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Not difficult at all—just a matter of making the decision and funding the effort.

When I was a crew dog (EC-130Es) back in the mid-90s, we were continuously deployed to Aviano AB, Italy. Aviano, like other USAFE bases, had enough hardened aircraft shelters for a full wing of fighters. In those days before F-16s moved there permanently, we usually had a couple of fighter squadrons deployed there, along with our aircraft and RAF E-3s.

Our platform was designated as Airborne Mission Commander for SAR during the nighttime hours, so crews scheduled to fly the next day pulled SAR alert from 1800L until we launched on our normal mission. We bunked in an aircraft shelter off the end of the runway, on cots inside metal building inside the Tab Vee. Every 90 minutes or so, another pair of Navy or USMC F/A-18s would taxi out and launch on their air patrols over Bosnia. Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep on those alert nights, with jets running up their engines just prior to take-off. But in wartime, those shelters offered dispersal and protection, ensuring that some of your aircraft would survive.

Lack of shelters at virtually all CONUS bases is a reflection of attempts to save money and a mistaken belief that a Cat 5 hurricane won’t happen here. In the case of Tyndall, the Air Force took the gamble and lost.

This also happened in the Viet Nam War. Robert Strange McNamara thought based on what was known of enemy capabilities the chances for aircraft loses from rocket or mortars was minimal. Tet 68 came along and at Da Nang and TSN and Bien Hoa scores of USAF aircraft were damaged and a good many destroyed on the ground by enemy rocket bombardment. The Norks had modified the launch mechanism for the Katuyuska (a pretty simple system anyway) to allow the rockets to be fired from individual launch racks. The NVA/VC sited scores of these in the bush around large bases and fired hundreds of rockets during the 68 offensive. We got very good at using tracking radar to locate the launch sites so as soon as a rocket started its parabola a good fix could be gotten on where it was fired from and in less than five minutes some times from launch US artillery rounds were descending on target. The Viets offset this somewhat by developing timed release devices so they could set their rockets up, wind up the launch set and be well gone when the rocket fired.