On Oct. 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida panhandle and the eye of the storm passed directly over Tyndall Air Force Base. With sustained winds of 155 miles per hour, the category 5 hurricane destroyed most of the installation and surrounding area.
Immediately following the storm, the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center formed Task Force Phoenix to help Air Combat Command and Tyndall’s 325th Fighter Wing clear debris, assess damage to facilities, preserve recoverable facilities and determine courses of action for other facilities.
Tyndall PMO
In November 2018, AFIMSC shifted its Tyndall operations from short-term response to long-term recovery and rebuilding. The AFIMSC-led Tyndall Program Management Office was established to replace Task Force Phoenix and take charge of repairing, reshaping and rebuilding Tyndall to support near-term resumption of mission operations and long-term redevelopment and reconstruction.
In January 2019, the Tyndall PMO created an installation rebuild master plan and began facility design work.
Offutt PMO
A few months later, in March 2019, the icy waters of the Missouri and Platte rivers engulfed nearly one third of Offutt AFB, Nebraska, following record rainfall and melting snow breaching nearby levees. The following month, AFIMSC established a PMO to support recovery operations at Offutt.
In the summer of 2019, Congress approved supplemental funding for Air Force disaster relief and recovery. Combined, Offutt and Tyndall represent an initial MILCON investment of more than $3.6 billion, and a full-lifecycle cost of roughly $9 billion.
Natural Disaster Recovery Division
Recognizing the importance of a single unit focused on recovery, in 2021 the Air Force established the Natural Disaster Recovery Division (NDR), a part of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center’s Facility Engineering Directorate. The civil engineer center is a primary subordinate unit of AFIMSC.
Today, the NDR division serves as a strategic reserve of expertise equipped to tackle current and future natural disasters with capabilities that include damage assessment, requirements development and construction execution. The division also has a responsibility to rebuild installations with adaptive, resilient, right-sized and fiscally sustainable infrastructure that can withstand future natural disasters and enhances combat power.
The NDR mission is one component of a broader AFIMSC approach to managing infrastructure following the 2019 Air Force release of an Infrastructure Investment Strategy that provided a stark analysis of the degrading condition of the force’s 180 installations.
The AFIMSC enterprise is rolling out new approaches and analytical tools developed to restore installation readiness through cost-effective modernization, innovation and mission-needs-based prioritization.
Dubbed the “Unity of Effort” initiative, the AFIMSC approach is expected to align policy, planning, programming, execution and sustainment to meet mission requirements for on-time, on-schedule and on-budget delivery of capabilities.
(Current as of September 2022)