Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search

airfield because we had immediate access to them on the
radio nets; a very good operation.

S: What about airfield pavement mission capabilities? You were
never ever quite happy with the condition of the airfield
pavement, were you?

M: The airfield is 8 years old. It was constructed by a Corps
of Engineer contract. The airfield has not been maintained
at all in those 8 years. The asphalt is, old. There are
small potholes in the runway and taxiway. I was not very
concerned about the condition of the runway because we were
not operating F-16s here originally and were not scheduled
to do that. A-l0s and heavy airlift aircraft are not
particularly susceptible to FOD, but when the F-16s came, I
repeatedly requested pavement maintenance. It was only
because it was not available. The MC-64, the Zorac, the
asphalt repair materials were just not available in theater
at all. I thought that was unusual. We were not able to
fix the pavement with anything other than sacrete, which is
a bomb-damage-repair material. I was dismayed often because
of the inability to repair the taxiways.

One thing we need to do when we deploy is to take the
appropriate heavy equipment with us, the appropriate asphalt
and concrete repair materials. I'm not suggesting that we
would have had the time to repair the runway for the small
jobs to do normal maintenance because of our flow, but there
were some moments, whether we had an hour or maybe 2 hours
of open space on the runway, which we could have used to
repair it.

S: Perhaps you had some concerns about the rapid runway repair
capability here?

                                                                              18

Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search