Land-based Systems
Land-based military airfields operating fighter or jet trainer aircraft also use arresting gear systems, although they are not required for all landings. Instead, they are used for landing aircraft on short or temporary runways, or for emergencies involving brake failure, steering problems or other situations in which using the full length of the runway is not possible or safe. There are three basic types of land based systems: permanent, expeditionary, and overrun gear.
Permanent systems are installed on nearly all U.S. military airfields operating fighter or jet trainer aircraft. Expeditionary systems are similar to permanent systems and are used for landing aircraft on short or temporary runways. Expeditionary systems are designed to be installed or uninstalled in only a few hours.
Overrun gear consisting of hook cables and/or elastic nets known as barriers are commonly used as a backup system. Barrier nets catch the wings and fuselage of an aircraft and use an arresting engine or other methods such as anchor chains or bundles of woven textile material to slow the aircraft down. On some land-based airfields where the overrun area is short, a series of concrete blocks referred to as an engineered materials arrestor system is used. These materials are used to catch the landing gear of an aircraft and slow it via rolling resistance and friction. Aircraft are stopped by the transfer of energy required to crush the blocks.
The first use of a barrier on a military airfield was during the Korean War when jet fighters had to operate from shorter airfield where there was no margin for error. The system used was just a transplant of the crash barrier used on straight deck carriers to keep any aircraft that missed the arrest wires from crashing into the aircraft parked forward of the landing area. But instead of the more complex hydraulic system used on carriers to stop the aircraft when it hits the barrier the land based system used heavy chains to bring the aircraft to a halt.
Read more about this topic: Arresting Gear
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