RAMSTEIN, Germany - In the wake of a prolonged period of instability and in light of recent threats, the capacity for Airfield Damage Repairing (ADR) has become a critical and decisive factor for the Alliance to ensure resilience, survivability, and operational continuity in case of attacks.
The core of ADR is the ability to intervene very rapidly to implement immediate repair measures (e.g., covering craters with fiber-reinforced panels, repairing key facilities and equipment, etc.), which at a minimum allow assets to disperse to other locations outside the threat radius. NATO is strongly pushing for nations to build these capabilities internally, preferably standardizing repair procedures and techniques to enable potential interoperability in a crisis.
Airfield Damage Repairing or – in concept – damage rapid repairing is a key capability to ensure infrastructure resilience
Many nations possess the technical capacity to carry out these types of repairs, and NATO, thanks to dedicated Working Groups - in which Allied Air Command (AIRCOM) is involved –, is pushing to give to the Nations also an "expeditionary" posture in order to have skilled personnel, trained and prepared, able to intervene, even in non-permissive environments (e.g., CBRN), along with a whole series of materials and equipment that are pre-positioned and ready for use.
In the wake of a prolonged period of instability and in light of recent threats, the capacity for Airfield Damage Repairing has become a critical and decisive factor for the Alliance to ensure resilience, survivability, and operational continuity in case of attacks. Photo courtesy NATO AIRCOM
A multinational team from Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Italy practice ADR recovery activities. Photo courtesy NATO AIRCOM
“Airfield Damage Repairing or – in concept – damage rapid repairing is a key capability to ensure infrastructure resilience” said by LtC Fernando PUGLIESE Combat Engineer A4 Engineering Branch AIRCOM. “It contributes effectively to implement Agile Combat Employment (ACE) deployments and dynamic basing” he added.
The United States, who are promoting the development of this capability, periodically organizes multinational exercises to demonstrate to its NATO partners the state of the art in repair techniques and materials. Recently for example, in Grostenquin in France, late March-early April, a United States Air Force Europe (USAFE) and France exercise or in Amari airbase in Estonia, late August, a USAFE and Estonian exercise with 14 other nations as observers.
The latest exercise, held in September 2024 and supervised by US team, involved a multinational team from Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Italy – this last one participated with 12 people out of 18 - to practice ADR recovery activities. The three-day-long multinational exercise on the techniques of rapid damage repair of airport pavements, organized by the 435th Construction and Training Squadron (435th C.T.S.) for the personnel of the NATO Nations has been held at the Ramstein air base in Germany. The 435th CTS created, on concrete pavements dedicated to the purpose, some craters similar to those that would be generated by the impact of various types of explosive devices on the flight surfaces.
In particular, via a carpet of elementary modules in Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP), the multinational team fixed a “large crater”, measuring 12m in diameter, and a “small crater” measuring 4.5m in diameter. The FRP carpet technique 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 acquisition of several FRP kits for European airbases considered critical.
The next appointment will be in Moron in Spain where multiple NATO members will perform airfield damage repair with USAFE civil engineers.