Posted on 01/25/2017 4:29:43 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea strengthens its emergency airfield capabilities
Joseph S Bermudez Jr, Colorado - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
13 January 2017
Commercial satellite imagery shows that North Korea has been progressively modernising its emergency airfield capabilities since late 2015 by adapting highways for use as airstrips, building aircraft shelters, and developing contingency airfields.
The measures seem to be part of a nationwide modernisation programme designed to bolster the infrastructure of the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF).
Built on specially reinforced highway sections or on compacted dirt roads, the highway airstrips average 1.8 km in length and vary in width between 15 and 22 m for paved highways and 8 and 12 m for dirt and gravel roadways.
Some of the KPAF's highway airstrips appear to be moderately serviced, while others, such as the Sunan-up highway strip, seem well maintained. This probably depends on the airstrips' proximity to regular airbases and cities. The airfields in better condition appear to be occasionally used in training exercises in a bid to ensure pilot familiarity and test support unit proficiency.
(Excerpt) Read more at janes.com ...
P!
Kim can now flee the country from just about anywhere. But where would he land?
I suppose it’s a good thing to use highways as emergency airstrips when you don’t have any actual cars on them.
It is a small, isolated, wooded ridge at Latitude 39.078464°, Longitude 125.780545° that has a big, wide highway [short runway?] running straight through its northeastern end, (The roadway could have easily bypassed the ridge on flat ground instead of being tunneled through.)
Its base is surrounded by structures that are actually "sunk into" the mountain. And, there are several tunnel entrances (roads that dead-end into the mountain) visible -- especially on earlier, older overflights -- before the vegetation was allowed to grow and mask them....
I suspect the whole ridge is one huge, underground military facility...
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Of particular interest is the ridge's southwestern end. On it are two clearly visible, old, Soviet style SAM system emplacements: small, oval "racetrack" roads -- with eight SAM enclosures radiating outward from them:
Also visible in the above image is a large tunnel entrance...
Similar installations (including the more modern, "linear" layout SAM sites) are visible on other isolated, wooded hilltops in the area...
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If any of you, my fellow FReepers, are "into" Google Earth "snooping" and KML, FReepMail me: it might be fun to start a "FR PingList" for swapping KML files of such sites found with Google Earth... '-)
Iran's a hellhole - they'd take him.
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