Here is one of the obstacles the AF engineers have to work around. It's the casing of a russian mortar shell that has been imbedded in the runway at Bagram Air Field for years.
They have a big job ahead of them.
Posted on 11/03/2005 4:08:12 PM PST by SandRat
11/3/2005 - BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Age, weather and more than 3,000 operations every week take their toll on the busiest runway in Afghanistan.
Without a continual effort to repair the runway here, the mission would virtually come to a halt.
A nine-man spall-repair team from the 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron spends more than two hours every day maintaining the runway. A spall is a shallow break in the concrete, usually found along a joint.
“We’ve made more than 200 repairs in the last two months,” said Tech. Sgt. Jason Benbrook, the noncommissioned officer in charge of airfield maintenance who’s deployed here from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. “This is an ongoing effort to support the mission until the new runway is completed.”
“The 455th ECES airfield repair team mission is critical to our operations at Bagram. Without constant runway repair, Bagram flight operations will stop within a few days or risk significant damage to fixed-wing aircraft,” said Lt. Col. Mark Danigole, 455th Expeditionary Operations Group deputy commander. “Without their tremendous effort, Bagram drops from 140,000 operations a year -- three times the rate at Ramstein Air Base, Germany -- and becomes little more than a huge parking lot.”
The team must overcome the challenge of timing all repairs between arriving and departing flights.
To make a repair, Airmen saw a square around the spall, jackhammer away the bad concrete, vacuum up the debris, then fill the hole with a quick-drying mortar mix. Within 30 minutes, the repair is dried and ready for aircraft to land on.
Bagram’s runway supports combat and humanitarian missions. The repairs keep the spall’s loose debris from damaging aircraft engines or tires.
“What we do has a direct impact on the mission,” said Staff Sgt. Brady Dryden, NCOIC of the spall repair crew. “Without us, the aircraft couldn’t do their job. It makes us feel like we’re part of what’s going on here at Bagram.”
USAF PING
Yep, and all thanks to one of the least known and potentially greatest building material known to man: alkalai-activated aluminosilicate cement concrete.
Strong, very long lasting, chloride rsistant, environmentally friendly, fast setting, dimensionally stable geopolymers should be available everywhere, like down at your local Builder's Emporium. But, I bet it's not.
This is one technology that just can't seem to make it into the commercial world. Why not? Because of building codes.
In a nutshell what is the issue with the codes?
Yeah. Interesting that when the construction industry of Chile fell to an annual growth of 0.1%, the sales of cement increased 20%. Who is doing this construction? It is outside Gummint records. Extralegal construction and extralegal property ownership and business fills in the gap, and it is a huge gap when the national legal system is not expanded to meet the actual demand. Building codes, land use zoning in the way? Go outside, that's how the third world does it. At the same time they are actually well to do, they are impoverished because most of the people cannot use their extralegal property as capital. We're getting that way in the USA these days.
Building codes generally lag way behind the technologies. Sometime WAAAY behind. this is due to inertia (nobody wants to carry the can for a change that might be blamed for some sort of failure), and union pressures to keep old and ineffecient regulations that force greater labor utilization.
For example, San Francisco used to require individual conductors to be strung on ceramic insulators in house wiring, thus effectively prohibiting the use of ROMEX insulated cable used virtually everywhere else. I believe that this antiquarian regulation has finally been changed, but it persisted for decades. And today, there are very few if any building codes that include guidelines for the use of anything but portland cement concrete.
Here is one of the obstacles the AF engineers have to work around. It's the casing of a russian mortar shell that has been imbedded in the runway at Bagram Air Field for years.
They have a big job ahead of them.
“We’ve made more than 200 repairs in the last two months,” said Tech. Sgt. Jason Benbrook, the noncommissioned officer in charge of airfield maintenance who’s deployed here from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. “This is an ongoing effort to support the mission until the new runway is completed.”
Um, has anyone thought of maybe building another runway? I hear some airports have more than one.
BTTT
Thanks for the useful cogent reply.
That also explains the levees' failure when Bush blew them up. ;-)
Cheers-
Did 15 mos. in Kandahar and the runway there had the same problems... maybe more so since summer daytime temps. are routinely 140-150 degrees. The Harriers were the usual culprits although the day in and day out pounding by C-17's and IL-76's took a toll. The runway was originally put down around 1976 ??? A parallel runway is under construction by an American/Egyptian construction co. in Kandahar (? CONTRACK ?). They hire local help by the bus loads and purchase all the materials off the local economy which usually means the local 'friendly' warlords. The material is of a poor quality compared to US standards. Highly contaminated by deleterious materials (organics) and often the wrong geologic material (too soft) and of the wrong size (too large or too small). Much of the work is done at night for obvious reasons. I seem to recall, most of the initial runway that was placed was removed due to poor strength, setting the project back several months.
Wow, interesting! Thanks for the info and for your service!
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