KUNSAN AIR FORCE BASE, South Korea - Recently, the 8th Maintenance Squadron dismantled two aircraft to ship back to the states to create more space on the Kunsan flightline.
Several years ago, two F-16 Fighting Falcons crashed. After being recovered, the Falcons underwent a salvaging process and were stored at Kunsan. The 8th MXS, Crash Damage Disabled Aircraft Recovery team and 8th Logistic Readiness Squadron joined together to free up space for accepting follow-on forces, one of Kunsan's missions.
"The crashed assets here at Kunsan were taking up valuable real-estate, which has a direct effect on our ability to accept follow-on forces," said Tech. Sgt. Marvin Burton, 8th MXS CDDAR team chief. "The faster I am able to get these shipped out, the better off we'll be in our contingency warfighting effort."
The CDDAR team also continued to save the Air Force money by lowering transportation costs of the two 19,700 pounds aircraft.
"It is more difficult for us to ship the aircraft in big bulky pieces," said Airman 1st Class Joshua Gurd, 8th LRS Traffic Management journeyman. "Bigger pieces require a crane in order to be picked up, more wood packaging materials and not to mention the cost of the vehicles."
The solution to the oversized pieces came from the CDDAR team with the necessary resources to cut, split and breakdown an aircraft.
"The bottom line is that without CDDAR breaking down the jet, we couldn't get the jets out in a timely manner," said Gurd.
After cutting, fragmenting and shattering 39,400 pounds of aircraft into manageable and transportable pieces, the CDDAR can breakdown a jet, a skill set rarely practiced and hopefully not needed, said Burton.
"Planes don't crash every day, but I know that we can effectively complete our mission at any given moment because of the knowledgeable and dedicated airmen we have," said Burton.