Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:45 pm
Big surprise, for particularly large bases and/or ones that got their sirens in the 1950s, the Thunderbolt was particularly popular, for the same reasons that it sold so well to civilian customers.
And the big driver for the military switching over to electronic sirens (by Pentagon mandate!) is cost... not of the sirens, but of maintenance. Specifically, by using voice-capable electronic sirens, there's no longer a need for the base to maintain a separate public address system in addition to its siren network; they can play bugle calls/music and make voice announcements through the sirens, which they'd have to pay to maintain anyway.
While I disagree with the decision (I still personally think that an electromechanical is more reliable and more effective as a warning device), I can't disagree with the financial logic--the cost of maintaining a basewide PA system is considerable, particularly for older bases that are trying to maintain an old 1950s-or-earlier vintage system, and can, in just a few years, add up to the cost of installing a complete new all-electronic siren network that can do both jobs.
Civilian federal installations that require an outdoor warning siren network, but not an outdoor public address system, tend to retain their mechanicals until they fail badly enough that replacing them costs less than fixing them, since the part of their budget that new sirens would have to come out of (security) is *always* stretched thin, and rarely if ever needs to be "padded out" at the end of the fiscal year to avoid the "Oh, you didn't spend everything we budgeted? Well, then, we'll cut your budget next year!" syndrome. (This is a real thing; I spent several months working at a VA hospital back in the late 90s, including a fiscal year transition less than a month after I got hired. I *still* have a few dozen boxes, unopened, of new Skillcraft ballpoint pens and wooden pencils, that I was *told* to take from the supply closet one day, so that the department could order new ones to spend the remainder of its annual budget...)