After a month-long recovery from Hurricane Michael, Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., will resume operations with many key missions returning, following a U.S. Air Force announcement made last week.
Among the units that will resume operations at Tyndall AFB are the 601st Air Force Operations Center; the 337th Air Control Squadron; the Air Force Medical Agency Support team; the Air Force Office of Special Investigations; the 53rd Air-to-Air Weapons Evaluation Group; the Air Force Legal Operations Agency; Air Force recruiters; the 823rd Red Horse Squadron, Detachment 1; and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center. Dates vary, but most will resume by Jan. 1, 2019.
“We are focused on taking care of our Airmen and their families and ensuring the resumption of operations. These decisions were important first steps to provide stability and certainty,” Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said. “We’re working hard to return their lives to normalcy as quickly as possible.”
All but approximately 500 Airmen will return to the facility within the next one to three months.
“By the winter holidays and in many cases well before, we expect all our Airmen—military and civilians—to have certainty about their options so that everyone is either on a path or already settled,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said. “The strength of Tyndall (AFB) comes from its Airmen and their families. It will take us a while to restore buildings and infrastructure, but returning our Airmen and their combat missions to full strength—at Tyndall or somewhere else in the interim—will happen quickly,” he added.
Some missions will shift to other locations for the time being. Among them, the 43rd and 2nd Fighter Squadrons’ F-22 Fighter Training and T-38 Adversary Training Units will relocate operations to Eglin AFB in Destin, Fla., as will the 372nd Training Squadron, Detachment 4. Also, personnel and F-22s from the 95th Fighter Squadron will relocate to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia; Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska; and JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. The Noncommissioned Officer Academy will temporarily disperse across four locations: McGhee-Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tenn.; Maxwell AFB – Gunter Annex, Ala.; Keesler AFB, Miss.; and Sheppard AFB in Texas.
“We will rebuild Tyndall Air Force Base,” Vice President Mike Pence said while at Tyndall on Oct. 25.