It seems that almost 10% of our F-22 fleet is damaged or destroyed because someone didn't think to get them out of the path of Hurricane Michael. Yeah, really.
The US Air Force’s Tyndall Air Base in Florida has taken a direct hit. Many of its ultra-advanced F-22 Raptor stealth fighters have been caught on the ground.C'mon, guys. Those things fly, or are supposed to. IF a hurricane is coming, get them wheels-up and out of the danger zone. Letting an advanced jet fighter get destroyed by weather is simply unacceptable.
Exactly how many of the $475 million aircraft were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Michael has not yet been revealed.
Someone's head needs to roll over this.
5 comments:
Unconscionable, but I'd still like to hear the explanation. I'm betting it'll revolve around "not enough pilots available to fly them out," probably more like "not enough F-22 certified pilots...." as if leaving them to be destroyed rather than risking them with an F-16 of F-15 driver was a better choice.
Along the same lines, should we not be expecting military installations to have a emergency resource plan of some sort, and a base located on the Hurricane Coast have preps in the can for dealing with that?
On a separate note, any bets on how high the base commander will now be promoted to reward him for his command ability?
I'm confused, because I'd seen reports that all aircraft were evacuated before Michael hit.
The ones that were on the ground were not flyable. Too big to truck (to where? a choked freeway?), hangers were not bunkers(money), and the storm gave them 48 hours to act.
Exactly what I found; from what this article says, F-22 parts are in short supply, and the hangar that many of them were in partially collapsed: https://taskandpurpose.com/tyndall-f-22-destroyed-hurricane-michael/
This is the best explanation I've seen: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms
So, the better question would probably be: Tyndall AFB is located in Florida, right on the coast. Why wasn't there adequate hanger space that was built to withstand a Cat 4/5 hurricane?
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