How to prevent enemy planes from taking off from the airfield?

[Rubanartem87]

Friends, share your experience. Is it possible to inflict with your aircraft and artillery on the objects of enemy airports in order to prevent aircraft from taking off? What do you think airport facilities need to be damaged for this? Is it possible to damage only the runway enough?

[blu3s]

From one of the strike tutorials:

At between 75% and 100% integrity level (ie. 0-25% damage), the runway can handle very large aircraft.

· Between 50% and 75% integrity it can handle up to large aircraft.

· Between 25% and 50% integrity it can handle up to medium aircraft.

· Between 10% and 25% integrity it can handle up to small aircraft.

Between 1% and 10% integrity only STOVL aircraft or helicopters can operate. (<--- At this point you're literally looking at craters and broken chunks of concrete everywhere. Perhaps even the STOVL ability is optimistic, given that in such a condition the engine-FOD would be quite likely...)

I usually strike runaways, taxiways and access points.

[BDukes]

Section 9.3 of the manual is about exactly this. Check it out

M

[Schr75]

If you take out all runways and runway grade taxiways you will shut down the airfield.
Alternatively, you can take out all runway access points. This will prevent the enemy planes from reaching the runway to take off.

Which approach is the best depends on the enemy airfield and the weapons you have available.
Runways (and taxiways to some extend) are typically heavily armored so they require penetrator weapons to really do some damage.
Access points on the other hand are only lightly armored, so HE weapons will do a great job here.

Hope this helped.

Søren

[foxid259]

A very easy way to land planes, is to destroy 2-4 connection points that connect the runway and taxiways.

[Blast33]

To help you a little bit, here is a print screen of a XLS I made a few years ago.
CMO is programmed that every (!) airfield you attack will repair the runway in a very fast time. Maybe this was the case in the Cold War but I wonder how the situation is at the moment..I don't know.
You can fight the program and attack the runway access point of just try

Clipboard01.png (46.4 KiB) Viewed 943 times

[Knightpawn]

How long does it take to repair a bombed runway (say 50% degraded and 90%+ degraded)?

[Blast33]

The lovely answer is...it depends

The first question is: In what timeframe is your scenario? In the Coldwar NATO and the WP had units to repair damages. But probably Brazil did not.
Nowadays many airforces in Europe discarded these capabilities and it is unclear who can do what.

Secondly: What kind of weapon is used. Penetrating or blast (how deep is the damage.

Feel free to scroll down this post and read Fri Jul 21, 2023 10:15 am

[Gunner98]

The first question is: In what timeframe is your scenario? In the Coldwar NATO and the WP had units to repair damages. But probably Brazil did not.
Nowadays many airforces in Europe discarded these capabilities and it is unclear who can do what.

That is very true but the capability is easily reconstituted - or contracted. You're not looking for a permanent repair so all you need is:
1. Bulldozer to scrape away the crap
2. A dump truck full of gravel
3. Asphalt, either with a purpose-built machine or a dump truck and steam roller - or cement
4. A few hours to let everything cure, perhaps applying chemicals or heaters or other aids to speed up the process
5. Spray paint to tell the pilots where to avoid if they have a chance

If you use deep penetrator munitions or runway busting cluster munitions it makes the process much, much harder. But basic holes are easy work to fix.

[bsmithwins]

The first question is: In what timeframe is your scenario? In the Coldwar NATO and the WP had units to repair damages. But probably Brazil did not.
Nowadays many airforces in Europe discarded these capabilities and it is unclear who can do what.

That is very true but the capability is easily reconstituted - or contracted. You're not looking for a permanent repair so all you need is:
1. Bulldozer to scrape away the crap
2. A dump truck full of gravel
3. Asphalt, either with a purpose-built machine or a dump truck and steam roller - or cement
4. A few hours to let everything cure, perhaps applying chemicals or heaters or other aids to speed up the process
5. Spray paint to tell the pilots where to avoid if they have a chance

If you use deep penetrator munitions or runway busting cluster munitions it makes the process much, much harder. But basic holes are easy work to fix.

Plus you'll want the EOD guys to disarm or blow the delayed detonation ordnance...

[Quixotic1917]

How long does it take to repair a bombed runway (say 50% degraded and 90%+ degraded)?

I've been trying to experiment to find out myself. I'll be sure to post if I can ever find a pattern for how the facility repairs work.