Hurricane Cost May Skyrocket As Billions In Stealth Fighter Jets Unaccounted For; Tyndall AFB “Complete Loss”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

After Hurricane Michael rendered Tyndall Air Force Base a “complete loss” from “widespread, catastrophic damage” – questions remain over nearly two-dozen F-22 Stealth Fighters which are unaccounted for.

According to the New York Times, Tyndall is home to 55 stealth fighters, “which cost a dizzying $339 million each.” Before Michael hit, the Air Force evacuated at least 33 of the planes to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, however they would not comment on the status of the remaining 22 fighters.  

Air Force officials have not disclosed the whereabouts of the remaining 22 planes, other than to say that a number of aircraft were left at the base because of maintenance or safety reasons.

An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Malinda Singleton, would not confirm that any of the aircraft left behind were F-22s.

But photos and video from the wreckage of the base showed the distinctive contours of the F-22’s squared tail fins and angled vertical stabilizers amid a jumble of rubble in the base’s largest building, Hangar 5. Another photo shows the distinctive jet in a smaller hangar that had its doors and a wall ripped off by wind.

All of the hangars at the base were damaged, Major Singleton said Friday. “We anticipate the aircraft parked inside may be damaged as well,” she said, “but we won’t know the extent until our crews can safely enter those hangars and make an assessment.” –NYT

F-22s are notoriously finicky and, as the Times puts it “not always flight-worthy.” The Air Force reported earlier this year that just 49% of F-22s were mission ready at any given time – the lowest rate of any fighter in the Air Force. The total value of the unaccounted-for fighters is arouind $7.5 billion.

The eye of Hurricane Michael traveled directly over Tyndall, peeling back stormproof roofs like tin cans and flipping over an F-15 fighter jet display at the base entrance.

When it was over, the base lay in ruins, amid what the Air Force called “widespread catastrophic damage.” There were no reported injuries, in part because nearly all personnel had been ordered to leave in advance of the Category 4 hurricane’s landfall. Commanders still sifting through mounds of wreckage Thursday could not say when evacuation orders would be lifted. –NYT

See the rest with pictures here: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-13/hurricane-cost-may-skyrocket-billions-stealth-fighter-jets-unaccounted-tyndall-afb

15 thoughts on “Hurricane Cost May Skyrocket As Billions In Stealth Fighter Jets Unaccounted For; Tyndall AFB “Complete Loss””

  1. Gone missing my ass….they must think we’re all one crate short of a full load. I’ll tell you what’s really gone missing, and that is Trumps secret stash of extra hold hairspray that was accidently left outside on the tarmac before Michael hit.

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  5. I know, I know…they went to Al Qaida. Or Al Nusra. Or the White Helmets. Or Saudi since they need them to genocide Yemen even better than they have been. Or Obama or Clinton stole them and sold them to pedophile gangs to hide the bodies…Maybe it is jobs…building F-22’s that don’t work very well so more and more have to be built for no other purpose than to keep the MIC going and “jobs”…watch this, now they’ll make more “jobs” building robots to build these jets that don’t work well…after all, we need more federal debt, right? When it hits a quadrillion, let me know… Or this–another false flag…boy o boy, they sure know how to use planes for that purpose!

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    1. My gut instincts tell me that these 22 “missing planes” wound up in Israel. Free of charge. Let’s see now. At $339,000,000 each, times 22 – that would come to a rip off of the American tax payer of:
      $7,458,000,000.

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  8. This means that 22 out of 55 very expensive planes were not ‘flight-worthy’ … thats only 2,528,262.00 MILLION dollars sitting there wasting away, now destroyed; or were they sold or given away to another?

    Any ‘guess’ who got them?

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  10. YEP , I agree they went to Israel under the cloak of a hurricane, to combat the S300. we all know trump is sleeping with Satan yahoo , I mean Benjamin Netanyahu the Zionist piece of shit.Jim Stone investigative journalist put it out there.

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  11. Relatively speaking, this is a drop in bucket for the military. More importantly, how did the Pentagon manage to “lose track” of $20 Trillion dollars? That’s more than their total budget for the time period. Maybe it’s time for Trump to start acting like the Commander-in-Chief instead of Cheerleader-in-Chief. It’s impossible to drain the swamp without looking into the blatant waste and corruption in the armed forces budgets. Or, we can continue to pay too much for weapons platforms that may or may not work when needed.

    Reply

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