shehbazi2001
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Shehbazi, the flying mechanics and aircraft handling while landing in an underground airfield and onboard an aircraft carrier are very different. I haven’t landed on either of these so all my/our discussion is all theory based rather than practical. While deck landings have been going on since many decades, but no one has ever dared operating a jet fighter at an underground airfield at regular basis. It’s too risky and operationally un-viable.
Your idea of moving runway is very interesting but again it has many strings attached. The first thing that needs modification are the aircrafts. Carrier operating aircrafts have very robust landing gears, struts and come with an arrester hook. So all the fighters will need a major mod here.
Secondly, how do you plan to move this 4000 feet (more than a kilometre long) giant in a single piece from Sargodha to ( let’s say) Pindi Bhatian ? It’s impossible with the current road infrastructure. And also the whole world will know anyway whenever and wherever it is being moved. Hence no surprises for the enemy.
Thirdly, an aircraft carrier is never alone but sails with the whole battle group and it’s very well protected. How do you foresee the protection of land based moving runway? We will need number of AAA, SAM , Crotales , missiles and other defences that will be moving with it where ever it goes...hence another logistical nightmare.
On a usual airfield, fighters are much protected, well spread and it’s not easy to destroy them all. But will this moving runway parked near Kallar Kahar, It’s like putting all the eggs (60 to 70 fighters) in one basket and making job easy for the enemy.
IMO its not a workable idea. It will be very costly and redundant before even put into service. In our scenario, we have ample amount of FOBs/ MOBs that are very well spread from Skurdu to Karachi. These airfields serve our purpose very well and are more than enough. While PAF has operated from existing motorways and road runways, I don’t think that a moving runway has any future in our arena or even elsewhere.
Perhaps I did not use the proper words for changing a little bit the location of runway in the spanwise direction. I did not mean "Transport" of runway rather it meant just a few hundred or may be just 200 to 500 feet sideways movement while remaining at the same location and same airbase.
An attack coming at tree-top level will pull-up just in front of (mostly) runway. If during the dive or just before the attack formation arrives, runway slips to the side, the fighter can do nothing. A fighter jet can't drop bombs sideways.
The figure of 4000 feet was based on the runway length required for fully loaded F-16. However with the use of catapult, I think we can reduce it to half easily. Thus 2000 feet seems managable length for moving.
For Satishkumar, the ships too carry water reservoir with themselves, as far as I know. Correct me if some new technology has come but you cant use the salt water of ocean for steam turbines of nuclear power plants equipping aircraft super carriers. Thus the ships dont take water from ocean although it seems so.
Thanks x_man for your participation on the topic. Although we consider it just an imagination, we still dont know what North Koreans have done so far and whether it is still a reality or not.
For your point of modifications to aircrafts, I just remember the earliest british aircraft carriers that had decks of rubber. Thus they could use their ordinary fighters without much modifications. They used the belly-landing on rubber decks. Although this concept did not work at that time, the rubber deck "should" allow land-based aircrafts to land without much modifications except that arrestor hook. Again it needs to be tested.
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