The Air Force is demolishing the Cold War-era fuel storage tanks at Beale AFB, Calif., that supported the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft that formerly operated from the base. Workers have already removed three of the five massive tanks that held the airplanes’ JP-7 jet fuel; they are scheduled to demolish the remaining two in the coming months, states Beale’s July 22 release. Each of the tanks held between 400,000 gallons and 657,000 gallons of fuel, according to the release. “They’re kind of historic structures,” said Robert Nordhal, 9th Civil Engineer Squadron flight chief of programs at Beale. “We just don’t have the need for high-capacity fuel storage anymore,” he said. This demolition project is a part of the service’s “20/20 by 2020” initiative that aims to reduce excess capacity by decreasing the base’s footprint as well as its operating costs by 20 percent by 2020, according to the release. Beale officials are rechanneling the money generated by recycling the scrap metal from the tanks to defray the demolition project’s costs. (Beale report by SSgt. Robert M. Trujillo)
The Space Force recently awarded SpaceX $739 million to launch nine missions for the Space Development Agency and National Reconnaissance Office over the next three years. Five of the awarded launches will be to build out SDA’s constellation of missile warning and tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit.
