User:Brutaldeluxe/BASE 90

Base-90 replaced the Base-60 in the 1980´s and had a Basebattalion -85 for it´s protection and support. It was just a development of the Base-60 with further focus on dispersing the planes, e.g. using roadbases and such.

A typical airbase-90 consisted of: A main runway (often located in forest) Several, up to five, short runways (usually public roads) A "sidebase" (normally a civilian airport) A reservebase

All these runways was connected with a system of roads so the planes could move around and the ground-supportteams were mobile. A typical airbase-90 only consisted of 4-8 planes so they were VERY dispersed and had a lot of runways to chose from.

Such a base were supported of a Base-85 battalion that consisted of 1500-2000 men. 1500 men to support only 4 planes seems much but most of them were airbaserangers that would hunt and kill spetznas, repairteams to fix the runways and clear them from unexploded bombs and mines and groundsupport , they had to be plenty since they were dispersed in such a large area and there were so many runways.

The threat was a sudden massive attack from soviet. Our fighters would hopefully get airborne and counter the first wave. Since we had so many (several hundreds) runways they could´nt possibly destroy all. The ones that would have been destroyed would have been fixed again before 24h. Rearmed and refuelled the fighters would have left again within 8 minutes and be on the way for the next mission. Even if the attack came as a surprise and some fighters were on the ground not many of them would have been destroyed thanks to the fact they were so dispersed (only 4 planes in a huge airbasesystem). Another threat was Russian Spetznas, but we trained special airbaserangercompanies to deal with that.

From what we have seen in recent wars it was clearly the right idea. Instead of having a few airbases with many planes and counting on the concreteshelters would give your planes protection, many airbases with several runways dispersed over a huge area with just a handful of planes is a better choice. In today's wars mobility is the key. On the other hand, if the first wave would have been a couple of hundreds nuclearbombs against these bases we would´nt had stood a chance. I don´t know in wich extend we used the mountainhangars built in the 50/60´s in the base-90 system. One must also remember the capabilities of the soviet airforce in the 80´s. They did´nt have that many Su-24/MiG-27 that had such a range that they could reach Sweden from the Baltic states, and certanly not enough fighters (Su-27/MiG-25/31) to give them support.

But now Base-90 is coming to an end. The focus of the Swedish armed forces is now on international use and so are our basebattalions. Nowadays the few ones that are remaining will be able to be transported anywhere in the world, find a reasonable straight strip of highway and turn it to an airbase for our Gripens that will participate in a coalitionforce.

External links

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0413722/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0647719/L/ Byholma main runway

http://www.f17.mil.se/photo.php?id=55478&nid=16860 and the main runway in Visby- Gotland.