterday, and that is how it is going to continue to be. We will continue to persevere."
I like it so much that I really just want to make it a motto to live by: "things are better than yesterday and that is how I will continue to make them."
More to do but heading in the right direction
which was widely mocked for being particularly uninspiring. I still quote it all the time - hardly a week goes by when it can't be amusingly slipped into conversation hehe. (Usually to helpfully complete someone's attempt to describe the state of a situation they're working on.)
Won't be easy.
Stuff corrodes, and somebody has to notice it. Hangers built near the ocean will corrode faster than normal.
Even the cheapest USAF jet trainer is more expensive than the building that stores it.
> somebody has to notice it
That's why we invented periodic inspections and mandatory maintenance even for those times nobody notices anything.
This hurricane was about as powerful as one from the 19th century... We're well into the 21st century.
(There have been, according to AccuWeather, 27 other category 4 hurricanes that have made landfall in the US since 1851.)
https://dod.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/612710/
Someone would ask, "How's it going?" and I'd reply, "Today is better than yesterday, so we can't complain. We just have to keep making it better than yesterday."
No other state takes hurricane evacuation more seriously than Florida. This article[1] posits that Tyndall has 55 F-22s divided between two training squadrons. If only 4 were left behind, that's 93% brought to NMCM Airworthy status or better, which is mindblowingly effective.
[1] http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...
http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html
Most commonly encountered when talking about an insured asset. In the case of military owned equipment, there is no insurance company, so the DoD takes the loss themselves.
The article states how much it would cost to get the tooling back to make more of the planes and you would be looking at spending billions to make replacements.
There is no 'series production' going on and therefore that means that 'maintenance' is more like 'restoration' with these dubious machines.
I wonder if it would make more sense and provide as much utility if the Air Force just settled for a fleet of classic concept cars. It wasn't as if the Air Force was of any use whatsoever on that day seventeen years ago when action stations was actually needed.
Deterrence is a peacetime activity intended to preserve and extend peacetime as long as possible. One could argue that the fact that no two major powers have engaged in direct combat since ww2 is an existence proof of the power of deterrence.
Geopolitical rivals have similar tech to the F-22 entering service.
You may disagree with the wars being fought but this tech does what it says on the tin.
Likewise, we will never go to conventional war with those “geopolitical rivals”. Instead we go to war with countries like Syria and sub-national actors like ISIS neither of which have similar tech entering service, to put it mildly.
It was also the first plane to drop JDAMs which are useful regardless of the tech level of the enemy.
It’s a long range bomber that was designed to fly long distances and drop bombs that entered service and flew long distances and dropped bombs.
No part of that history is “revised”.
Furthermore, maintaining military parity with geopolitical rivals is why we do not engage in conventional warfare with them. The MAD doctrine has proven to be effective for decades.
I’m happy to hear reasoned criticism of American foreign policy but the B-2 and F-22 are both performing exactly the jobs they were designed for. Both as combat vehicles and as deterrents.
It’s deeply insulting both as an American and as a thinking human being to say the USAF did nothing on 9/11.
PS: I have no knowledge in the subject, just curious.
Throwing jets on flatbed trucks? People don't realize how large of a flying machine a Raptor is. They are roughly 44 feet wide, 62 feet long, and weigh over 43,000lbs. They are not something you just throw on pop's flatbed and skidaddle out of dodge. Nor are they made to be transported that way in the first place. And to where? You are talking about a highly sensitive asset packed with classified material. Its skin treatment alone presents a national secret risk. These aircraft are supposed to sit in last minute hurricane traffic heading somewhere as they hog up multiple lanes? The whole notion is ridiculous. And if they can't seek refuge in time, you have a flying machine strapped to a flatbed. Good luck with that.
[1] http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...
No, these planes aren't just Lego sets that you can take apart and pour into a C-5. Removing wings on an F-22? That is a massive undertaking, let alone getting a C-5 in and loading it up to fly away to someplace. Once again, limited capacity in a limited timespan, and that is a long-lead type of project.
If these planes were so borked they couldn't be made airworthy then maybe putting new wings back on ins't that much extra considering you've risking the whole engine by leaving them behind.
but a moot point. I'm sure they will just build concrete hangers for next time.
Ok, let’s leave it to be destroyed by weather then
On top of that, the Air Force has a less than an infinite supply of trucks and drivers. If you have more resources to move than logistical capacity then surely it makes sense to move the most value within the constraints.
At some point maybe a cannibalized, corroded F-22 fuselage is less valuable than whatever else the Air Force decided to put on a truck.
Considering that being in the eye of such a powerful hurricane is a freak occurrence, the cost of the risk contingency probably would not be worth it if you ran the numbers.
With relatively minor changes like that, an ordinary wood frame house should be considerably stronger.
The issue is as always cost, people operate on a "why spend the money it may never happen" risk model generally and are averse to dealing with a problem til it punches them (personally) in the face, I mean this isn't new, as a species we don't deal with things until it gets to the brink.
If you want a fascinating example of this in the general case read up on the Clean Air Act in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956
Most people do better. Typical construction in Florida is concrete block. There is no "ordinary wood frame house" in Florida. That would be out of place. We have termites, but not concrete-eating termites.
To me it feels like the houses are about 5% wood frame, 90% concrete block, and 5% solid poured concrete that could stop a truck tossed by a tornado.
You're also talking about a very serious wall. Fast moving water is extremely powerful and heavy - and it can also wash out the earth beneath you. And it's carrying all manner of debris. It can drop concrete bridge pilings on your house, for example.
I cleaned up after Katrina. There's really nothing we can practically build for these types of situations. Most houses will survive the winds, unless they're hit by a tornado, a tree falls on them, they're especially unlucky, or have unusually poor construction. A lot of people on HN seem to have this idea that we just need better building codes. That is not my experience.
IANAP (I am not a pilot/military) but the airbases near me in Scotland have bunkers like [these](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9e/24/8f/9e248f941d40fca8e947c4a57...) for storing RAF Tornados and Typhoons.
Hopefully this loss will be a lesson to the USAF
Some possibilities: 1) Nuclear hardened bunkers exist on base but were already full. 2) Nuclear response planning does not require planes to be stored in hardened bunkers. 3) The threat model for a nuke is different than a hurricane.
Excuses don't seem credible.
I'm not offering excuses. Hell, I'm not even suggesting the base design was satisfactory or that this damage is acceptable. I am offering possible explanations for why this amount of hurricane damage was sustained and why these specific air frames were not in "nuclear hardened bunkers".
"I saw some bunkers somewhere" is a pretty poor excuse for criticism of a military installation's design, or anything really.
It's not 72hours, but probably since ~ 1492 they knew that FL is hurricane country. They also know that x% of planes are always on maintenance and a certain amount of planes cannot evacuate to a safer base. And while not cheap, it's possible to make hurricane proof hangars. Someone dropped the ball and a lot of money was lost.
This was a strong cat 4 with heavy forward momentum and a significant storm surge, a 200+ year storm for the area. Nobody builds for highly unlikely events like this, they buy insurance.
Building better ones I bet would be cheaper than year after year insurance on billion $ items
Neither of us knows the detailed cost benefit analysis that went into hurricane preparedness at this base. No lives were lost and most of the F22s made it out, presumably a lot of the other assets did as well. Overall I’d say that’s a success.
If our plan for a 200 year storm is “rebuild” I’m ok with that if the alternative is “spend more than rebuild costs to hurricane proof the base”.
But uh, is it really news that hurricanes roll through Florida with pretty regular frequency?
So, uh, yeah, it’s news.
It’s disingenuous to claim there was a huge failure in preparedness in an area with frequent storms while ignoring the efforts involved to evacuate and the severity of the storm. This evacuation successfully saved every person on base and a significant amount of hardware from a 200 year storm in... 72 hours.
It's about 71.5 more hours than they'll get from an enemy.
Not all of these planes were airworthy, of course, but that in itself is a bit of a problem, IMO.
For example, a probable solution would be to place the aircraft far from things likely to become flying debris, then add sandbags... lots of sandbags. Park the planes on the runway, then add enough sandbags to divert the wind over the top.
I'd take that chance if I knew that the hangar would fail, but again, that is cheating.
They're planes. Fly them out of the way, it's not rocket science.
Point is, we don't know if the planes were in flight ready state, do we? It could be something simple but I'd not risk my officer's life just to save a plane.
My apologies if the planes were indeed flight certified.
These morons built an Air Force base with billions of hardware in hurricane territory, and were caught flat-footed by a hurricane because apparently there were no adequate plans for what to do when a hurricane approached?
Jesus christ. Those planes are irreplaceable. F-22 production has ceased, so it's not like they can order up some more. And considering the problems with the F-35s, those F-22s are some of the only capable 5th-gen fighters we're likely to have for a longggggggg time.
(I understand that most of the places were apparently evacuated, but it's tough to swallow any significant loss of those very expensive pieces of hardware due to inadequate planning)
Seeing as you've had the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate Tyndall's emergency hurricane evacuation procedures, the airworthiness of 55 aircraft divided between two squadrons, O&M/MILCON budget of a training base, and logistical impediments arising from 72-hours notice coupled with a swarm of evacuating civilians from surrounding areas, please do take the time to enlighten us all.
Are you saying that their plans were adequate? Clearly they weren't; they lost at least a handful of irreplaceable planes.
Or are you saying that there was just no way to predict or prepare for a hurricane hitting an airbase right in the middle of hurricane country? I mean, a lot of hurricanes roll through that part of the country.
My "evaluation" is what the article says. Namely, that the planes left behind weren't airworthy. If you know otherwise, let's hear it.I'm no military brain genius, but it seems obvious to me that at any given time less than 100% of the planes at any given airbase would be airworthy and that perhaps some provision should be made for sheltering or evacuating these planes if a hurricane rolls through this base which, again, is located in a very hurricane-prone region.
I'd think that the cost of making sure you don't lose a billion dollars worth of fighters every time a hurricane rolls through a hurricane-prone area probably costs less than, I don't know, a billion dollars.That you presume to parade your decision making as superior to the dozens of career field officers and senior enlisted members with real skin in the game--let alone the hundreds preceeding them who have earned their keep--is even more baffling.
That you continually insist $1bil in F-22 assets was lost to this hurricane is quite telling of both blatant ignorance and inexperience in matters relating to military aircraft maintenance operations.
Admittedly, I'm rather insulted by the magnitude of sheer narcissism and narrow-minded hubris in your remarks.
I angrily said "these idiots" as if everybody involved was an idiot.
What I should have acknowledged is that the folks on that base are insanely talented (I know enough about the military to know that the folks trusted with these aircraft are very elite) and in all likelihood pulled off a freaking miracle to save as much hardware as they did with (more importantly) zero loss of life. I have no doubt that they spent 72 hours stretched to their limits and performed admirably.
Whatever else we disagree on, at least we agree on that.
What I am angry at is the design of a base that had inadequate structures and/or procedures in place to enable those assets to be fully protected and/or evacuated in the event of a hurricane. Clearly those (or the budget allocated) were not adequate to fully handle the situation. The results attest to that.
The lifespan of the planes is only ~30 years. Losing a few of them to a total freak storm doesn't seem as outrageous as you are making it out to be, especially when much more of the fleet was evacuated than should be expected based on typical readiness.
You're acting like the USAF had no hurricane plan at all when in reality they obviously did. Not all the F-22s were lost and a bunch of the other assets made it out too.
From the article:
It seems pretty clear that on any base, not all planes will be airworthy at any given time.It also seems pretty clear that in prime hurricane season, in prime hurricane territory, that... I don't know, man, hurricanes might roll through.
Seems avoidable to me. Obviously, making every single hanger hurricane-proof is probably not feasible. How about, having some kind of smaller reinforced hangar for the planes which cannot be evacuated? Jet fighters are really not that massive; we're probably not talking something the size of a football stadium. Seems cheaper than just losing up to a billion dollars worth of irreplaceable fighters.
"More than a dozen F-22s were left behind as Hurricane Michael bore down on the base Oct. 10. Now, in Michael's wake, many of those are damaged, and some beyond repair, at a cost of more than $1 billion, Air Force officials said."
So of the ~12 planes left behind a subset were damaged and and even smaller subset (apparently four) were potentially damaged beyond repair.
The arrogance on display here is staggering. You think the USAF is not aware of hurricanes in Florida? Since you are obviously an expert please tell me how many category 4 hurricanes have hit the Florida panhandle in the time the USAF has existed or in the time since we started recording them. How many have hit Tyndall directly? How many times has it successfully withstood tropical storms and hurricanes?
Please share the credentials that qualify you to provide detailed guidance to the USAF on how to design and run an air base.