Thread 64162450

Why did Sweden choose such strange layouts when redesigning their airbases for Bas90? building isolated Roadbases I understand but why build short runways and revetments on public roads around a normal airbase then connect those public roads directly to the main runway?

Jokkmokk has a winding 5 km public road with 20 hardstands on it connected directly to the end of runway 32. So in an alpha strike you'd a conga line of up to 20 Viggens/Gripens (possible stuck behind mormor's Volvo 66) driving through the twisties for miles until they reach the active runway.

How do Gripens handle on the road? Are they safe in crash tests?

>>64162450 (OP)
Oh boy can I answer this one. As someone who has spent 5 years in the Swedish Air Force, specifically on air base issues (Yes I have worked at Jokkmokk too), you have to put Bas 90 into a 1980s context. The long distances and dispersion was a defence against smaller yield nuclear weapons for one. But be a bit more specific in your questions and ill answer. Jokkmokk has btw has three different roads connected to both ends of its main runway, and a bunch inbetween those three. The idea is no matter where you cut it, you can still get to one of the runways to take off (also, there were units tasked with road repair that could be done in under 2h)

>>64162587


>What the deal with having the roads roll directly onto the runway thresholds, is that in case the legit taxiway surfaces get cratered?

>Related to that was the threat they were building against nukes or runway cratering munitions and cruise missiles? I always assumed the latter.

>Do you know if at the time Bas90 was being conceived they considered using hardened aircraft shelters? and if so why they discounted using them? I've noticed today any Swedish airbase I've looked at just has dispersal hardstands/revetments and some of those light open sided aircraft shelters for QRF not HASes.

>Are the SAAB marketing and memes about Viggen and Gripen being easy to operate from roadbases and prep on a makeshift flight line true?

>Did they design short secondary runways because the Viggen didn't need a 2,000m runway or did they build it with STOL capability because they already planned on operating smol runways.

I can't think of any more specifically phrased questions :(

>>64162757
>>What the deal with having the roads roll directly onto the runway thresholds, is that in case the legit taxiway surfaces get cratered?
Yes, thats one of the reasons, another one is for quick take off in case of an air raid alert

>>Related to that was the threat they were building against nukes or runway cratering munitions and cruise missiles? I always assumed the latter.
Inaccurate nukes was mostly a Bas60 thing, but carried over to Bas90. The idea regarding layout was also so that no straight line conventional bomb run could crater a ton of stuff.

>>Do you know if at the time Bas90 was being conceived they considered using hardened aircraft shelters? and if so why they discounted using them? I've noticed today any Swedish airbase I've looked at just has dispersal hardstands/revetments and some of those light open sided aircraft shelters for QRF not HASes.
Some bases has old 1950s concrete shelters, but they arnt really comparable to a real HAS or part of Bas60/90. The open QRF stands with weather protection are known as "Törebodabågar" in Swedish and are still in use. In the 90s they were experimenting with the idea of concrete shelters (or where possible, just drilling into hard rock, but that didnt go anywhere due to budget cuts post CW

>>Are the SAAB marketing and memes about Viggen and Gripen being easy to operate from roadbases and prep on a makeshift flight line true?
Absolutly true, and this isnt even me beeing biased, I have worked on other airframes too in joint exercizes as part of exchange teams

>>Did they design short secondary runways because the Viggen didn't need a 2,000m runway or did they build it with STOL capability because they already planned on operating smol runways.
A bit of both, Saab was tasked with this in mind, and came back saying 800m will be well enough. So 800 it is.

>>64162450 (OP)
highway strips aren't supposed to be used for sustained operations, you won't be launching deep strike COMAOs from them as the sortie generation rate will be abysmal
in the theoretical 60s-80s scenario, after you get nuked with 2 500kt class weapons per airbase the handful of surviving aircarft and support crews will be flying CAP against frontline bombers like Su-24 and Su-22 trying to destroy anything BDA recon said was not hit yet

>>64162865

Thank you for the reply anon. It has genuinely answered a lot of what was confusing me.

I expected all the posts ITT to be from people for whom Kallax is a bookcase and nothing more not the most elusive posters on /k/: Someone with any actual subject knowledge.

>>64162975
When you have 100+ airbases nuking everyone of them twice really isnt an option anymore for the Soviet Union, unless they for some retarded reason decides to go all in on a nuclear war with Sweden alone and nobody else. Released documents tell us that they had two 500kt nukes allocated for the entire country of Denmark incase of a hot war with NATO, and Sweden wasnt even in NATO.

>>64163074
Well thank you for not just disregarding everything I wrote and calling me a nigger, as is otherwise tradition here on /k/

>>64163095
there were only tens of airbases not a hundred, the planes were not spread out uniformly across them in peace and crisis time and sweden/norway were an important part of the european theather, blocking access to the atlantic ocean
I don't know what documents are you referring to, if those are declassified polish or czechoslovakian 60s war plans, Poland alone had 16 100kt+ class warheads stored on its territory for immediate use against hardened targets in west germany and denmark, that is command posts and airfields with HAS
soviets had hundreds of such tactical weapons in the first echelon and the exact targeting information was never declassified
denmark was supposed to be occupied not destroyed, I'm not aware of such plans for sweden because opposed amphibious assaults were very costly

>>64163196
>czechoslovakian 60s war plans
We were supposed to march through Southern Germany and die before reaching Lyon. Denmark was not our responsibility.
t. Czech

>>64162470

it has 2 things soccer moms would love: sitting high up compared with other cars like an SUV an having an ejector seat for little timmy