Raptor Rising: Hurricane Damage Won’t Stop Most F-22s From Flying

November 5, 2018 Topic: Security Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: F-22MilitaryTechnologyWorld

Raptor Rising: Hurricane Damage Won’t Stop Most F-22s From Flying

Really good news. 

The damage caused to F-22 Raptors that rode out Hurricane Michael at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, will not prevent 80 percent of all Raptors from being flyable by fiscal 2019, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said on Friday.

“We expect to meet that goal,” Wilson told reporters. “Most of the F-22s have already flown out of Tyndall and the last ones will fly out by Nov. 6.”

Defense Secretary James Mattis has ordered that 80 percent of F-22s and other fighter aircraft fleets be mission capable by Oct. 1, 2019.

Seventeen F-22s were at Tyndall when Hurricane Michael destroyed the base on Oct. 10, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., revealed in an Oct. 22 letter to Wilson.

“The damage was far less than feared and we won’t go into details,” Wilson said on Friday, noting that the Raptors were able to fly shortly after the storm.

The Air Force does not yet know how much the damage to Tyndall will cost to repair, she said. It will take “several years” to fully restore the base.

For the meantime, the F-22s and personnel with the 95th Fighter Squadron will move to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia; Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Wilson said.

The Air Force has not yet decided whether the squadron will return to Tyndall.

This article originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter.

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