There was a fascinating book, called Outside Lies Magic[0], where he talks about these kinds of things.
[0] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-r-stilgoe/ou...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/landing-of-hope-and-glory/
The two biggest arguments against using highways as runways are:
1. Airports are not at all rare, even in rural areas. If an enemy could succeed in making all airports (even in just a single region) unusable, they could do the same to major cities, and have pretty much already won the war.
2. Sacrificing a lot of ground mobility for a little bit of air power is extremely unlikely to ever be a worthwhile trade-off.
It may, indeed, be false, but I'm not sure if that Snopes thing is really saying that. It's talking about a fairly specific example.
* No, interstate highways in the US are not required by regulation to be designed for military use.
* Yes, the military is aware that highways are an option for landing if need be, and they have even trained to do this.
* Regardless, the military doesn't really need highways to be required by law to be designed for landing for them to serve that practical purpose. A scenario in which US military bases and airports are blown up is a pretty extreme scenario to plan for anyway. There are almost 20,000 airports in the US.
* Some other countries do impose design requirements by law for highways to be used as runways.
I think you mean "military aircraft use", because it's a well-known fact that the U.S. Interstate Highway System was conceived and implemented to facilitate movement of troops and materiel in the event of a war on the home front.
The problem, though, was getting it off the ground. Mechanics stripped it of everything they could. Then put just enough gas in to get it to Heathrow. The pilot was one brave mofu, and he got the job done.
Brilliant move - suddenly there's an abundance of airstrips all over.
(Finnish fighters landing and refueling from highway stops. Including the US-built FA-16A Hornet.)
[0] https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/the-h...
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Vj_eJxy8ojk>
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=D0KADbVDkn8>
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=UUr5KWEQNxc>
Note the full deployment of speed brakes in the 1st & 2nd videos particularly. I've never seen the F-18 Hornet rear brake (between the twin tails) before.
This approach would have resulted in the absolute minimum cost of acquiring the land to build the highway, so it is probably why I-57 looks the way it does. It's pretty easy to imagine that the only reason I-57 exists is as a political quid-pro-quo and therefore they'd try to build it as cheaply as possible. If you wanted to go from Chicago to Memphis & New Orleans, you could take I-55, but then you also have to go through the state capital and St. Louis. So instead, if you live in the politically-powerful areas on the Southside of Chicago (where the first mayor Daley lived - perhaps the most powerful mayor in America back when the Interstate system was started), you could have a highway built specifically for you! You don't have to waste time driving past the people you hate on the west side, you can skip the people you hate in Springfield, you can skip the people you hate in St. Louis, and then the Interstate ends when it connects back up with I-55 north of Memphis.
PS - Chanute got BRACC'ed about 30 years ago.
In the Netherlands you could drive an entire armored division straight into the capital over the many highways. Some of them you could land a Boeing 747 on. Roads are important Infrastructure that you take for granted like power and clean water.
It’s pretty easy to defend against an invading force if they have to all go nose to tail in one line on infrastructure that you know everything about. You can further limit where they go by disabling choke points like bridges, and just destroying the roads faster than the engineers can repair them.