Air Force chief working to rebuild Tyndall base

He said in an interview that we are focused on making sure that the base is resilient as we rebuild, and that we can continue this mission for many, many years.

The base has a mission that can only be trained here on Florida's sunny beaches. It is the only airspace in the country where the Air Force can train fighter pilots to shoot down fake fighter jets from the sky and from the ground with rockets. The debris falls into the gulf of Mexico and is retrieved to be reconstructed and reused.

Watkins said that Tyndall was the heart of air dominance. It is the core of our air power for our fighter aviation. The idea that the U.S. air power could be destroyed by a storm highlights the threat that climate change poses to the military. While some parts of the U.S. government and private sector have been slow to respond to climate threats, climate risk analysis has become a part of the military preparations for the future. The Pentagon called climate change a threat to national security, and the Army released a climate strategy guide in February, which included a roadmap of actions that will enhance unit and installation readiness and resilience in the face of climate-related threats. Tyndall is now being rebuilt to withstand the enhanced threats.

New buildings are going up that are stronger than what was previously here in the past, scattered between makeshift airplane hangers and temporary office structures. Air Force engineers have inserted new standards into what now looks like the bones of a building. Those bones will eventually wear an armor of materials meant to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.

Watkins said that we are trying to be innovative and we are trying a lot of new projects. Some of them will be successful and will carry over to how we build Air Force bases in the future and how we do coastal resilience in the future, not just on Air Force bases. The rebuild is using the base's natural habitat as a first line of defense against powerful storms, combined with stricter building codes. Tyndall is located on a peninsula, making it particularly vulnerable to storm surge, flooding and wave erosion if a strong storm hits its coast.