In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
Plus it never ceases to amaze me the number of folks who think that (a)
bringing in enough aluminum matting (and we don't use PSP anymore) to build
a fighter strip is a piece of cake (and trying to support a C-5 on one is a
mean proposition), (b) installing the matting is all there is to it (no
cut/fill, drainage work, or subbabse and base course prep required),
getting the requisite engineer equipment and units into the site is an easy
matter, and (d) this will all happen over a matter of a day or two. Laying
in a fighter-length strip from scaratch is a *major* engineer operation, and
quite different from that required to construct a minimum length rough field
C-130 strip.

Compare this with the effort needed to create HMS Sheathbill in the
Falklands (which was a basic "land, refuel, leave or GLI" strip). It's
*much* easier to pick a stretch of highway, fly in fuel bladders and
maybe ordnance & first-line servicing - than to build a fixed-wing CTOL
strip from scratch (lots of supplies and equipment needed just to build
the runway before anything else arrives) The USMC's AV-8Bs did this to
very good effect in 1991, for instance.


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk