Perttu Karivalo hit the road to join the Finnish Air Force as it practised its long tradition of flying its F/A-18C/D Hornets from the country’s main dual carriageways.
The Finnish Air Force has been using several ‘highway strips’ – or dual carriageways – across Finland for dispersed operations for many years. This practice enables it to base fighters at each strip, making it very difficult to destroy the Air Force on the ground. All the main bases are close to a carriageway, to which fighters can taxi. Because of this, the main bases are used only in peace time; during crises, they are mostly empty as they are likely to be targeted quite early in any possible war.
Finland has an 845-mile border with Russia and, as has been seen in Ukraine, the missile threat is real. Col Vesa Mäntylä, commander of the Finnish Air Force Academy and commander of this year’s annual road-based training exercise, Baana 22, said that dispersed highway strip operations are good protection against the Russian missile threat and that the Finnish Air Force has enough roads it can use. This, and a very effective command and control system with the Air Force, Navy and Army working as one, creates the potential…
