F-22 Raptor grounded by swarm of almost 20,000 bees

This is crazy.
https://theaviationist.com/2016/08/11/f-22-raptor-grounded-by-swarm-of-20000-bees/

 

"On base entomologist". Does our military really need an entomologist on each base? I am pro military, but our government pisses so much money away it's ridiculous. So what does this guy do for the next 15 years while waiting for the next bee invasion (which he didn't dispatch himself, he made the recommendation to call a beekeeper. Sure glad we had that entomologist on site, I'm sure nobody would have thought of calling a beekeeper. Not to mention a quick trip around the pattern or up to altitude would have solved the problem just as well.)

 

I think the on base guy was a maintenance chief that was coincidentally a beekeeper.
That said iirc they have tried to weaponize bees in past so perhaps Air Force drone taken more literally than necessary?

 

That caught my attention as well.... I'm guessing just from experience that it's an on base wildlife person who spends the majority of their time dealing with birds. Birds are a pretty major issue and off the of my head the F-22 was notable as a non-crash Class A accident (greater than $1 million damage) when one sucked a stork through an engine a few years back.

 

As I recall, most bases have an entomology section within the bioenvironmental engineering flight within the aerospace medicine squadrons. They are not entomologists with degrees per se, but enlisted folks with some specialized training (such as how to open a phone book and call a bee keeper.) They may have been part of Civil Engineering too. I really can't recall. They were all called "Racoon Chasers" to the rest of us.

Seriously though. Those folks had a pretty tough job dealing with problems all over bases that often sprawled hundred of square miles. When deployed they made sure we stayed safe from who the hell knows what crawled all over these places. Camel Spiders...'nuf said!

 

I assume the bees were just in the midst of migrating and would have been gone by the next day.

Had a swarm about the same size take refuge in my tree last summer for about 12 hours.

 

Camel Spiders? Lots of war stories about them from Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Used to see them at night when we were taxiing. Guys tried to keep them as pets, but they chewed their way out of the cages. One ate a 9" long lizard. Scary things.
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Our maintenance guys in Kuwait kept them and held cage matches. It was quite popular. I only ever caught a small one which was mortally wounded in the process. I used superglue to attach it to the door frame of our flight surgeons room. It was an awesome prank that didn't work out as planned when a female pilot walked by and freaked the **** out and smashed it with a boot.

 

I have always had a great deal of respect for all who serve our country, especially in hostile, dangerous, and inhospitable places.

Doubly so, after seeing ^^that mother****er^^

Thank you for providing me the freedom to live in a land devoid of those ****ing things.

 

Thanks Taz, I don't think I'll be sleeping for a week!

 

That's what I recall as well. In most cases we couldn't ask the locals (language barrier) nor refer to the internet (there wasn't one). I suppose nowadays, "there's an app for that".