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Comment by sillywalk | Hacker News Reader

"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..

[1] http://www.cassholdings.com/AM2.htm

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> "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.

I'm curious how long it takes / how many people / what special equipment or vehicles were required to set up these types of semi-improvised runways.

Interesting, here is a picture with a bit more detail:

https://ascelibrary.org/cms/10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.00016...

> I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines..

They would send out personal to remove FOD (foreign object debris) before any operations and before laying those mats, I assume.

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’m sure Finland’s current F/A-18s also need tons of support infrastructure if you go by ~the book~a google search. That hasn’t stopped us from developing and drilling the capacity to routinely operate them from these highway bases with much lighter logistics if need be. As stated in the article, the RAF is coming to Finland to learn and conduct tests. And because we’re in the process of replacing the Hornets with (non-B) F-35s, the experiments will benefit us as well.

A lot of the Nordic strips are only semi-distributed and near a central logistics hub. This lends itself to caching. There is definitely a tradeoff in how dispersed one can be before they are completely expeditionary vs. simply dispersed. It’s a continuum.

I think this is one of those options you use after some of your airfields have been rendered inoperable. Then you transition the remaining personnel to your highways with a stack of containers from a random storage location.

they can refuel in the air...

https://www.boeing.com/defense/kc-46a-pegasus-tanker/

The "FOD Plod"

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)

For a video example, here's a de Havilland Vampire destroying a runway on takeoff at an airshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3_mQZ4gY8

Is concrete used much in Europe? I’d think asphalt is a much more common highway surface material.

In the UK concrete has mainly been superseded by asphalt but there are one or two hold-outs. The M3 motorway (which heads from London down to Winchester / Southampton) has a long (ten miles?) concrete stretch which I drove along every day for years, although this is the exception that proves the rule. The road was noticeably more noisy / rumbly than others.

https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/concrete-roads/ 400 miles, apparently. But much less common outside of the east of england.

Concrete is also commonly used on heavy industrial estates - if they've got hundreds of 40 tonne lorries making sharp turns every day, they need the durability.

Probably depends on climate. Asphalt handles freezing temperatures much better.

It was used a lot in the GDR (and i suppose a lot in eastern europe a few decades ago).

Ah yes, I remember the distinct sound and the rhythm from the joint lines that the concrete plaque roads made when driving through the GDR as a child.

A lot of Warsaw pact countries, yes, and in Ukraine it was still common a decade ago when last I was there.

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.

Sorry to bother you on a random comment, but is your airship thing still current?

Yes. As with most things it’s taking time to get things moving - I’m still raising an initial round of funding, and am at the “I will if they will” on several counts stage, and am working with a local council to get my hands on a large chunk of industrial park on a grant. Not far off the target, and a few potential investors yet to approach.

It’s going to take a while to go anywhere, but in the meantime I’m working with a couple of aerospace engineer friends/family on solidifying the concept. If nothing else I’m having fun figuring out how to make something the size of a skyscraper fly with next to no energy expenditure.

> 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?

The headline says vertical but this describes short takeoff on a well prepared surface.

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...

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