Up to 17 F-22 Raptors may have been damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Michael

As someone who works for a large defense contractor, in my experience this lack of long-term thinking is endemic to the industry leadership as a whole, down to software developers often having to lobby and push for basic equipment, like workstations with the software required to run their code (not making this up). It's a very efficient business in terms of extracting revenue from the customer, the actual mission is almost always secondary or tertiary, much to the chagrin of the Engineers. And it's very complacent.

In theory there's competition, but in reality all the big contractors are roughly the same company with a different color scheme down to the salary grades. I've had co-workers whose customer shifted the contract from one big contractor to the other and the only thing that changed was his badge and health insurance provider.

It's actually a possible golden opportunity for any aspiring entrepreneurs willing to endure the politics and bullshit of working with the government. Regarding software, providing a better and cheaper product than the incumbents would not be difficult. The barriers would be human, but not necessarily insurmountable.

Not to mention, what’s the true capacity of the US defense network if there’s a series of bad weather events? What happens if a hurricane hits the east coast shortly after a major earthquake hits the west coast?

Are we training our enemies on our non-nuclear weak points?

Or perhaps something has gone “horribly right.” Now Lockheed gets to sell an additional 17 replacement jets. I would argue that the goal of the MIC isn’t to effectively allocate resources to defend the US (or even to expand US imperialism). It’s to make money for the MIC and keep the system going.

Yeah, an F-22 isn't a Toyota Camry. Some quick googling shows they require 12 maintenance man-hours for every hour of flight time. Given how quickly Michael ramped up, I wouldn't be surprised if those planes were simply caught in an unflyable state.

All the talk about flying them away, or not. You're storing billions in hardware next to a beach in hurricane country. Maybe drop 10 million -- hell, even 100 million -- for an elevated bunker rated to survive the strongest possible storm?

Maybe cancel a few band practices -- or, a dumb-ass DC parade -- to pay for it.

The bunker doesn't have to be large enough to be a general working space. Just a safe, to toss the crown jewels in, when warranted. (And elevated, because storm surge, if that's a possible factor.)

Production was halted in 2011, and restarting it wouldn't be cheap.

In 2016, the Air Force estimated $9.9 billion in non-recurring start-up costs. [^1]

[1]: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/21/the-f22-fight...

here is before. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21133/florida-air-base-...

packed in pretty good.

AFter https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpRVHdvVAAADoHd.jpg:large

I see couple of F16 with orange marking, but in top left corner, there is F22 tail

The B-29 was the first nuclear strategic bomber. They were decommissioned in 1960.

If you have read down the twitter thread you would have perfectly found an article explaining the reasons..

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-recor...

The best idea is to have a geographically- and meterologically-diverse network of bases, with enough capacity to shift your flyable assets in case of emergency. Which is basically what we have. And you do want bases as close to your borders as possible to gain the initiative when needed.

The failure here is the F-22 replacement parts supply chain, which is likely exacerbated by cancelling the program after purchasing about half of the promised aircraft.