A multinational exercise on the techniques of Rapid Damage Repair of airport pavements, organized at the Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, from 09 to 11 September, by 435th Construction & Training Squadron for personnel of NATO member nations.
The 435th CTS is part of the 435th Contingency Response Group of the 435th air ground operations wing of the United States Air Forces in Europe, and deals in particular with Mission Essential Equipment Training (MEET), that is, training in the use of equipment essential for operations in times of crisis that is not used in day-to-day operational activities.
The Italian Air Force took part in the training with Major Emiliano Zenga, team leader engineer, and 11 operators and construction assistants from the three Engineering departments of Verona Villafranca, Ciampino and Bari. Personnel from the air forces of Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia also participated in the event.
The 435th CTS created, on concrete pavements dedicated to the purpose, some craters similar to those that would be generated by the impact on the flight surfaces of various types of devices. In particular, a "large crater", measuring 12m in diameter, and a "small crater" of 4,5m in diameter. The operating personnel, already experienced in their homeland in the work necessary to create new pavements, tried their hand at this new operational scenario with the following activities carried out with the means made available by the USAFE:
cleaning of the areas surrounding the crater, with excavation equipment and sweepers;- layered filling of the craters with aggregates of various sizes, duly compacted with rollers and vibrating plates, until the level of the undamaged pavement is reached;
- simultaneous assembly of the elementary modules in Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) to create a single carpet of dimensions slightly larger than those of the crater;
- positioning and fixing of the carpet above the crater to allow the pavement to be reopened for aircraft transit in the shortest possible time.
This is part of the capabilities envisaged in the RAOS (Repair of Aerodrome Operating Surfaces) chapter of Stanag 2929, Aerodrome Damage Repair, which some Officers of the Infrastructure Service of the Logistics Command have been working on updating for some time, as members of the specific ADR Working Group. The technique of the FRP carpet with anti-FOD function is a technique developed by the United States in the last decade and in which the Allied air command has also decided to invest, planning the urgent acquisition of 48 FRP kits on European bases considered critical, including the two Italian ones, Ghedi and Amendola.
On Wednesday 11th, at the end of the works, the diploma award ceremony took place.
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The three AM engineering departments, under the control of the infrastructure service of the AM logistics command, are responsible for the studies, investigations, planning, contracts and execution of the works necessary to ensure the availability and efficiency of the infrastructures used by the Air Force, Defence and NATO, carrying out the works through contracts with external companies or in direct administration with military and civilian personnel from the respective field engineering groups.
The experience gained in the management of military infrastructures is also put to the service of the country in support activities for civil protection and for the construction of works in all emergency conditions and in operations outside national borders where the departments, with their own personnel, have created in recent years, in a very short time, pavements and infrastructures necessary for the illumination of the assets envisaged by the missions.
