AIX also has a topic on the old Italian airfield. You can find it here: http://www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/community/showthread.php?5270-Rhodes-Kalathos 🙂

Civilian airfields have always been part of the plans. Frankfurt-Main being the obvious example, like Brussels it is a shared airfield. But I recall Amsterdam-Schiphol being used for airlift flights during large exercises too, as were Saudi and severeal other M-E airfields during the Gulf Wars. Airfields all along the Italian east coast were used during the Yugoslavia/Balkan wars in the 1990s.

The Belgians still consider their cold war reserve airfields to be operational reserve fields. They used the airfield at Ursel for an exercise not that many years ago. The French did the same with Vouziers-Sechault in 2008.

And I’m pretty sure that almost every nation around the world hase some option to use civilian airports for wartime use. After all, noise complaints do not apply during those times.

Topic kick:
Rocroi is also such a field (for which there is surprisingly little to find on line). But you might want to look into the NATO Dispersed Operating Bases in France. Wikipedia (in both english and french) mentions some, but I’ve discovered there are many more. If anyone has any information on reserve airfields in Europe I would sure like to hear something about them. 🙂

Not really.

The ‘rescue attempt’ was absolutely pathetic. Where was the cover? Why illegally landing your Lynx on foreign soil to evacuate two mere persons from Sirte, when Sirte airport was still open to anyone with a ticket and a passport?

It was a useless effort, a pathetic performance and could have been a diplomatic disaster if it wasn’t for the Lybians acting kinder than they had too.

Stelletje kneuzen.

As you do not know all the details, like everybody else, you should keep your mouth shut until more information becomes available.

Lynx ‘277’ should be preserved as a fitting memorial to Dutch military and diplomatic incompetence. I’m sure a nice pedestal can be erected in a town in the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Lynx 277 has nothing to do with Bosnia. Again: you are trolling. Consider yourself kill filed.

Far from it, my view is the minute you started to introduce all of this stuff, you instantly lost the war against terrorism, they had achieved their goal.

I’m not sure who the crazies are anymore. To ‘protect’ us from terrorism and child pornography we are ‘protected’ by laws and measures the East German Stasi and the KGB could only dream of 25 years ago, and more is underway. Western governments are ‘protecting’ our freedom by restricting it.

But I’m going off-topic here…

It’s not the toys, or the lack thereof. It’s the mindset. Remember Srebrenica!

Srebrenica failed because of international politics. That resulted in the Dutch MoD ordering NATO to hold fire, but it all began when NOBODY wanted to relief the Dutch forces there (almost unarmed and having been on rations for half a year because NOBODY was willing to undertake an effort to resupply them), and NOBODY was willing to stop the Serbs for a period of up to 3 years before that. That includes the Brits, that includes the Americans, that includes the French. Do your research.

@ RonaldV: The problem starts much earlier. You do NOT fly in there alone. One helo in the air covering, the other on the ground doing its thing, doorguns ready, &c. Oh! Only one helo aboard that ship? Why is that? Why is such an unsuitable platform sent into such a situation? THAT’s the problem.

Again: do your research. Hr. Ms. Tromp was not even supposed to be there, it had to return from the Suez Canal because it was going to hunt pirates off East-Africa. THAT is why it carried only one helo. It was the closest military presence in the area. That single helo was sent in because the alternative (doing nothing because you have only one hellicopter) was worse.

When People like Quaddafi are in power against the wish of his own people and killing them. Sovereignty and Sovereign Air Space means nothing.

I hope NATO intervenes soon. As for the Russians making a fuzz about all this. South Ossetia anyone !

How I wish if they do it under UN flag, Russians Chinese NATO all involved.

I hope NATO will NOT intervene, because that would ‘prove’ to the entire muslim world that we will always attack muslims and we set up the whole democratic movement in the arabian world. Let them handle it themself. Support them, but do not get in an active role. That’ll be MUCH better in the long term (although I’m pretty sure some muslims will begin complaining that the lives of muslims are not worth anything to NATO, or they would have come to help).