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1. Tracked Landing Gear: aircraft that can land anywhere

2. "The ideal troop-carrier combat
transport would appear to be a large
transport of the twin-boom type for
which personnel, artillery, and vehicles
could be dropped. It should have a
range of two thousand miles and should
be equipped with self-sealing tanks,
pilot armor, and a retractable track-
laying undercarriage. This last feature
would permit its landing and take-off in
pastures and cultivated areas. It would
thus be able to enter the airhead early in
an operation, landing and taking off
from areas normally suitable only for
gliders".
---Airborne Warfare by General James
M. Gavin, 1947

3. Early tracked landing gear aircraft successful in the 1950s!
A Retired USAF C-130 pilot
writes about the C-82 with
tractor gear experiment
shown here:
"Mike...the C-82 with
tractor gear. Only one
was produced, but the
P-40 Warhawk fighter idea was to reduce the
pressure exerted from
C-82 Packet
60 psi to 20 psi and
EB-50 Heavy Bomber give it the capability to
land anywhere."
XB-36 Peacemaker Ultra-
Heavy Bomber

4. With its initial single-wheel main landing
gear, the 265,000 pound gross weight XB-
36 could land at only 3 airfields in the entire
United States!
“The track on the main landing gear is
designed for a maximum average of 57
pounds pressure per square inch on the
landing strip, as compared to a pressure
of 156 pounds per square inch exerted
by the conventional wheel-type gear on a
B-36 at the same gross weight.”
Tracked XB-36 on
grassy field! Washington, D.C. April 12, 1950.
www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/bombe
rs/b3-69.htm
BOTTOM LINE: tracks can reduce
ground pressure over wheels by
2/3ds!

5. Current rubber-tired aircraft cannot
just land anywhere---USAF Combat
Control Team members must survey
assault landing zones with Digital
Cone Pentrometers to assess soil
hardness to support high
pressures/weights of USAF aircraft =
conservative Joint planners opt for
hard runway seizure; targets that are
likely to be heavily defended by the
enemy!

6. Joint warfighter requirements for land-anywhere
capabilities drives R&D towards unsound hybrid
fixed-wing/rotary wing compromise design types
that are overly complex, fragile and unsafe...
lacking other alternatives...
“Hanger Queen”
Bad
helicopter
with too
small rotors
Bad fixed-wing with too large props “Death Trap”

7. ASB Chairman Michael Bayer told Jane's Defense
Weekly:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/landforces.janes.com/News;sz=125x125;tile=3;ord
=021601085048?
"The ASB found that providing strategic lift from the
continental USA to intra-theatre staging grounds will
continue to be the major bottleneck in transportation.
Bayer noted that Boeing 747-style aircraft would
provide the greatest strategic lift potential because
they can carry more cargo further than the U.S. Air
Force's future mainstay Boeing C-17 Globemaster III
transport aircraft. Noting that because "there is a huge
demand for strategic lift", the ASB recommended that
expeditionary units plan to send as much equipment as
possible on 747-type aircraft, freeing up scarce space
on the C-17s."

8. U.S. has over 100 passenger 747s sitting
unused in the southwest desert that could be
inexpensively converted to nose-loading
cargo types to solve the strategic lift problem
and carry Army pre-loaded light tracked
vehicles----Boeing On Board Loaders can
give roll-on/roll-off capability---but 747s
would have to land at a long concrete runway
Intermediate Staging Base (ISB) to off-load
vehicles that would have to be shuttled in by
USAF C-130s, C-17s and Army helicopters.
Details: www.geocities.com/cargo747airlift

9. The Answer: upgrade existing USAF C-130s,
C-17s and a force of converted cargo 747s
with TRACKED LANDING GEAR SYSTEMS to
create land-anywhere extreme short-take-off
and landing (E/STOL) capabilities so Joint
Planners can make virtually any large area
into an assault landing zone!

10. The technology: unlike primitive tracked
technologies of the 1950s, reinforced aramid
fibers (kevlar) and high-strength steel
reinforcements can make “band-tracked”
landing gear easy to maintain and safe.
Unlike the Concorde whose fragile, air-filled
tires shredded on take off after running over
a sharp object, causing a fiery crash that
killed 114 innocent people, a tracked landing
gear can run-over all kinds of dangerous
objects and bumps without fatal damage
YES! NO!

11. C-130 E/STOL versus V-22 V/TOL: which works best?
“J” 400 mph
100 mph
sling-loads
Wheeled Osprey when its flyable
and not crashing, barely lifts a 3-ton
rubber-tired HMMWV SUV truck
Tracked Hercules can internally carry then airdrop/airland
light 92 troops or tanks up to 20 tons, 500 foot Assault LZs