Tyndall Air Force Base Hurricane Michael Recovery Industry Day #3: Welcome Video
“Base Tour and Update” video production
Industry Day is a collaborative effort where senior military and business leaders come together to discuss innovations and the future of Tyndall Air Force Base and the impact to the community. We realize there is no better way to rebuild Tyndall AFB without a partnership that includes both the local community and Industry. This is our third Industry Day in what we hope will be a series of exchanges to help identify innovative ways to move forward as we rebuild Tyndall together. On behalf of the Air Force we are pleased that you have taken time away from your busy schedules to assist us with the rebuild at one of the Air Force’s most important bases in its inventory.
Industry Day was held at Florida State University – Panama City’s Holley Academic Center, Panama City, Florida
Transcript
The last few weather reports we had is this is, this is gonna be a strong Cat 4, maybe a Cat 5, and Tyndall is the bullseye. We heard the roof start to tear away, some really loud metal ripping sounds, and couple rip rip rip, and then you heard the whole thing go. When you walked outside, people weren’t really saying a lot. What are you gonna say, I mean it was surreal. You could tell that the damage was significant. I think you could probably say in some cases that the damage was catastrophic. (sad piano music) Our base took a beating and our people took a beating. The recovery effort has been remarkable, has been amazing. I can tell you with high confidence we’re gonna be better tomorrow than we are today, ’cause I know for a fact we’re better today than we were yesterday, and I couldn’t be more proud of the thousand airmen who are bed down here today, who have been able to accomplish so much in so little time.
Morning everybody. I’d like to welcome you to Industry Day 3 here at Tyndall Air Force Base. I’m Colonel Brian Laidlaw, the installation commander up here at Tyndall. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since hurricane Michael made landfall here at the base. What I’d like to say though is over the course of the last 10 months, we’ve made a lot of progress, and I’d like to give you a few examples. As you’re aware, we’re an F-22 training base. We are training F-22 pilots, maintainers, and intelligence airmen at the same rate that we were training them at prior to the storm. Our First Air Force, and our Air Operations Center have taken the Homeland Defense Watch. Our test and our training enterprise is back doing Combat Archers, and Combat Hammers, from right here at the base. Our nation’s engineers are training down at our Silver Flag site at the same rates that they were training at prior to the storm. And our Air Battle Manager schoolhouse, they’re kicking out Air Battle Managers to our Combat Air Forces at record rates that exceed what we were able to do last year, and they plan to do even more next year. If you add it all up, we have 85% of our people back at work, but the reality is that we’re operating out of only half of our facilities, because that’s all that survived the storm, and that’s where we need your help.
We welcome our industry partners to our third Industry Day today. We’re going to update you on where we are with the Tyndall rebuild, and more importantly, let you know what we need from you as we face a multi-billion dollar construction effort in our very near future. Industry is key to our success, and I can’t thank you enough for your willingness to come out again and partner with us as we work to build Tyndall as the Air Force’s 21st Century installation. It’s going to be resilient, sustainable, and adaptable, and most importantly, ready to support the digitally integrated missions of today and tomorrow.
As you may have heard, Tyndall Air Force base sits on 29,000 acres of very strategic real estate for our nation. We’re surrounded on three sides by some of our country’s most pristine airspaces. That airspace and this base will be the key to test and training, not only now, but well into the future, for our Air Force. So, on behalf of all the men and women, who every day are working as hard as we can to build not the base that we had, but the base that we need for the future, I want to thank you for taking this very important step to joining our team and being a part of something special.
We have the best people in place, and now it’s time to partner with industry, working side by side to make Tyndall the Air Force base of the future, leading the way for the next hundred years.