The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Politics
 interstates and airstrips




From: mccafferta@aol.comment (McCaffertA)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Date: 16 Feb 2001 22:15:56 GMT
Subject: Re: Interstate Highways as emergency landing strips

In article <96jc38$d18$1@allhats.xcski.com>, ptomblin@xcski.com (Paul Tomblin) writes:

>Important point: The difference between all these true stories of
>countries that use road basing as an option, like Sweden, Finland, South
>Korea and others, and the US Interstate System which is not now nor ever
>has been considered as runways for the military, is that the countries
>that really do this stuff do practice sessions! If Interstates were
>designed to be used as emergency runways, they'd be shutting down parts of
>it on regular intervals so that pilots could practice landing on them, so
>that ground crews could practice preparing the surface, and so on. The
>military doesn't plan to do *anything* without practicing it first.

Based on my time as an army engineer, I'd say that isn't strictly true. Using straight road sections as an emergency landing strip is taken pretty much as a given, as is usurping ball fields for helipads, and swiping drainage sytems for fair-weather overhead cover. If we have to use a straight section of I-10 as a landing strip, we will... but it will be given no more special consideration than any other chunk of appropriate terrain.

People forget that land, in the US, was, and pretty much is, outside of a few hotspots, relatively cheap, and the Interstates were the first big Davis-Bacon job; that is, the contractors were required to pay "prevailing (i.e. union) wages". This, during a time when fuel was fairly cheap, meant that massive earthwork to provide wide, level roadbeds was feasible on a scale seen nowhere else on earth. It also meant that building real airfields was pretty cheap. Finally, the US had just finished developing a series of airbases for training and sustaining a massive conventional airforce, with most areas of the country having far more runways in place than were needed for either (local) commercial or downscaled military requirements.

Add to this no one has yet come up with any particular hard cite of a policy, beyond the airstrip program associated with the early US highways.

Face it, this thing is off the scale on the Crock-o-meter.

Anthony "Mean Mothra-Farquhar, Engineer, by God!" McCafferty

From: Juha Veijalainen <jve@surfeu.fi>
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Interstate Highways as emergency landing strips
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 07:49:10 +0200

In article <96jc38$d18$1@allhats.xcski.com>, ptomblin@xcski.com says... > Important point: The difference between all these true stories of
> countries that use road basing as an option, like Sweden, Finland, South
> Korea and others, and the US Interstate System which is not now nor ever
> has been considered as runways for the military, is that the countries
> that really do this stuff do practice sessions!

Yes. As you said, military always practices. For example, some pictures of Finnish F-18 Hornets operating from road bases.

http://www.ilmavoimat.fi/satlsto/laivue/galleria/INDEX.HTM http://www.mil.fi/joukot/satlsto/sisalto/roadshow.htm

These road bases are not marked on any public maps. Of course they are not that difficult to hide, but the basic principle is something like 'enemies/whoever - make your own maps'...

--
Juha Veijalainen, Helsinki, Finland
http://www.iki.fi/juhave/ (PGP public key available) ((Mielipiteet omiani / Opinions personal / Facts suspect))


http://tafkac.org/