Military AI Works

Apparently an RAF C-130 did a wheels up landing at Brize Norton yesterday. Dont know the cause at the moment.
It closed the base all day yesterday, so this begs the question, is it a good idea, the RAF putting all its eggs in one basket ( basing the C-130,C-17,Tristar,VC-10,Future tanker fleets) all at one airfield with only one runway?

What was wrong with Lyneham? Money I guess?

Possibly money.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Lynham is bigger than Brize and also has 3 x runways?.

david lock wrote:Possibly money.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Lynham is bigger than Brize and also has 3 x runways?.

You are wrong I'm afraid.

Lyneham does indeed have multiple runways but the largest of these is 7828 feet long as apposed to Brize with 10007 feet long. Fully loaded Tristars and VC-10s, or for that matter A-330s as they will be, cannot take-off from Lyneham's short runways. Brize also has a better infrastucture and a modern passenger terminal. They thought long and hard over the decision to close Lyneham and relocate to Brize, there was even talk of moving everything to St Athan at one point. I guess the runway made the biggest decision for them.

Nick

I stand corrected.
Thanks for the info Nick, I didn`t realise the runwas were shorter, but that solves the reason for staying with Brize.

Dave

I'm surprised they didn't divert the herc to a local airfield of lesser importance. Maybe they weren't aware of the gear failure 'til it was too late?

Personally I think it does demonstrate a strategic weakness: Brize is the principal UK military transport hub, and it must be quite crowded there when everyone is home. Any mishap like yesterday's (or worse), and UK mil transport operations are potentially thrown down the pan. Oh well. On the other hand there's probably many good reasons for the move that, as a civilian, I have no hope of being able to comprehend.

Tbh I think if you have all of your military transports and tankers at one base, it needs two runways at least, so that if something happens it can remain open, but, then again, I'm only a civvie, so what do I know?

You've got to remember that these decisions are made by and large by the bean counters, not the strategists.

And Fairford is pretty close, so if there were a serious enough short-term need, I reckon it could easily act as a temporary home.

I am surprised that they did not base some of them at Fairford. With Fairford's parking and runway length, it is a great base for large frame aircraft. Maybe because the USA has some use for it as a designated standby base and use for RIAT? I was there with the 11SG for "El Dorado Canyon" and it was amazing how many KC-135's and 10s we put on the ramp at Fairford. Also remember RIAT in 2003, there were attendance of 535 aircraft with the show recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest military airshow ever.

In today's 'peace time' world - closing the main transport base for a day is not a big deal. They would want the aircraft to land at Brize Norton to make repairs faster and cheaper.

But believe me - if they had critical missions which needed the runway, they could clear it very fast.

Now had this been a high operational tempo period - an alternate airport for the emergency landing would most likely have been used.

I'm sure there also existed the possibility of short field intersection takeoffs and a short ferry to a base with a long runway should any of the EGVN aircraft be absolutely needed to get out.

I saw that one day at Subic back in 73 when the runway was closed for a similar incident (a C-2). They flew a lot of birds out with very light fuel loads to Clark - refueled and then flew their mission.