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It's one of the three USAF maintenance depots (consolidated, IIRC, back in the 90s). Aircraft that are maintained by USAF (vice dispatched to a contractor site

It's one of the three USAF maintenance depots (consolidated, IIRC, back in the 90s). Aircraft that are maintained by USAF (vice dispatched to a contractor site for the same kind of work) primarily go to Robins, Tinker, or Hill to be torn apart and rebuilt. An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance. And that's ignoring all the other functions the 25k+ people working there serve.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance This drone attack worked because small explosives detonated close to an airframe can do catastrophic damage. That simply isn’t true for most equipment, civil or military. (The exception at Tinker being the AWACS.) Tinker being nuked would be a strategic disaster. Dozens of drones causing small-arms damage around the base would be embarrassing, but nothing on the order of America losing a third of anything in its possession. The analog would have to be us putting e.g. most of one class of unit at Tinker simultaneously for maintenance.
- Jtsummers 1y ago
  You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker, but they aren't the only aircraft at Tinker. I count over 60 aircraft on the Google Maps image of Tinker, not all of them AWACS (there are less than 20 AWACS total so most of these planes aren't AWACS). And that's not counting what may be in hangars which could also be a target of this hypothetical attack. USAF has about 5500 aircraft, so this accounts for over 1% of the current USAF air fleet. It's not as critical an attack as what's happened in Russia, but it's still very damaging. It's an operational airfield so it has large fuel tanks which would be targeted and are hardly immune to small explosives themselves. Attacking those and the ensuing fires would be costly to repair and recover from. That alone, ignoring any attacks on aircraft, could lead to months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks (if the aircraft survived the attack).
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker They’re slow to make, critical to modern war and we don’t even have two dozen of them. (I think at least a quarter of our AWACS are at Tinker. Hence the analogy to Russia concentrating its bombers.) For everything else we have redundancy in droves. > not all of them AWACS Yup, refuelling, logistics, cyberwar. Nice to have. But not critical and few among many. > months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones. (Not unless they’re storing munitions within blast range of the tanks.) I’m not arguing such a strike wouldn’t be damaging. It just would not be disabling to scale of this attack. It would also be unusual for the highways around bases to be unrestricted during major wartime. (Or drones to remain uncontrolled, for that matter.)
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      > You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones. Why are you so certain of this? IIUC (I am far from an expert) the insurgents in Iraq regularly utilized improvised shaped charge devices to attack armored vehicles. I don't understand those to have been particularly large or heavy. Consider that fiber FPV drones are carrying upwards of 2 kg of fiber (IIUC) in addition to the payload. Fuel tanks are stationary so you can dispense with the fiber.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> An attack on a place like Tinker won't necessarily hurt in the next 6 months, but will in the next 18 when you lack the critical facilities for depot maintenance This drone attack worked because small explosives detonated close to an airframe can do catastrophic damage. That simply isn’t true for most equipment, civil or military. (The exception at Tinker being the AWACS.) Tinker being nuked would be a strategic disaster. Dozens of drones causing small-arms damage around the base would be embarrassing, but nothing on the order of America losing a third of anything in its possession. The analog would have to be us putting e.g. most of one class of unit at Tinker simultaneously for maintenance.

Jtsummers 1y ago
You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker, but they aren't the only aircraft at Tinker. I count over 60 aircraft on the Google Maps image of Tinker, not all of them AWACS (there are less than 20 AWACS total so most of these planes aren't AWACS). And that's not counting what may be in hangars which could also be a target of this hypothetical attack. USAF has about 5500 aircraft, so this accounts for over 1% of the current USAF air fleet. It's not as critical an attack as what's happened in Russia, but it's still very damaging. It's an operational airfield so it has large fuel tanks which would be targeted and are hardly immune to small explosives themselves. Attacking those and the ensuing fires would be costly to repair and recover from. That alone, ignoring any attacks on aircraft, could lead to months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks (if the aircraft survived the attack).
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > You're focused on AWACS probably because that's the operational unit at Tinker They’re slow to make, critical to modern war and we don’t even have two dozen of them. (I think at least a quarter of our AWACS are at Tinker. Hence the analogy to Russia concentrating its bombers.) For everything else we have redundancy in droves. > not all of them AWACS Yup, refuelling, logistics, cyberwar. Nice to have. But not critical and few among many. > months of downtime for the airfield and various disruptions as you relocate your operational units to an airfield that still has fuel tanks You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones. (Not unless they’re storing munitions within blast range of the tanks.) I’m not arguing such a strike wouldn’t be damaging. It just would not be disabling to scale of this attack. It would also be unusual for the highways around bases to be unrestricted during major wartime. (Or drones to remain uncontrolled, for that matter.)
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    > You’re not detonating fuel tanks at Tinker with drones. Why are you so certain of this? IIUC (I am far from an expert) the insurgents in Iraq regularly utilized improvised shaped charge devices to attack armored vehicles. I don't understand those to have been particularly large or heavy. Consider that fiber FPV drones are carrying upwards of 2 kg of fiber (IIUC) in addition to the payload. Fuel tanks are stationary so you can dispense with the fiber.