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Up to 17 F-22 Raptors may have been damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Michael
- zaroth 8y agoAny before/after pictures of the hanger? I guess not due to the sensitivity of the intelligence, but hard to believe hangers holding a few billion of jets weren’t fortified to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast.
- pcurve 8y agohere is before. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21133/florida-air-base-hangar-turns-into-a-raptors-nest-as-f-22s-take-refuge-from-alberto http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21133/florida-air-base-... packed in pretty good. AFter https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpRVHdvVAAADoHd.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpRVHdvVAAADoHd.jpg:large I see couple of F16 with orange marking, but in top left corner, there is F22 tail
- zaroth 8y agoThank you! Wow, that hanger was completely destroyed. Unbelievably destructive storm. Those planes are toast.
- cozzyd 8y agoDoes seem like a bad idea to have an air force base right on the coast.
- CodeWriter23 8y agoThe best idea is to have a geographically- and meterologically-diverse network of bases, with enough capacity to shift your flyable assets in case of emergency. Which is basically what we have. And you do want bases as close to your borders as possible to gain the initiative when needed. The failure here is the F-22 replacement parts supply chain, which is likely exacerbated by cancelling the program after purchasing about half of the promised aircraft.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ridgeguy 8y agoGiven a 2009 flyaway cost of $150 million each [1], 17 F-22s lost is about $3B in todays dollars. Seems like it's worth hardening Tyndall's buildings or scrapping the base and moving inland. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pasbesoin 8y agoAll the talk about flying them away, or not. You're storing billions in hardware next to a beach in hurricane country. Maybe drop 10 million -- hell, even 100 million -- for an elevated bunker rated to survive the strongest possible storm? Maybe cancel a few band practices -- or, a dumb-ass DC parade -- to pay for it. The bunker doesn't have to be large enough to be a general working space. Just a safe, to toss the crown jewels in, when warranted. (And elevated, because storm surge, if that's a possible factor.)
- cma 8y agoBuilders of cheap, strong bunkers can't hire expensive lobbyists. And Lockheed definitely isn't going to lobby for it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- runlevel1 8y agoProduction was halted in 2011, and restarting it wouldn't be cheap. In 2016, the Air Force estimated $9.9 billion in non-recurring start-up costs. [^1] [1]: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/21/the-f22-fighter-jet-restart-dead-study.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/21/the-f22-fight...
- gravy 8y agoAlso worth reading (and is also included in the tweet chain) before any discussions on moving them. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...
- mikeash 8y agoI’d have thought that military aircraft hangars could withstand a hurricane. They are supposed to serve in times of war, after all. I’d think they’d be built to survive a somewhat near miss from a nuke.
- blondie9x 8y agoThis is one of the reasons The Pentagon needs to keep their eyes on climate change. The politicization of the science needs to stop. I am also surprised The Air-force did not move the entirety of the fleet as it normally does when extreme weather is imminent.
- sremani 8y agoIf you have read down the twitter thread you would have perfectly found an article explaining the reasons.. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...
- justin66 8y agoDoes that author have any sort of military background, or is he just a blogger?
- nradov 8y agoTyler Rogoway is a well known defense journalist and has been covering this stuff for years. He's not just a blogger.
- justin66 8y agoI tried to find a CV for him, to no avail. I am pretty unimpressed with the tone of his comments (you fools just don't understand!).
- nradov 8y agoI might take a snippy tone myself if ignorant people kept sending me the same stupid suggestions and questions. Most of his articles are somewhat "inside baseball" and assume that the reader has a certain baseline knowledge of policy and technology rather than explaining every little thing.
- JamesCoyne 8y agoThe thread goes on for a bit before the author says: Fair. Technically correct would be 9% of Raptor airframes in the USAF inventory. Appreciate the correction. The caveat is that the damaged airframes could be trainers, as many combat ready jets were moved prior to the storm.
- LaMarseillaise 8y agoSince a lot of the comments on this are basically "Why weren't they flown away?" Many of the aircraft were flown away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHKLfXTwvc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHKLfXTwvc The aircraft that remained were likely unable to be evacuated: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...
- scottLobster 8y agoYeah, an F-22 isn't a Toyota Camry. Some quick googling shows they require 12 maintenance man-hours for every hour of flight time. Given how quickly Michael ramped up, I wouldn't be surprised if those planes were simply caught in an unflyable state.
- obblekk 8y agoThis feels like one of those events that historians will look back upon as a signal of the decline of the American Empire that went unnoticed. Yes, all the reasons listed in the article make sense. These reasons are the proximate cause for why the aircraft could not be saved. However, what we’re effectively saying is that we as a society have a defense system incapable of prioritizing a few million dollars in hangar cost to protect a few hundred million dollars in aircraft cost (think about how many weather events can be expected to happen over the 50yr life of the F22). When the military industrial complex starts making such poor resource allocation decisions, something has gone horribly wrong. We’re just too afraid to admit it.
- obblekk 8y agoNot to mention, what’s the true capacity of the US defense network if there’s a series of bad weather events? What happens if a hurricane hits the east coast shortly after a major earthquake hits the west coast? Are we training our enemies on our non-nuclear weak points?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rangibaby 8y ago> Are we training our enemies on our non-nuclear weak points? ATM there is no nation in the world with the ability to launch a conventional invasion of the USA, let alone have a chance of succeeding
- Pulcinella 8y agoOr perhaps something has gone “horribly right.” Now Lockheed gets to sell an additional 17 replacement jets. I would argue that the goal of the MIC isn’t to effectively allocate resources to defend the US (or even to expand US imperialism). It’s to make money for the MIC and keep the system going.
- LVB 8y agoDoubtful, since the last plane was delivered about 6 years ago and the program has very steep startup costs.
- dba7dba 8y agoNot the first time this sort of thing happened. http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2010/06/prior-to-arrival-of-boeing-b-52.html http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2010/06/prior-to-arrival-of-... The 1952 Carswell AFB Tornado In 1952, 2/3 of the B-36 bomber force of USA knocked out in less than 30 minutes by tornados. And I'm pretty sure B-36 was the only strategic nuclear weapon delivery system at the time, as this was before nuclear powered submarines or ICBMs.
- captain_perl 8y agoThe B-29 was the first nuclear strategic bomber. They were decommissioned in 1960.
- dingaling 8y agoThe B-29 wasn't strategic in terms of Cold War capability against the USSR, in fact SAC had downgraded it to 'medium bomber' in classification. SAC did modify a few dozen with inflight refueling as the B-29MR but that required stripping off nearly all defensive armament and giving over half of the bomb capacity to fuel tanks. And even then the missions would be one-way: http://b-29.org/charlie/charlie1.html http://b-29.org/charlie/charlie1.html The developed B-50 was semi-strategic and had inflight refuelling capability from the outset.