Cold-War West Germany had about 30 "Emergency Airstrips", about 3km long Autobahn sections that could be converted to airports for military use. Complete with parking lots designed for aircraft parking, mobile air control towers, etc. Large enough that we landed C-130 Hercules on them.
Similar strips exist in Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Though most of the German locations are now retired and removed.
This is an issue I care deeply about as I believe effective dispersal is a useful conventional deterrent to conflict.
To add - this is a more trodden upon path than many realize. The RAF trained extensively on establishing dispersed airfields for the Harrier force. They dedicated a lot of resources to being able to conduct dispersed operations from modified fields (fields, not airfields) https://youtu.be/QOf1AAf1yqc.
The US Marine Corps’ F-35B community has limited experience with what I’d semi-austere forward arming/refueling points(FARPs).
There is enough here about the challenges of fast jets off of roadways and poor condition airfields. I’ll just add that a jet is only as capable as its ground crew, spares, available munitions and fuel stores, so getting those things to a remote strip and protecting them is a big challenge and resource drain. The UK armed forces are already stretched quite thin for personnel so how operable this concept is TBD.
People with an interest in dispersal should watch this video https://youtu.be/MNak9lB_q00 and read this wiki - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90. The nordics really expect much of their aviation infrastructure to be destroyed in a conventional conflict and plan accordingly.
Notably, in the recent CSIS wargame of a Taiwan invasion, the US lost 90% of their aircraft on the ground. Even dispersing to civilian airports in Japan doesn't help much (Japan has plenty of airports but PLARF has plenty more missiles) and of course hugely complicates logistics. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publi...
I'm inclined to agree, but am almost totally ignorant, would enjoy pointers to/reading critical takes on the role of dispersal. The reason I'm inclined to agree is that war is a worst case scenario, and very uncertain (bottom of worst could fall quickly) so it seems odd to prepare to fight war under ideal (large intact airfields) rather than very ugly circumstances. Perhaps the cost efficiency in peacetime of centralization allows (the US anyway) such an overwhelming advantage that the correct calculus is to maintain that advantage rather than prepare for the worst?
The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse.
The doctrine of always having air superiority in NATO (and thus not needing makeshift runways) is so far rather justified given the hilarious level of incompetence shown by the VKS. Although the RAF seems to be more anxious about it, they definitely know much more than me. We do need a lot more air defense though, it's clear that before the next NATO-Russia confrontation they will have a rich arsenal of flying trashcans like the Shahed, as well as some decent missiles.
As far as I could tell after a bar argument, this is more or less an urban legend[0]. While the referenced article only debunks the "Every 5 miles" myth, further (brief) reading led me to believe if there were ever any designed airstrips into the interstate system they were short-lived and likely very one-offish style programs.
The US trains for this but I'm not sure it's needed domestically. FAA funds local and regional airports - there are plenty of airstrips all over that could accommodate a fighter or a C130.
Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled!
In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition.
Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!
It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE
And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).
Here’s a video showing STOVL(Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing): https://youtu.be/hO5mZxaiyUQ. The distance it needs to take off is incredibly short, should work on any short straight road with enough clearance on both sides. It does need to come slow crawl engage STOVL landing.
From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!
There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!
That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29.
That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue.
20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.
No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.
One of the coolest things about the Gripen is the support infra. Even while in the fancy hangers, all support equipment is in 20 foot containers. This makes it very mobile when the fancy runway gets a few holes put into it. Also, only one professional soldier and a few conscripts can service the jet, all while standing on the ground, with mostly automotive style tools.
The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware.
The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0]
If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond.
If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago.
Those motorway strips were all over the place in Geany during the Cold War. Most, if not all, got built back since. The idea of operating modern milizary aircraft from ad-hoc and improbvised airfields is nothing new. Easier to do with s/vtols so, added bonus for aircraft being carrier rated.
"FTA:
they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them."
"AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form runways, taxiways, parking and other areas required for aircraft operations and maintenance. Thirty ISO containers can be constructed to form a 1,500 square foot vertical, short landing and take off airfield and can accommodate up to a total of eleven CH53, UH1, AH1 and AV8B aircraft. " [1]
I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines..
> "FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them."
They did this before as part of an airshow demo. The Royal Engineers (Army co-operation!) had built pads at RAF Fairford for RIAT then the F-35B flew in, engaged STOVL mode (i.e. lift fan door open, rear engine nozzle pointed down etc.) and landed vertically on it then took off again.
Can't remember what year it was; Google suggests the MoD released PR saying they had done the same thing at Marham in 2018 but it's possible the demo was by a USMC F-35B.
Just some musing on the logistics and difficulties etc. of theoretical "distributed" highway F-35b operations..
[Numbers found by google search :_) ]
30 ISO containers for just the runway, = 30+ vehicles, + munitions, spare parts, maintenance personnel, that computerized logistics thing - ODIN/ALIS, food and water, security for the personnel, generators to power all the computers to support the aircraft, . would there need to be SAM support? anti-drone support?
Fuel would seem to be a real issue especially - an upgraded refuelling tanker-truck holds ~20k litres, and an F-35b can take ~10k litres I think. One refuelling tanker-truck = two air sorties.
I can’t help but think it must be about protecting the aircraft rather than protecting the surface, as in ukraine roads are commonly built out of reinforced concrete slabs, and somewhat less commonly, but still frequently, they are built to take the weight of tanks, and are wide and straight enough to accommodate even large aircraft - there’s a strip of highway north of Mariupol that was originally built to accommodate strategic bombers.
The other thing that they would do is to even out the surface - decades of frost heave has left said concrete slabs pretty uneven, even in a car, never mind a jet, landing.
It's really about the surface, which would be quickly destroyed by jet exhaust.
One of the impulses for changing surfacing methods for runways in Soviet Union was early jets ripping asphalt off the surface, for example, though later planes had higher-mounted exhausts that caused less problems.
As for road landing in Ukraine (and other Warsaw Pact countries, and Sweden), it's a mix of special road segments and special aircraft design (for example, consider MiG-29 with its intake shields that close when it's on the ground, and sturdier landing gear on many aircraft)
Well protecting the surface protects the aircraft - the exhaust from the F-35B version is so hot it melts the concrete and could kick of bits of debris.
> AM-2 Aluminum Matting, Portable Aircraft Arresting Gear and Marking (lighting) Systems. AM-2 matting is the base upon which the entire EAF system rests.
> AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles ...
So, are they aluminum or are they steel? Or some structure involving both?
If you ever been to Xiamen (city close to Taiwan across the ocean in China), the highways near the coast have long stretches of straight with extremely low side barriers. I wouldn’t be surprised if these highways were designed specifically to land aircrafts during times of need.
The F-35 obviously needs more preparation so they're really going to do it first with Typhoons and those are cool and potent aircraft even if they're not completely "Made in the USA (TM)".
There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from everything else which can then be updated much more easily and rapidly.
They've also been flight testing a radar that can do electronic warfare as well as its normal job and the Typhoon, like the Gripen and Rafale carries the Meteor BVRAAM which is exceptionally good because it has a long range and a lot of energy to maneuver at the point where its nearing its target.
Some of the software is mission critical but not flight critical. If your targeting pod is down, it'll be harder to see the ground target or visually ID aircraft from afar, but there is no safety issue to the plane.
For example the aircraft is unstable by design and software keeps it responding and making changes N times a second (IIRC 40times/sec or something like that) without which it might crash - so that system would be one you don't want to change frequently.
Ukraine has shown that when your airspace and airstrips are contested, the only real answer is limited CAS where you fly in low, drop your load from as far away as possible, then pop flares and head back. A plane that is highly survivable and resistant to MANPADS is going to be superior.
For this, the US has the A-10 which was designed with this exact war in mind. It takes off from a short runway (and it can be a pretty rough runway because the engines are so high), requires more basic maintenance, and is proven to take MANPADS hits then still make it back.
The A-10 was designed for an all-out conventional war with the Warsaw Pact. It was never considered survivable even then; plans assumed that almost all would be destroyed in the first few days of the conflict and that was considered acceptable.
A few airframes have taken missile hits during Middle East conflicts and made it back to base. Those then took months of extensive maintenance to restore to operational condition, and in some cases were written off entirely. A-10s are not at all survivable against modern Russian air defenses and would be mostly useless in Ukraine.
The A-10 is too old at this point and I really doubt anyone is going to make more. The Sky Warden has better electronic systems but who knows if that's actually going to be acquired. The best tactic now is to fly high enough to avoid laser targeting from the ground and avoid radar targeting with stealth.
That's the best option when all you have are shitty short-range Soviet-era missiles and unguided rockets / bombs from the 1980s and radars that can't see anything past 35km.
If you have low-observability or stealth aircraft, with powerful radars, and weapons with 80km+ range, you would absolutely rather use anything else.
It doesn't matter if your plane is "highly survivable to MANPADS" when A) the enemy has a lot of MANPADS and larger AA weapons, and B) you run out of functional planes because they all got shot up. Not getting hit is strictly better than getting hit, regardless of how "survivable" the plane is.
To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.
Sweden was publicly clear they weren't going to make the Gripen available to Ukraine, the planes exist in small enough quantities that some new manufacturing would need to happen in order for any of its operators to swap their existing inventory out and give it to Ukraine (not impossible in the long run since there is a new variant that some countries might want to acquire someday, but not happening in the short term), and - this is the big one - there are roughly twenty times as many F-16s in service worldwide as there are Gripens.
Everything that's commonly said about the Gripen performing admirably in rugged conditions and the F-16 being particularly vulnerable to foreign object damage is certainly true, but Ukraine would happily throw people and resources at the problem of maintaining intact and clean runways.
One of the reasons is there are much more F-16s both in number of units and consequently support ( of all kinds ) and know-how from many operator countries.
Unfortunately the Gripen is the plane everyone talks and loves but "nobody" buys them. The Rafale is in a similar situation. AFAIK there are many minor reasons but the main one is: "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", aka the F-16, it's all fine and good, NATO, etc, etc, but America has A LOT of pull when someone wants to buy planes, they tend to be "persuasive"..
The F-16 is the most numerous fighter jet in existence today and some countries are replacing them with F-35s, so there are a few dozen F-16s that might be available soon for Ukraine.
On the other hand, the amount of Gripens available is in the low hundreds, which in practice means that Sweden would have to donate a significant part of it's current air force capability to Ukraine.
Easy: avaiability, in every sense. There are many, many more F-16 in service to draw from. As are more operators, making training easier. And maitennace, everything from spqres to sites to people, is much easier to come by at scale for F-16s.
All of the above under the caveat of needing it now.
I would guess the F-16 fleet is easier to quickly expand than one based on Gripens as the supply of F-16:s is larger. Also creates a direct link to US military industrial complex which will help with US support in coming years (good business). The intake in f-16 seems really troublesome for takeoffs in ruddy envorinments.
Vertical landing drops staight in from the sky, and comes to an immediate halt. These planes just need a strip of concrete wider & longer than the plane itself. Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark, and then lay a short portable runway along its off-ramp for takeoff.
> Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark
I'm sure the exceptionally canny operators of motorway service stations would find a way to make some extra money off them then. Come for a coffee, stay for a jet launch.
With Ukraine you want the plane to take off from Ukraine, not the UK, or else it is seen as direct involvement. So the plane takes off from the UK, lands in the motorway somewhere near Keeeev and then the Ukrainian pilot hops on, to carry out the mission.
He then lands on the highway again, the plane stays still for the British pilot to get in, he does so, flying up to meet a tanker over Poo land to then get home by teatime.
Dunno, the V280 was selected for FVL and FLRAA at the end of 2022; if only for pilot training and maintenance logistics, it probably makes more sense for FARA to go that way, as well.
Readit News
Similar strips exist in Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Though most of the German locations are now retired and removed.
To add - this is a more trodden upon path than many realize. The RAF trained extensively on establishing dispersed airfields for the Harrier force. They dedicated a lot of resources to being able to conduct dispersed operations from modified fields (fields, not airfields) https://youtu.be/QOf1AAf1yqc.
The US Marine Corps’ F-35B community has limited experience with what I’d semi-austere forward arming/refueling points(FARPs).
F-35B landing at FARP. https://youtu.be/le4W1Pk-Dn8
There is enough here about the challenges of fast jets off of roadways and poor condition airfields. I’ll just add that a jet is only as capable as its ground crew, spares, available munitions and fuel stores, so getting those things to a remote strip and protecting them is a big challenge and resource drain. The UK armed forces are already stretched quite thin for personnel so how operable this concept is TBD.
People with an interest in dispersal should watch this video https://youtu.be/MNak9lB_q00 and read this wiki - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90. The nordics really expect much of their aviation infrastructure to be destroyed in a conventional conflict and plan accordingly.
Here's another video talking a bit about the costs of dispersal, and costs basically being the reason for not doing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lcu2kBXQI
The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse.
The doctrine of always having air superiority in NATO (and thus not needing makeshift runways) is so far rather justified given the hilarious level of incompetence shown by the VKS. Although the RAF seems to be more anxious about it, they definitely know much more than me. We do need a lot more air defense though, it's clear that before the next NATO-Russia confrontation they will have a rich arsenal of flying trashcans like the Shahed, as well as some decent missiles.
As far as I could tell after a bar argument, this is more or less an urban legend[0]. While the referenced article only debunks the "Every 5 miles" myth, further (brief) reading led me to believe if there were ever any designed airstrips into the interstate system they were short-lived and likely very one-offish style programs.
[0] - https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-2000/one-mile-...
In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition.
Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!
And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).
There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!
That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue.
20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.
The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware.
The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0]
If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond.
If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago.
[0] https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-t...
[oops, around the Economist paywall] https://archive.is/gOKqZ
Never any seen any Čech actually use that silly term...
"AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form runways, taxiways, parking and other areas required for aircraft operations and maintenance. Thirty ISO containers can be constructed to form a 1,500 square foot vertical, short landing and take off airfield and can accommodate up to a total of eleven CH53, UH1, AH1 and AV8B aircraft. " [1]
I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines..
[1] http://www.cassholdings.com/AM2.htm
They did this before as part of an airshow demo. The Royal Engineers (Army co-operation!) had built pads at RAF Fairford for RIAT then the F-35B flew in, engaged STOVL mode (i.e. lift fan door open, rear engine nozzle pointed down etc.) and landed vertically on it then took off again.
Can't remember what year it was; Google suggests the MoD released PR saying they had done the same thing at Marham in 2018 but it's possible the demo was by a USMC F-35B.
https://ascelibrary.org/cms/10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.00016...
They would send out personal to remove FOD (foreign object debris) before any operations and before laying those mats, I assume.
[Numbers found by google search :_) ]
30 ISO containers for just the runway, = 30+ vehicles, + munitions, spare parts, maintenance personnel, that computerized logistics thing - ODIN/ALIS, food and water, security for the personnel, generators to power all the computers to support the aircraft, . would there need to be SAM support? anti-drone support?
Fuel would seem to be a real issue especially - an upgraded refuelling tanker-truck holds ~20k litres, and an F-35b can take ~10k litres I think. One refuelling tanker-truck = two air sorties.
The other thing that they would do is to even out the surface - decades of frost heave has left said concrete slabs pretty uneven, even in a car, never mind a jet, landing.
One of the impulses for changing surfacing methods for runways in Soviet Union was early jets ripping asphalt off the surface, for example, though later planes had higher-mounted exhausts that caused less problems.
As for road landing in Ukraine (and other Warsaw Pact countries, and Sweden), it's a mix of special road segments and special aircraft design (for example, consider MiG-29 with its intake shields that close when it's on the ground, and sturdier landing gear on many aircraft)
> AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles ...
So, are they aluminum or are they steel? Or some structure involving both?
I wonder if the F35B’s thrust would rip up a highway like SpaceX’s first starship launch.
https://news.usni.org/2014/01/15/sna-2014-heat-f-35-mv-22-co...
There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from everything else which can then be updated much more easily and rapidly.
They've also been flight testing a radar that can do electronic warfare as well as its normal job and the Typhoon, like the Gripen and Rafale carries the Meteor BVRAAM which is exceptionally good because it has a long range and a lot of energy to maneuver at the point where its nearing its target.
The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it.
I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.
For this, the US has the A-10 which was designed with this exact war in mind. It takes off from a short runway (and it can be a pretty rough runway because the engines are so high), requires more basic maintenance, and is proven to take MANPADS hits then still make it back.
A few airframes have taken missile hits during Middle East conflicts and made it back to base. Those then took months of extensive maintenance to restore to operational condition, and in some cases were written off entirely. A-10s are not at all survivable against modern Russian air defenses and would be mostly useless in Ukraine.
That's the best option when all you have are shitty short-range Soviet-era missiles and unguided rockets / bombs from the 1980s and radars that can't see anything past 35km.
If you have low-observability or stealth aircraft, with powerful radars, and weapons with 80km+ range, you would absolutely rather use anything else.
It doesn't matter if your plane is "highly survivable to MANPADS" when A) the enemy has a lot of MANPADS and larger AA weapons, and B) you run out of functional planes because they all got shot up. Not getting hit is strictly better than getting hit, regardless of how "survivable" the plane is.
Everything that's commonly said about the Gripen performing admirably in rugged conditions and the F-16 being particularly vulnerable to foreign object damage is certainly true, but Ukraine would happily throw people and resources at the problem of maintaining intact and clean runways.
Unfortunately the Gripen is the plane everyone talks and loves but "nobody" buys them. The Rafale is in a similar situation. AFAIK there are many minor reasons but the main one is: "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", aka the F-16, it's all fine and good, NATO, etc, etc, but America has A LOT of pull when someone wants to buy planes, they tend to be "persuasive"..
All of the above under the caveat of needing it now.
I nearly broke a spring from a dipped pothole on the M6 south.
Not to forget all the smart motorway signs every 100 meters and signboards overhead, will make a landing "interesting".
I'm sure the exceptionally canny operators of motorway service stations would find a way to make some extra money off them then. Come for a coffee, stay for a jet launch.
With Ukraine you want the plane to take off from Ukraine, not the UK, or else it is seen as direct involvement. So the plane takes off from the UK, lands in the motorway somewhere near Keeeev and then the Ukrainian pilot hops on, to carry out the mission.
He then lands on the highway again, the plane stays still for the British pilot to get in, he does so, flying up to meet a tanker over Poo land to then get home by teatime.
He lands on a regular runway.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30405/behold-sikorskys...