Air Force plans cuts; impact on Tyndall unknown

TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE — Local officials said Thursday they don’t know what impact, if any, the Air Force’s plans to cut about 22,500 airmen from its active duty force would have on airmen stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base.

The cuts are expected to come over the course of about a year, and many, if not all, of the positions will be cut through attrition, said Tyndall spokesman Herman Bell and Bay Defense Alliance President Tom Neubauer. Bell suggested the Air Force might first target airmen with problems in their background if too few positions are cut through attrition or offer early retirement to airmen with less than 20 years.

Neubauer said cuts might target specific fields within the Air Force, such as public affairs.

“It’s just too soon to know that’s going to impact us, if it’s going to impact us at all,” Neubauer said.

Tyndall is currently home to about 3,000 airmen, but that number is expected to swell to about 3,500 to 3,600 as the Air Force continues to transfer F-22s. That transfer is expected to be complete in the spring.

“We’re growing, as you know, with that new F-22 squadron,” Bell said.

The cuts were mentioned in documents from the Air Force Personnel Center. Those numbers are expected to change, said Mike Dickerson, a spokesman for the center.

Congressman Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, said he does not think the force reduction will have a big effect on Northwest Florida.

“Based on what the Air Force has told us, I do not expect a significant negative impact in the near future for our area,” he said in an email.

He said the recent vote to delay the sequester, which requires steep and immediate defense budget cuts, helped avoid a “catastrophe” for the military and regions like Northwest Florida with a strong military presence — at least for the next two years.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh addressed force reduction during a visit to Eglin Air Force Base last week.

“How we do business is going to change, and that’s what we have to be thinking about in the future,” he said. “We know what the budget is going to look like in 2023” when sequestration ends. “It will not support the same size Air Force we have today. The Air Force has to be more capable, credible and viable. We have to invest now in order to have that force in 2023.”

Neubauer said a delegation of military booster groups from the Panhandle will be traveling to Washington, D.C., in March, and the trip should shed more light on what the Air Force plans to do locally. The next session of Congress also will be illuminating, he said.

For now though, the future of local airmen is up in the air.

“I’ve got a lot of airmen sitting here wondering about their future, and we can’t tell them,” Bell said.