NYT: Most of Tyndall’s 55 F-22s were flown away to safety before the storm hit, but 17 of the aircraft had been grounded for maintenance and could not be made airworthy in time. Those jets, worth about $5.8 billion — more than three times what it would cost to rebuild the entire base from scratch — had to be left behind, and many were damaged.
Several factors conspired to put a tenth of the nation’s F-22 fleet at risk in Hurricane Michael. The sophisticated jets are notoriously temperamental, and at any given time, only about half the them are mission-ready, according to a recent Air Force report. The storm appeared and developed swiftly, giving maintenance crews only a few days’ warning to get as many jets airworthy as they could. And though the 17 F-22s left behind were put in hangars built to weather tropical storms, the buildings were no match for a Category 4 monster whose winds were clocked at 130 miles an hour before they broke the base’s wind gauge. ...
With more than a dozen Air Force, Navy and Marine airfields dotting the coast from Texas to Virginia, military leaders know that another disaster is only a matter of time, General Arlen said, but they may run into trouble addressing the growing threat by name because of President Trump’s outspoken skepticism about climate change.
“Leaders have to walk on eggshells with the administration about what they say,” the general said. “They have to frame it in terms of resiliency and preparedness.”
Whatever words are used, there is no cheap or easy way to safeguard aircraft from storms like Michael. Fleets of fighters cannot simply be relocated permanently to inland bases, experts say, because vast, empty training areas are needed where pilots can safely fire missiles and shoot down target drones. Most of those areas are over the ocean.
The base has 11,000 personnel, and they were all evacuated without injury but apparently are not allowed yet to visit base housing to see how it fared.
I've seen plans for massive seawalling of whole areas to protect some, but hurricanes are another issue. How much worse are they going to get? What do we build for? The Atlantic circulation has slowed to a 1000-year low -- so far. Record hot water temperatures in hurricane areas -- so far.
Those eager to cast angry blame should obviously start conserving and stockpiling some extra energy for the future. It's not only going to get worse, but there's real danger of accelerated and even very abrupt and abruptly catastrophic climate change effects, very promising for outrages like you've never felt.
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