NATO Interoperability and The Cold War

Just curious, the cold war kept me pretty busy. I remember lot's of "REFORGER" stuff, but i was trying to remember if I'd ever seen anything regarding NATO aircraft, in addition to the Norwegians, using roadways and other flat spaces for alternative strips. I was watching a program on the Mil Channel today, and they showed some grippens landing on a back road. think it was stock footage from grippen flight and acceptance testing, but any of you old NATO pilots (not Norwegian) out there ever do some ops off of roadways ? and if ya did, what were you flying, and how'd that first landing go. thanks. keep them flying !

reply to post by tencap77


not a pilot - but experience of RAF harriers training to operate anywhere but an established airbase

Germany autobahns had stretches that were deigned to be used as airfields. I think the Panavia Tornado was designed to use short strips and there are many videos of these aircraft using autobahns. Basically, any aircraft that had short take off and landing could use a road.

I am certain that in the event of the Cold War getting hot, NATO would have dispersed their air forces and stretches of roads would have been quite convenient.

Regards

Harrier was VTOL for operating in the field, Jaguars had rough field landing gear I do believe. Not so sure about the Tornado's - although there are some sections of Motorway in the UK that could be used at a push

tencap77--->in addition to the Norwegians, using roadways and other flat spaces for alternative strips.

That would be the Swedes, as we don't have enaugh staight (and wide) roads to be used as runways for jet airplanes.

reply to post by tencap77


See following forums for aircrew and groundcrew involved. Tests were conducted with RAF Jaguar in the UK and Germany. RAF Harriers in addition to their dispersed sites also tested and exercised on German Autobahns.

www.pprune.org...

Luftwaffe Tornado on Autobahn.



Various NATO aircraft operating from Autobahn



Jaguar doing tests in the UK

The Jaguar was a sales pitch or PR by BAE Systems (British Aerospace) - the stretch of M55 motorway was unfinished at the time, well not open to public and is at the nearest junction to Warton (the Staining turnoff 2) before the bridge was built.

The RAF used austere airfields in the Falklands as an FOB for Harrier - obviously the planners would know what equipment to take and the sappers would know how to build an austere airfield thanks to Cold War plans:

www.thinkdefence.co.uk...

Sorry dont know how to link pictures.

Although not NATO, Taiwan also has several purpose built roadways that double as take off and landing strips:

www.youtube.com... (sorry, ATS's Youtube embed feature not currently working for me)

reply to post by IamSirDrinksalot


Here is a quick tutorial I made in another thread on how I embed photos into posts (sorry if this thread drifts a bit:

First, copy and paste a pic from your online source to your computer. Then return to ATS.

Click on arrow next to the "logout" button. This will bring down your other account options. Click on the "Upload" button (cloud with the arrow):



Then click on the cloud in the upper left of the window and this will bring open a box that you can upload .jpg files from your computer to your ATS account:



After you do this you will see the pics. appear in your upload library:



After you have them on your ATS library click on the image and it will bring up another window with 3 different codes in it:



Copy the "BBcode for use in post" code and paste it into your reply/post to any of the ATS threads.

Be sure to click the "preview under your post to see it before you post it. Hope this helps.

Well thanks Sam.

So the Falklands, thanks to Nato Cold War planning, the UK had the Harrier, at the time of the Falklands Skirmish it was the SHAR (sea Harrier) for Fleet Defence and the RAF GR (Ground (Attack and) Reconassaince) 1 and 3 - both heavy on sealant to Navalise them!

The planning assumptions for the Falklands taken straight from the Cold War manual was to establish an FOB on the Islands, the FOB was to provide sustained operations over a 22 day period with fuel, weapons, air traffic control and maintenance facilities for 12 aircraft with a 400m runway planning on 8 sorties per day.

So to enable this, equipment was loaded into the Atlantic Conveyer. Equipment which the planners and sappers had all used in training for Cold War missions put to use in Europe was now on a ship to South America.

You can read the article any way but this FOB and Aircraft was designed to be deployed across Europe, the Aluminium matting for a 400m runway and taxi way plus fuel, weapons, maintenance and air traffic can probably all fit in 4 chinooks!