The Air Force Academy’s first TG-16 lands -- on asphalt -- at its new home last summer
The Air Force Academy has just opened its new glider landing strip. It’s an area the size of 23 football fields carpeted in 1.3 million square feet of what the service calls “aviation turf.” The Air Force unveiled the carpeted runway – which it termed “one of the largest of its kind in the world” — last week. It one of those ironic grace notes, high winds forced the outdoor ceremony to be cut short. Apparently, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Cost: $3.6 million. And to think some folks believe Pentagon spending has been cut to the bone, and that the nation’s military is on the verge of collapse for lack of funds. If that’s what you think, let’s track the academy plan…to carpet a runway:
Academy cadets fly gliders to become familiar with flight and how to control it. Last year, the academy spent $4.8 million on 19 German-built TG-16 gliders. Until now, the academy’s gliders have usually landed on…grass. “With the grass area, it was hard to tell where you were supposed to land,” Colonel Christopher Plamp, the 306th Flying Training Group commander, told the Academy Spirit newspaper (see the new gliders flight-tested here).
That’s not the only benefit. “Vibration from landing impact and landing roll are prime causes of material failure in our new fiberglass and carbon-fiber gliders,” Maj. Mike Mulligan (no, not the guy with the steam shovel, but the assistant director of operations for the 306th Operations Support Squadron at the academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo.) told the newspaper. “The aviation turf is a state-of-the-art surface material that reduces the wear and tear from vibration during landing.” (What’s next? Aircraft carriers topped with extra-firm mattresses?)
The fake grass will have markings to outline landing and parking areas, kind of like on a football field. The news story notes that “while the sailplane landing area’s turf looks similar to what’s installed in Falcon Stadium [where the Air Force Academy’s football team plays], the surface beneath the faux grass does not give. The texture is closer to the concrete runways on the airfield than a grass field.”
In typical Air Force fashion, an engineering study done by the academy’s Engineering Mechanics Department and the Center for Aircraft Structural Life Extension confirmed the wisdom of carpeting the landing area. “The findings in the report directly attributed overstress and fatigue on the sailplanes due to the native vegetation,” Scott Bowshot, a civil engineer with the Academy’s 10th Civil Engineer Squadron, told the newspaper. “If the Air Force did not invest in an improved landing surface, the new glider fleet would be subject to a premature service life expectancy. The new gliders are fiberglass, which is much more expensive and timely to repair versus the metal TG-10 gliders” (fly aboard one of the older, metal birds here).
In fact, Bowshot said carpeting the runway was actually a bargain. “The cost to install sod with irrigation would have been more expensive over the life cycle versus installing artificial turf,” he said. “The synthetic turf is virtually maintenance-free, with only the requirement of an herbicide application in the spring to keep weeds from germinating.”
The Air Force says its new gliders will take off and land on the carpet about 17,000 times a year for 25 years. That’s 425,000 sorties, which works out to $8.47 per flight.