Friday, July 30, 2021

US Air Force To Practice Landing On Michigan Highway In August

WXYZ Detroit: Military training exercise will attempt to land planes on Northern Michigan highway in August

The Michigan Air National Guard and several other military outputs from across the country will test landing planes on Michigan highways next month.

According to the Michigan National Guard, the combat readiness exercise will happen in Alpena to demonstrate how active-duty and reserve-component units can integrate to project combat airpower in austere environments.

 The MI Air National Guard's 127th wing, the Air Force’s 355th Wing from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona; and, the Air Force Special Operations Command from Duke Field in Florida, will land four A-10 aircraft and two C-146 aircraft on a closed-off portion of the road.

I hope they've sufficiently strengthened the landing gear on all the aircraft and briefed the pilots to watch out for Michigan's ubiquitous potholes on landing considering the condition of our state roads. 

Good luck, you're going to need it, not due to any question of skill, but due to a very real question as to the quality of your landing surface.

4 comments:

Old NFO said...

Lots of military do this in various countries... VA-15 did an entire deployment in Korea flying off highways for SIX MONTHS!

Aaron said...

Old NFO: That they do and its hardly as shocking as the article makes it out to be, but I suspect Korea's highways are in better shape than Michigan's.

Scott said...

I bet those folks in Alpena get a quick infusion of money from Gov. Wretched to "fix the damn roads"

Rick said...

From a flight in 2005 to Deming, NM, I remember a NOTAM that one of the runways was OTS due to a C-17 chewing up the surface a year before. The runway still hadn't been repaired since it seemed the locals were fighting with the feds.