Scratch 1 billion dollars worth of F22

[TonyT]

It's probably a case of can we have extra  funding to improve / harden the  buildings against storm damage .... have you had problems before?..... no.....then no.

[John1]

19 minutes ago, TonyT said:

It's probably a case of can we have extra  funding to improve / harden the  buildings against storm damage .... have you had problems before?..... no.....then no.

 

Again - google Homestead AFB.   Not the first time an AF base in FL has been razed by a hurricane.   Seemed pretty apparent that this would occur again.     And given that there are always aircraft down for maint at any time, it also seems apparent that you would never be able to fly all assigned jets away prior a storm hitting.  As we just saw, towing them into a sheet metal hangar and hoping for the best isn’t the optimum solution.  

 

Regarding money - Costs to build a few reinforced concrete hangars are minimal. Heck, every base in Europe has dozens of them.  

[Dave Williams]

Hardened hangers are much less space efficient than regular hangers, so you would need more real estate to hold the same amount of aircraft as the standard hangers.  Also, how much do you spend for a once in maybe centuries event?  This was the strongest hurricane ever to hit this area in recorded history (and please spare the climate change argument that this is going to happen every few years now).  Finally, this $1 billion figure seems speculative.  The damages haven’t been totaled.  I’ll bet it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, but it’s unlikely that these aircraft were structurally damaged enough to be written enough.  Probably mostly damage to the canopy, skin panels, and the LO coatings, which won’t be cheap, but not massive.

 

The weaknesses here are our government’s shortsightness to limit production and shut down the production lines, making replacement difficult, plus make an aircraft so complex that unserviceability is so high.  Maybe what we need to do is find a better place to base F-22s than the coast of a hurricane prone state.  Not sure of the need to base our most advanced fighters on the Florida coast anyway.  What’s the threat that we need F-22s there that plain old F-15s and 16s can’t deal with?  Probably based there more for political reasons than common sense.

 

Grumpy old man out.

[CATCplSlade]

37 minutes ago, Dave Williams said:

This was the strongest hurricane ever to hit this area in recorded history

 

 

Unless you're specifically talking about Panama City, no. That honor would fall to the Cat 5 that hit the Keys in 1935 (185mph winds), followed by Camille in 1969 (I was 5 at the time; I still remembering driving along the coast with my mom to check out the damage), and then by Andrew in 1992, which I was also present for, although further inland towards Orlando.

 

Then you have Michael at #4. Prior to Michael the local champ was Opal in 1995, which nearly wiped Pensacola Beach off the map at only Cat 3.

[Dave Williams]

45 minutes ago, CATCplSlade said:

 

Unless you're specifically talking about Panama City, no. That honor would fall to the Cat 5 that hit the Keys in 1935 (185mph winds), followed by Camille in 1969 (I was 5 at the time; I still remembering driving along the coast with my mom to check out the damage), and then by Andrew in 1992, which I was also present for, although further inland towards Orlando.

 

Then you have Michael at #4. Prior to Michael the local champ was Opal in 1995, which nearly wiped Pensacola Beach off the map at only Cat 3.

 

I don’t consider the Keys and Homestead remotely in the same “area” as the Panhandle.  Might as well throw in Katrina because New Orleans is much closer than either, but in any case hurricane force winds only extend about 50 miles or so from the center, so I stand by my statement about the most powerful storm to hit that area in recorded history.

 

I’m very familiar with Florida hurricanes since I’ve been living on the east coast of Florida for 33 1/2 years.  The eyes of both Francis and Jeanne passed directly over me (went out in both of them), and then got affected by Wilma, and more recently Matthew passed just offshore and lost power during Irma last year.

[LSP_Kevin]

OK fellas, some of the posts here were veering off into directions political, so I've pruned them.

 

Kev

[dutik]

CRS Syndrom at work. Must be best practice for the USAF.

 

Who could expect a landfall? Naaa. Andrew 1992. Cat 5 over dry ground. And the list of his girlfriends too.

 

'Nuff said.

- dutik

[Cheetah11]

 

 

I wonder why NORAD headquarters was in a Colorado Mountain. Maybe far from earthquakes. hurricanes , possible land attacks and far from enemy air bases ???? 

 

Protecting your your country's strategic assets  from the above is Strategic Planning 101.

 

Maybe common sense has been killed by the "Cheapest option"

 

Nick

Edited October 16, 2018 by Cheetah11

[Dave Williams]

Cheyenne Mountain was built as it was because at the time it monitored and controlled the entire air defense of the the United States and it was a single very high value strategic target that far outweighed any airbase.  The complex was built in a mountain not to protect from natural disaster, but from nuclear attack since it would have been very high on an enemies target list.  F-22s are hardly strategic assets.

[TonyT]

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms

 

 

[Bravo52]

These post are fun...I like to see the differing opinions on how and why the AF does things... 

[CATCplSlade]

After I read that article Tony linked, I felt like I was reading about the Third Reich and the issues they had with over-complicated machinery that were maintenance nightmares and slow to produce in sufficient numbers.

[John1]

On 10/16/2018 at 9:45 AM, Dave Williams said:

.  F-22s are hardly strategic assets.

I would argue that they are.   They are “silver bullets” that give us a marked advantage in any conflict against a peer/near peer adversary.    Given the small fleet size, the loss of even a few has significant implications.  

 

No less value to the nation than a carrier or B-2.  

[D.B. Andrus]

44 minutes ago, CATCplSlade said:

After I read that article Tony linked, I felt like I was reading about the Third Reich and the issues they had with over-complicated machinery that were maintenance nightmares and slow to produce in sufficient numbers.

 

Third Reich, really?

[CATCplSlade]

43 minutes ago, D.B. Andrus said:

 

Third Reich, really?

 

Well, yes. The German military at that time was plagued with issues regarding the teething pains of the Panther and other vehicles in addition to only producing relatively small numbers due to over-engineering of the inner workings which made building those vehicles time-consuming compared to the Sherman or T-34. 

 

From the article it seems the F-22 spends more time in maintenance than in duty, which reminds me of the problems Germany had keeping their gear running. That just seems a liability to me. I wasn't comparing governmental style if that's what you're thinking.

Edited October 17, 2018 by CATCplSlade