That's my experience too. Maybe it's a chicken-or-egg problem.
The electronics and lights would certainly drain the battery, but the specific fear was that the car wouldn't start when needed. It was never specified whether that fear was of a dead battery or failed starter, but frequent starts and short trips will deplete the battery in any car...
Article is an oversimplification. There is a proper shutdown procedure which takes some time. Deviating from it requires the aircraft to be checked and possibly serviced by ground crew.
Can anyone explain how this makes a meaningful difference?
In my lay-man‘s imagination, there will only be a few of these highway airstrips. And they are quite obvious, either from media reports, satellite images or when you drive along them in peacetime.
So the enemy will know and target them like your other airfields.
There are few air bases but many sections of highway which are long and straight enough to take off from. Targeting all of them with expensive precision munitions is totally impractical.
The article references the F-35A which is a conventional take off and landing aircraft (CTOL). The F-35B is the short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant. The F-35B belongs to the marines is capable of using extremely short and improvised runways and this has been part of its operational concept for quite a while[1]. For an expeditionary force that kind of thing is important.
The F-35A is a bit different in that its a normal air force fighter. This is just proving that if push comes to shove it can be operated out of improvised bases.
How clean does a runway have to be for an F-35 to take-off from it? I remember a lot of internet grief over the idea of shipping American fighters to Ukraine, on the grounds that the F-16 and other American fighters were designed only for pristine runways. Low air intakes of the sort Americans favor would ingest debris that would damage the engines, so runways have to be absolutely clear. The MiG-29, on the other hand, has auxiliary air intakes above the wing for taking off on a poorly maintained airstrip. So, does the F-35 need specially cleaned highways?
FOD is something to avoid when operating aircraft, everywhere. Meaning clean is clean enough, and if it isn't an emergency landing strips are prepared (basic maintenance, personal facilities, fuel...)
Regarding Ukraine, if it is internet grief, it is fair to assume it is wrong.
There's a lot more highway than airstrip length. According to Wikipedia[1], Finland has 78,141 kilometres (48,555 mi) of highways. That's a whole lot of runway to destroy.
It's tricky to put airstrips out of service (for long), especially if the one looking to do the attacking doesn't have the ability to meaningfully contest the airspace there, as would be the case for most if not all adversaries an F35 might have.
I was going to respond to this, only to have found myself at the end of an urban legend (no, there isn't a stipulation in the US to have 1 in every 5 miles straight in the US interstate highway system in order to allow for emergency landing of aircraft: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/landing-of-hope-and-glory/).
I do agree with the other sibling responses, though -- bombs cost money, and there's a lot of roadway that would need to be bombed in order to render entire highway systems unusable. So that's probably where the "win" comes in -- being nimble in takeoff / landing of aircraft locations makes life much more difficult for the enemy.
This doesn’t look like a special part of a highway that’s prepared to be an airstrip, but just a stretch of road without any obstacles such as road lighting.
This being Norway, I expect they have quite a bit of that. The country is reasonably large (385,000km²), population density is fairly low (15 persons/km²), so in large parts of the country roads won’t be busy and don’t need much infrastructure.
This is Finland, not Norway, and the landing sites definitely are prepared and marked as such, they are not just random stretches of road.
edit: you can clearly see in satellite images the strip in question here, its significantly wider than the surrounding road and additionally has been recently repaved: https://maps.app.goo.gl/teYJ7wzbTzcfwngB6
That in combat, it's never that simple. It seems like that, seems like the enemy has 100% information, or is 100% capable. And it's not (nor are we).
Everything is muddy, nothing is guaranteed to work, the environment is unforgiving, people react differently under stress. We, they, everyone KNOW this and it still doesn't work.
So, you plan, you test contingencies, develop capability, even if they're never used.
In Germany, they had plans to use shopping centers as ad hoc aircraft bases. Knock large holes into the store front (they tend to not be load bearing), shove out all of the shelves and what not with a bulldozer, clear the parking lots of cars and lights (bulldozers work well for this as well). Boom, instant hangar and tarmac.
But that's just it, just warplans. Think tanks thinking through potential problems and ways to solve them. They also had warplans to blow up dams to wash over a teeming Soviet advance. Seems, in the large, to be a bad idea. But, on the other hand, consider the events and thinking going on when someone chimes in "Hey, maybe we should blow up the dams...".
Combat is very messy. No plan survives first contact. Just ask the Russians.
The enemy only has so many resources to target your resources. War has been, really for most of history, an economic struggle as much as a tactical one.
If they're planning an attack, they have to decide if the risk is worth the reward. They can't just magically hit all targets (or they can but that's because things go nuclear and hey, none of it really matters).
The more redundancies you have, the more likely you are to stop their attack, or to exhaust their ability to extend themselves. Given the absurd size of most road networks, that's a lot of potential targets to worry about, even if mostly undefended.
It does not mean it would be meaningful inside the US, but Sweden, now a NATO ally, has had this doctrine and design requirement for a long time. Evidently they think it is useful.
And sure, these are well known and mapped. And yes, an enemy could target each and every one of them. But to do so they would need far more ordnance to destroy all these highways instead of just a few runways. But there’s some additional context. So, the most efficient way to disable an air base (or improvised air base using a highway) is to destroy the runway, preventing aircraft from taking off. But, it’s also the easiest thing to fix. Just takes some bulldozers and engineers and you can get it fixed relatively easily. So runway cratering is more about suppressing an Air Force instead of destroying it. Generally, you want to follow up those runway strikes with additional strikes to target the aircraft on the ground. And that is a lot harder when they are scattered all over the country.
Think about what it takes to put a military aircraft in the air.
You need:
A fuel Truck
A munitions truck
People
And that's really it. That means you can put an airstrip anywhere that's long enough and relatively smooth. If you have alot of highways, you're good to go, and, in most places, you can land, then park the jet off the highway with a tug (read: ATV with a hitch adapter) and it's trivial to keep it out of sight because even with the best tech available, it's just not possible to have eyes everywhere, all the time.
Are you sure about that? I thought one of the drawbacks of the F35 was that it needs quite a bit of servicing in between flights, something like 7-10 man hours of servicing per flight hour and ~10 flight hours before failure.
Genuine question. Seems a bit much if it’s just resupplying fuel and munitions, not that I know much about this.
It should be serviced is much different than it has to be serviced.
If you're in a position where, your airfields are getting holes blown in them, getting forces back up in the air is more important than having a guy double check a bunch of things that are probably fine anyway.
>Breaking down the engineering requirement for the three F-35 variants across the programme, the projected mean flight hour between failure was 10 hours for the conventional F-35A (from a requirement of six hours), seven hours for the STOVL F-35B (from a requirement of four hours), and 10.3 hours for the F-35C (from a requirement of four hours).
Failure suggests it has to be serviced, I’m not sure how that’s exactly defined or if that flight hour number is for airframes receiving regular scheduled maintenance (which is substantial) or not.
It certainly appears discordant with your statement of: “double check a bunch of things that are probably fine anyway.” Unless “failure” refers to non critical systems which may or may not be the case.
I’m wondering if you are speaking based on knowledge / experience or conjecture as I have not read much on the topic beyond random news/magazine articles over the years and don’t know the answers to these.
There is obviously still merit in being able to land outside of airbases but your description made it seem like this is a sustainable strategy rather than a backup landing and emergency take off situation 1-3 times to not lose the airframe.
I wouldn't take it as any failure has to be immediately serviced in order for the jet to be effective. Make no mistake, it's a maintenance nightmare for alot of reasons, but if all you want to do is put ordinance on target, which is probably your situation if you're using improvised runways, it'll be just fine for at least awhile.
You'd be surprised at how many failures an aircraft is allowed to fly with, and, more than likely, unless you've flown on a brand new aircraft, you've flown exclusively on aircraft that had a dozen or more things that are wrong with them that need to be repaired. The military world is no different, and with lockheed's nepotic service contract on these jets, I'm sure they get grounded for all sorts of trivial stuff.
> there will only be a few of these highway airstrips
In Finland there is hundreds of them of various levels of preparedness while we only have 4 actual air force bases.
Some of them have nice extra wide tarmac, bunkers hidden in the forest to store gear, etc. These are the ones used during peace time for practice.
During wartime if those are destroyed you use the less prepared ones which are just normal roads with a long enough straight and no bridges etc. You go and cut down the trees and electricity poles next to the road, fill any potholes and use that.
In the end all you really need is a road wide enough to fit the landing gear of the plane and enough length to speed up / slow down. Though obviously you use the better/nicer ones if you can (especially during peace time)
> The U.S. Marine Corps has already shown its ability to use its short and vertical takeoff and landing capable F-35Bs in this way, as The War Zone has previously reported.
There are 3 models that roughly breaks down like so:
A - Standard runway takeoff, carries the second most amount of fuel
B - VTOL, carries the least amount of fuel
C - Carrier launched, carries the most amount of fuel.
There are tradeoffs each version makes. The F35 is the plane of the future for NATO and other US allies. Having the A variant able to take off and land from a highway allows (theoretically) you to have the less expensive to maintain A variant and deploy it all over your highway areas (Norway) for example.
> Like its predecessor, the Bas 90 system was based around defensive force dispersal of aircraft across many krigsflygbaser (wartime air bases) in case of war, as well as dispersion of the air base functions within the individual bases themselves. The air units would have been dispersed so one squadron (8-12 aircraft) would be stationed per krigsflygbas. The system was a protective measure against nuclear weapons and airstrikes, the purpose being to make it complicated for an opponent to destroy the Swedish Air Force on the ground and thus ensure endurance for the air force in a conflict scenario.
I may have gotten Sweden/Norway mixed. When my father flew fighters and trained in Norway, he talked about the dispersion strategy employed by the Nordics. In addition to having mountain passes be able to serve as various strategic military points.
Additionally- the F-35B has a smaller combat payload than the F-35A, due to the combination of internal space/weight for SVTOL capabilities and lower payloads and the lower payload available for short takeoff.
Vertical takeoff is mostly an airshow demonstration- you can't carry a useful amount if fuel or weapons vertically, so in practice it's an STOVL rather than VTOL.
LOL, you really think secret agents are sneaking into engineering offices at night to tamper with construction blueprints, straightening curved road plans without anyone noticing?
Even if there were "make it straighter" dictates from above, those wouldn't need to be kept secret in the first place! Not even from other countries, which have perfectly good maps of US roads and can think of alternate uses all on their own.
Or you know, the fastest path between two locations is a straight line. Road networks try to avoid being curvy, often blowing through rock foothills with explosives to maintain that straightness. No conspiracy needed.
The stretches that qualify are tracked as useful military assets and worst case alternatives by the FAA, but you need to avoid overpasses etc, not just have a long stretches of strait road.
Only for fairly small aircraft, however my point is landings and takeoffs need to be clear vertically. Power lines across the road would represent a significant hazard as would overpasses etc.
Military aircraft landing and taking off from roads has happened forever. The F-35 has now done this. Whoopee. Water is wet.
How about fixing that little problem of not being allowed near thunderstorms? Not till 2027 at the earliest? But it can land on flat, straight roads, so that's something. /s
They erect a grounded mast to provide lightning protection for each parked plane. (Source: discussed purpose of said mast with ground crew at Nellis last year).
This has a significant deterrence effect because it means you can’t just massively attack all airbases and expect the Air Force to be disabled. Even if you destroy all runways there will still be air units with all manner of destructive weapons in action, at least for a long enough time to massively retaliate in kind.
> This has a significant deterrence effect because it means you can’t just massively attack all airbases and expect the Air Force to be disabled.
I'd be very surprised if being able to land/takeoff from highways wasn't one of the most basic design requirements for a project as massive as the F-35. If highways are already designed to be usable as ad-hoc airfields, it would make no sense at all to design new airplanes to keep them compatible.
Absolutely, that's why STOVL is the defining feature of the F-35B. It's common knowledge where American and allied air bases are, by making them able to base anywhere with modern infrastructure it makes "zerg rushes" untenable. The astute reader will note recent examples of countries with outdated airframes being vulnerable to massive surprise attacks.
Both F-35B and F-35C are the variants that can liftoff from a Carrier (aka: Navy) or WASP-class Assault Ship (aka: Marines) respectively.
F-35A is the one that needs the full runway. This is a big deal, as the F35A has the best performance overall but needs the nicest conditions to launch. If the "hardest to launch" variant can be flown from a highway, then the other two models will do even better.
This is a "steelman argument". We're demonstrating the worst F35 at this job. All other variants will do even better.
> Both F-35B and F-35C are the variants that can liftoff from a Carrier (aka: Navy) or WASP-class Assault Ship (aka: Marines) respectively.
Other way around: F-35B is the Marine Corps STOVL variant, F-35C is the Navy CATOBAR variant.
(No reason an F-35B couldn’t take off from and land on a regular carrier, too, but its the C that is made to launch with a catapult and catch an arrestor hook to land.)
It is not, as the Ukrainian air force continues to conduct regular sorties and has successfully prevented the Russian air force from every gaining air supremacy.
The Russian air force has taken massive losses, both in terms of planes and pilots, but it also continues to exist, from a non-generous and factual perspective.
> The Air Force with an estimated strength somewhere stern that of algeria and chile?
It’s amazing that such a small airforce manages to prevent russia from gaining air superiority and even manages to effectively conduct sorties isn’t it.
Just shows you how different it is when your the invading force. russias airforce losses largely outsize Ukraines even though Ukraine has a smaller airforce and they older planes.
>> with an estimated strength somewhere stern that of algeria and chile?
You have named two countries with credible and substantial air forces. Critically, both the Algerian air force and Chilean air force exist (the claim that I initially defended). Indeed, both Chile and Algeria have similarly-sized economies to Ukraine, and both countries operate sizeable air forces relative to other countries in South America and North Africa.
It is worth noting that the Ukrainian air force has 50+ F-16s scheduled for delivery in the near future.
>> Last I checked, they literally had more trainer aircraft than actual combat jets left.
They did have a relatively impressive number of L-39 jet trainers at the beginning of the war, as you alluded to. It is difficult to assess how many have survived the war. I would presume that you are correct to estimate that trainer aircraft have a lower attrition rate than combat jets during war.
I agree that ground anti-air has played a larger role in denying either side air supremacy than fighter jets. But it is important to note that Russia failed to establish air supremacy over Ukraine during the almost year before western anti-air arrived. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force effectively carried out anti-air missions (including against drones) and even some ground attack sorties.
So, tellingly, the Russian air force failed to establish supremacy over Ukraine when Ukraine fielded only Soviet-era aircraft and anti-air (and in comparatively small numbers). Which strongly suggests that the Russian Air Force is not a particularly good opponent either.
But critically, the Ukrainian Air Force continues to exist as a fleet-in-being. So while it may not currently be capable of much force projection (I would argue that the Russian air force is also not capable of much force projection against a serious adversary), it does force its adversary to strategically deploy anti-air.
As Russian anti-air systems become depleted (which may be sooner or may be later, but due to the rapid destruction of S-400 systems of late, my money is on sooner), it is quite possible that the Ukrainian air force will play a larger role, especially given that training on F-16s commence in a handful of weeks.
Thank you for the source, it has been good reading so far. Your comment about US SEAD operations in the past made me recheck my priors about the Gulf War. I was surprised to learn that Iraq had no strategic SAM systems [1].
> So all airbase runways are destroyed but the planes are untouched?
You should read the news regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has been operating their air force out it's highways and is making a fool out of Russia's armed forces with opsec tricks like fixing airways and hangars bombed by Russia but printing tarps with images of the bombed out runways to fool it to believe they are still decommissioned.
Ukraine has been playing Russia so masterfully that they led Russian intelligence into believing Ukraine's air force was operating out of a secret network of tunnels.
If the USA's airbases are all bombed there's nothing going to be left on the planet. It's not a credible scenario. There may be other reasons, but this is a dumb one.
The US operates 750 bases in 80 countries. I don't know why you are fixated on US operations, when military operations primarily take place outside of the US.
Space-based weapons should make you uneasy about America's home-soil impunity.
This increases when rival powers gain heavy-lift capability. If you can lift a few tons into orbit, you can drop rocks on targets. Not sure if there's much a target can do about that, other than not be there when it falls.
It's not quite as apocalyptic as nuclear holocaust, which is nice.
> So all airbase runways are destroyed but the planes are untouched?
Yeah, you can move and hide planes and put them in hardened bunkers, its kind of hard to do any of that with airbase runways, so that is one scenario for it.
But mostly its “we want to operate in an area and haven’t built/don’t control purpose-built airbases there yet”
Planes in Finnish airbases are stored in hardened bunkers deep in the bedrock. There really isn't much outside of a direct nuclear hit that would take out the planes. Though without a runway getting them back into air is going to be really hard.
Though ideally you want the planes in air before the bombs lands. With that scenario these hundreds of temporary runways all over the country make much more sense.
It's not only a matter of having a runway available. The F-35 is very data-centric and is very dependable on IT-systems which need connectivity also on remote sites. This can be easily solved by using modern 4G/5G networks (either dedicated MoD ones or public ones) with the "right" encryption running over it cleared for military use, but it is a constraint which needs to be taken into consideration. In the Gripen/Viggen days, you probably only needed a few trucks with equipment/fuel and conscripts. Now you need additional "datacenters in a box" to make this work.
Isn't this a very common requirement though ? India mostly has Russian planes but most new major Indian highways have several stretched that can be used as runways and Air Force also does test landings from time to time.
It's primary for forward tactical, war-time refueling because you can't just drive a jet from a hardened bunker on an air base to a random road far away. Wingspan and trees and such get in the way. Finland, Poland, etc. roads fit the criteria where it makes sense to have emergency alternate landing sites than first-to-be-destroyed fixed bases.
An adversary such as Russia undoubtedly already designates straight, manicured roads in Eastern Europe for anti-runway demolition as secondary targets.
Also, given Russia's hypersonic capabilities, they undoubtedly possess something between JP233 and DRDO SAAW: stand-off anti-runway and hardened target attack with area denial.
It would make sense that russia has ability to destroy roads, and airbases, but why aren't they using these effectively when attacking Ukraine? It's a lot smaller than all of Europe, should be easier to figure it out.
Initially Russian expectations missed the reality. The was no "one week of bombing " fase. Then Russia had to spend enourmous ammouts of rockets\artillery (mostly due to lack of planning and lack of military education\experience in the army) to have at least some results.
The main reason is that Russian military is rotten to the core, corrupt and has zero discipline (this has been the case for hundreds of years, probably due to mentality).
An associate of mine was a USAF Major who came into possession of a Soviet Belarussian MiG-21. He stashed it in a hangar in Germany and told absolutely no one outside his inner circle of war buddies about. The only person he ever showed if off to was a fairly high-up Russian who he mistakenly thought was "cool". Guess how long it was before the cockpit avionics were stolen, rendering it un-refurbishable? Sigh Never trust a Russian officer farther than you can throw them unless their name was Stanislav Petrov.
Doesn't seem like a good story to backup this "lesson". What would happen if you showed a US Officer a (possibly missing) US Fighter jet in a hanger? Never trust a US Officer?
Reason number one would be that serving in military is viewed as good old "conscript obligation"[1]. Or as a way to get money (in some regions serving was the only way to get decent money. some people would actually give bribes to get a contract).
At the same time you learn nothing while in service (unless you are part of some elite force wich is a different story and they are few in number anyway).
A classic thing about russian military: out of a platoon only 2-3 guys are often throw grenades during their time. Only to show them off before some general. While others just mind their own business.
The answer for what Russia is up to, militarily, is not savoury to our mindset, conditioned as we are to perceive them as an ineffective enemy that can be "easily wiped out if we wanted to" ..
The simple fact is: Russia hasn't given itself permission to wage all-out war.
Yet.
Remember, its a "special military operation", the same way that the invasion of Iraq wasn't actually a war, but a "special military operation", also. Russia has not declared full, all-out war, which would involve activating the other 80% of its military resources against Ukraine.
In those circumstances, Russian military doctrine calls for a concealment strategy whereby they don't deploy their best units first - but rather, their more expendable units.
The Russians simply aren't revealing their hand in this, what they consider, the opening round of a larger war to come. If they played their hand in Ukraine too soon - when the time comes to engage in all-out open conflict with the West, we'd know what they had in store for us. They're reserving their most effective military tactics for when the gloves come off..
The USA also does this, incidentally - although it is more willing to shock and awe their enemy into submission in the opening moves of the battle, there are definitely weapons systems held in reserve for when things get desparate. The Russians are doing this, too.
We have literally seen some of Russias most advanced equipment and most elite units, sent to and decimated in Ukraine.
They are fighting an all-out war, and if they aren't they are idiots considering how much of Russian territory and occupied Ukrainian territory has a tendency to explode suddenly.
You don't want your enemy to believe you are strong, when you are strong. You want them to think you are weak, when you are strong.
It is highly specious to mis-underestimate ones enemies. Western military planners are not mis-underestimating Russias' capabilities - that task is left to their media wing, to sell the public on yet more war debt.
The belief that Russia is weak serves to sell more weapons - it does not necessarily reflect the fact that Russia has held a majority of its elite units, in reserve, and is not - yet - fighting an all-out war.
I never said Russia is weak I just said that they aren't holding anything back and that they are clearly using their most modern weapons and defences and are still getting wiped out in droves.
What part of there doctrine says to reactivate T55/T54/T62's and to weld a random assortment of rocket systems to MTLBs in some sort of slightly more advanced technical?.
"The important part is that there is no scientific basis for Russia fielding old T-62/T-55s and in fact Russia is verifiably fielding three times more T-90Ms than before."
Is not going to have any increased repair time compared to when it didn't have two gaping holes in it?.
Thats obviously not true.
On second look this source is literally just Russian propaganda.
> I had forgotten to post this a while back. Ukrainian journalist Roman Revedzhuk who had previously run for office and was involved in Ukrainian politics for a long time revealed that he had received an insider report from the SBU that Ukraine had more than 310,000 KIA as of July:
> "The important part is that there is no scientific basis for Russia fielding old T-62/T-55s and in fact Russia is verifiably fielding three times more T-90Ms than before."
This is verifiably false, theres plenty of images of T-62's in Ukraine with Russian markings and with Russian style anti drone / RPG cages ontop of them.
You can find images of ~80 captured / destroyed Russian T-62's here.
None of this matches what seems to be the reality on the battle field. Russia has fielded a lot of modern equipment and many of their elite units. There is plenty of footage of destroyed modern Russian equipment.
Yes, Russia is holding back but only to the level that they do not call for total mobilization and war economy. They are not holding back 80% or anything close to that.
The Russian military is stuck executing a random terror campaign against the populace and defending being pushed out of Crimea, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. The reason is cost. They cannot afford an all-out offensive in bodies, bullets, mortars, or SRBMs.
> An adversary such as Russia undoubtedly already designates straight, manicured roads in Eastern Europe for anti-runway demolition as secondary targets.
Given the inability of Russian PGM to even destroy the runways of Ukrainian airbase[1], and the limited amount of these PGM in the inventory, I really doubt Russia has this capability, even at the scale of one of the small Baltic state.
> Also, given Russia's hypersonic capabilities, they undoubtedly possess something between JP233 and DRDO SAAW: stand-off anti-runway and hardened target attack with area denial.
And why hasn't still managed to shut down UAF after one year and a half of conflict? “Gesture of goodwill” maybe?
That's only the B variant, which only UK and Italy will operate in Europe.
I've never seen that use case discussed for the F35, but that was indeed the primary purpose of the Harrier - before it was eventually deployed onto small carriers.
F35A (the one from the article, and the one almost everybody is buing) isn't VTOL. F35B will likely melt the asphalt if it tried to take-off vertically from a regular highway.
The highways have to be built with that in mind though (and many are). In Poland it's called DOL and there have been 21 of them built, but only 1 is used regularly.
> For Baana 23, a section of Finland's Regional Road 551 between the towns of Karttula and Tervo in the southern end of the country has been turned into an impromptu air base.
Regional Road 551 shall now be known as the highway to the danger zone.
Specifically C is for takeoff/landing on CATOBAR (Catapult-assisted take-off barrier-arrested recovery) carriers. All nations other than the US buy the B variant for their carrier forces as they don't have catapult carriers (or can't/aren't interested in the F-35).
> All nations other than the US buy the B variant for their carrier forces as they don't have catapult carriers (or can't/aren't interested in the F-35).
While they won't buy F35 this can matter for joint operations.
> As of July 2021, Charles de Gaulle was the only non-American carrier-vessel that had a catapult launch system, which has allowed for operation of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and C-2 Greyhounds of the United States Navy.
> Similar to Rafale C, but with modifications to allow operations from CATOBAR - equipped aircraft carriers. For carrier operations, the M model has a strengthened airframe, longer nose gear leg to provide a more nose-up attitude, larger tailhook between the engines, and a built-in boarding ladder. Consequently, the Rafale M weighs about 500 kg (1,100 lb) more than the Rafale C. It is the only non-US fighter type cleared to operate from the decks of US carriers, using catapults and their arresting gear, as demonstrated in 2008 when six Rafales from Flottille 12F integrated into the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Air Wing interoperability exercise.
> As mentioned at the top of this story, the Marines just demonstrated earlier this year the ability to conduct operations from roadways using its F-35Bs, which have short and vertical takeoff and landing capabilities not found on the A variant.
In addition to what the others have said, the F-35B is more properly a STOVL aircraft: Short Take Off, Vertical Landing. It can't take off vertically with a useful combat load.
Also, in my understanding, B variant doesn't have vertical take off too, it has short take off and vertical landing. It can do vertical take off, but burns too much fuel that way for any useful mission.
Even the F-35B doesn't actually do vertical takeoff in practice (though it's capable of doing so IIRC), it does vertical landing and short take-off. Going straight up uses a LOT of fuel.
Also going straight up is a much higher risk operation than having some forward speed. The timeframe to eject in case of a problem is very very short when you're "hovering" while with forward speed the jet has much more stability buying you time.
Helicopters also tend to take off with forward speed if conditions permit. Not because of ejection options (they don't have them), but because of energy available and options in case of an engine failure. Forward speed is "energy in the bank" which you can use if (one of) your engine(s) quits.
Can these planes still land in somewhat icy and snowy weather? The article mentioned drag chutes and arrestor hooks, but I’d imagine a foot of snow being a problem…
You mean, like the planes the military uses to deliver cargo and people to the South Pole? They use skis, they land "on" the snow, not in it, and it doesn't work in bad storms.
Civilian planes don't normally land with snow or ice on the runway, because directional control becomes very risky at low speeds. At landing speed you initially have control via the rudder, but once you're down tot taxi speed you can only steer the small rubber nose wheel which doesn't do much if it has no grip.
Airports are continuously cleared / de-iced in adverse weather conditions. And if things become too bad, flights are cancelled.
Ice is fine. These and other planes routinely land on icy runways in Finland and all over the world. You do need to take that into account for the length of the runway needed.
For snow you just use a snowplow. The same thing you used to keep the snow off the road you just converted into a runway for planes.
Well, ideally the road has been prepared in advance. But fighter aircraft are much easier on runways than heavier planes (bombers/cargo) because there's typically only one or two engines producing thrust. The F135-100 engine used in the F-35A puts out 43,000 foot-pounds (191 kN) when in afterburner.
In comparison, the B-52 has eight engines, each of which produce 17,100 foot-pounds (76 kN) for a total of 136,800 foot pounds (608 kN), and the C-17 (which is rated for rough-field landings) has four engines, with a total of 161,760 foot-pounds (720 kN).
But the most likely scenario is that larger planes will have their wings & engines extend beyond the sides of the pavement, and they'll tear up any grass and/or throw any gravel back behind them from the exhaust blast. The road surface is likely to be fine.
I am not a highway or materials expert, but I would expect that 191 kN in one spot is a lot worse than 76 kN in many spots? The cars and trucks spread over the entire highway add up to many more kN, I assume; it's the concentration of force that matters.
Possibly, past a certain threshhold the road is destroyed and needs replacement, and 76 or 191 has the same outcome.
Another way to think about it: Imagine you wanted to break up the road, intentionally, for some useful purpose - repaving, etc. If someone supplied a machine that blasted the road with 43,000 foot-pounds, I might expect that it was overkill.
When planes that aren't VTOLs take off the thrust isn't perpendicular to the runway/road - it's mostly parallel. But what can happen is if there's a crack or gap in the road surface the wind could get under there and lift up chunks. Now you have a FOD problem for the next plane until someone can get out there and pick it up. But if the road was concrete and/or well-maintained, you're likely to be fine.
And the critical distinction between the two variants is that the F-35B has VSTOL (vertical / short takeoff & landing) capabilities, via ducted fans, whilst the F-35A does not. The reported test involved a rolling landing & takeoff, rather than a vertical approach as in the earlier test.
The A, B and C are essentially three different aircraft, designed for different use cases.
They were developed by the same program, designed to share as many parts/technology/software as possible, and to look almost the same... But the differences are larger than simply "the B has an extra lift fan" and "the c has foldable wingtips and a tail hook".
The C actually has significantly larger wings and weighs almost 20% more than the A due to the extra strengthening needed for carrier operations. And it needs to carry more fuel to get the same range.
I have nothing to add, but the fact that we have a journal or whatever the hell is it that is called "The War Zone" as war is something like a football league, really sadden me, I mean we are fucking fucked up in the brain, how can we even think that something like that is acceptable, do we even stop and think about the meaning of words anymore? Do words have meaning in modern society?
>> How is this useful if you can’t refuel or reload ordnance?
You can. It is true that there are logistics challenges to provide fuel/ammunition to a vehicle that does not have a fixed base (such as an airfield). Similar logistic challenges are solved for tanks.
>> aren’t you a sitting duck for the enemy?
Only until you take back off again. In the event that your airfields have recently stopped existing, that will likely be as soon as you refuel/reload.
In other news: security researchers have decompiled a popular Chinese social media app to find it has been hijacking the accelerometer and GPS in the smartphones of US citizens.
The payload was being activated whenever the phone was meeting a specific set of conditions: moving above 50mph, in a straight line, and on a road with a smooth surface.
When all three conditions were met a POST was made to an HTTP endpoint somewhere inside China. While the first two conditions are common, the detection of a well maintained highway with a suspicious lack of potholes is rare enough to identify secret military air fields with complete accuracy.
I’m so sorry, I feel bad that you searched for it. It’s just something silly about potholes which I wrote in the style of a Cory Doctorow scifi short story.
There was a recent article (Sep 21) in Financial Times, claiming that the F35 stationed in the US were able to only fly in 55% of cases due to various maintenance issues. Maybe they should consider using runways after all :)
This is not that uncommon and has nothing to do with the jet being modern.
Example, YouTube: india highway airforce
Is what's special here is that they can use very short strips for that specific variant? I see no mention of length being a factor as to why it's noteworthy in the article.
I'm sure this news will annoy many a Swedish military nerd. JAS 39 Gripen was designed for takeoff and landing from highways just like its predecessor JA 37 Viggen (developed in the 70's) could. In fact, that JAS 39E/F is easier and cheaper to operate (disputed of course) was one of its main selling points. The Finnish air force, however, choose F-35A over JAS 39E/F.
Was Grippen actually cheaper to operate? Because I've been following Swiss and Finnish purchase orders and they claimed that F-35A came out both cheaper to procure and was not more expensive to operate (mostly due to much higher production numbers since every other NATO country seems to be procuring them, making spare parts and per unit costs lower).
The savings are due to the production scale and expected operation time. F-35 is so cheap (amortized) because it is a) bought by everyone and their mother, b) expected to operate for many, many decades.
It's surprising isn't it? After all the costs and overruns... but the economies of scale kicked in becaues EU NATO countries are buying them in large numbers (and they're noticably more advanced than competitors now that software is actually working).
Aren't a large portion of the F-35s that have been made to date practically complete write-offs because they're not going to update the software on them to support features from the most recent version?
Here in sweden they just took advantage of the war to ask to join nato, abandon neutrality, swiftly change the constitution, cut funds to social programs, without a public uproar, just pushing the narrative that russia was going to invade any moment.
And is history not showing Russia is always invading someone?
Is Sweden entering NATO increasing your defense budget or what is making you not liking this ?
It's not only about being able to takeoff and land from a highway. The Gripen is designed to be maintained by conscripts, and the entire maintenance system is designed for dispersed operation from the get-go. E.g. all the usual spare parts and tools are located in shipping containers even in "normal" usage on an airbase. The hangars have slots in the sides where they place the containers, the containers thus becoming an integral part of the hangar storage. When it's time to disperse, they just shut the container doors and lift the container up on a truck and drive it away.
From what I understand the F-35 maintenance system is designed around the aircraft being based on permanent air bases. Could a next generation maintenance system be similarly designed around dispersed operation? I'm sure it could, but it's not the reality today.
As for the cost, I can definitely understand the F-35 being cheaper just due to all the fixed costs (R&D, etc.) being amortized over a huge number of aircraft over the life of the program.
If only! the freezing winter weather used to cause Finnish roads to crack, now its studded winter tyres damaging the asphalt unprotected by ice due to the mild weather.
They're using special strips of road intended as emergency runways - I guess they get priority fixing in spring.
Given sufficient road width, takeoff/landing length, and road "quality" (smoothness, etc), why wouldn't an aircraft be able to takeoff from and land on to a highway? I mean, what is the actual significance of this?
"especially" ... in comparison to, say, the Saab Gripen which was designed to use roads as runaways. The Gripen sucks up less debris, so it's more tolerant of worse road preparation. But yeah the engines are all susceptible.
Jet engine intake is basically a giant vacuum cleaner... and the jet engine itself can be destroyed by a small debris like small stones etc which is plentiful around any kind of a road. And a damaged jet engine is kinda bad news on takeoff, especially if there's only one to begin with.
A-10's high mounted jet engines are up there for a reason. It can operate from almost anything resembling a runway.
The Soviets/Russians seem to have solved that problem, this runway [1] looks worse than many county roads around these parts of Eastern Europe where I live.
I read something the other day that said for F-35s to take off from roads they have to be swept perfectly clean, otherwise junk (gravel, twigs etc) gets sucked into their air vents.
The Russian equivalent jets like the MIG-29, by contrast, have flaps that can close the intakes on take off and landing.
Did the road have to be cleaned up before this F35 could take off?
I think some fighter jets have the intakes on the upper side of the fuselage to enable this. Closing intake by some flaps seems like a bad idea, given that on take off you'd probably want to have all the power you can get.
The Swedish military have designed and built their (own) fighter jets
precisely for this scenario.
These fighter jets can take more abuse during take off and landing than
the F35 can.
They have also built the natural infrastructure needed.
Smaller somewhat hidden Airforce bases inside mountains or such, located
near suitable highways, so the airplane can land, be maintained, refueled and rearmed easily.
This gives them an easy way to distribute their fighters much more distributed than most countries.
If you dont have a means to protect, maintain, refuel and rearm the landed jet, it makes the landing a lot less useful.
This is primarily a PR stunt.
That Norway is even mentioning this as a good solution is a joke.
Norway has based most of their F35 on a single airbase.
With a second one planned or ready to go.
So as centralized as possible.
Sweden has far far higher standards on highways than Norway does.
(In part exactly because they planned for this)
Wider, straighter and with continuous maintenance to keep the tarmacs
flat.
Not very encouraging?
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