I suppose. I wasn’t actually thinking about the employees at all; I’m virtually certain they’re veterans of military logistics operations and might be sufficiently motivated to stay on the mission after it turns hot.
More the legality and practicalities of civilian combatants on the battlefield. Mercenaries? PMCs? Chains of command?
Would they ever attempt aerial refueling in contested airspace?
I would hope not, but the idea of a predictable battlespace may be a luxury we can’t be sure of any more.
We routinely project battle force into places outside the normal sphere of operations. A sophisticated adversary would definitely want to do the same.
An intercontinental tanker drag would definitely be a legitimate target for a combat intercept mission, if you could do it. Perhaps the contractors would be tasked with the “safest” orbits, but safety is at best relative if you’re a combatant.
We learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan that civilian contractors can find themselves, with little or no warning, in very unpleasant situations.
That makes sense. Would it be much different from the U.S. Merchant Marine in wartime?
That’s a fair point, and the parallels are enlightening. More so than, for instance, civilian contractors at a forward base, or a PMC deployment providing security.
I guess we’ve always had civilians participating in rear-battlefield logistics.
Big error in Nashville; plane rolling for takeoff blew tires braking for another aircraft cleared to cross runway. Screw up seems to be ground control. The headline with Boeing and 737 Max in it is just to gain clicks (sigh).
I am doubly impressed that Alaska had another plane handy AND refunded the fares AND gave $1000 in compensation for something that was in no way their fault. Okay, triply impressed. And they have to repair the frigging plane.
Just to be clear - the error here was likely ATC instructions, not the tires blowing. Turbine aircraft tires usually have fuse plugs that are designed to melt through when excessive heating builds up (such as during maximum braking). This is to prevent a pressure buildup leading to the tires bursting explosively.
Yeah. It’s completely designed in and expected that after a high speed abort pretty soon one or more tires will deflate in a controlled fashion.
So what repairs is Alaska looking at? New tires? Wheels? Brakes? Did the plane have enough inflated tires left to be mobile and what would happen if it didn’t?
Hard to say for sure from the pix given. Tires for sure. Depending on when the tire deflated versus when they stopped, it’s possible a wheel got dinged. Brakes sometimes seize up. There are doubtless tables in the maintenance manual about how much energy absorbtion requires replacing parts even if they appear undamaged.
Smart, better than having shards of tires all over the runways/taxiways (FOD) or having the tire explode just when first responders arrive on scene.
Something similar to freeze plugs in engine blocks (temperatures going the other way).
And we do have fusible links and plugs in ammo storage and the items themselves. The plug will melt out allowing the explosive content to burn rather than explode resulting in mass detonations (most fillers are melt poured to begin with).
My last post I skipped addressing this. Oops.
Once a tire is flat, the airplane won’t be taxiied. It can be towed if there are enough intact tires. Again consult the maintenance manual for details. It’s done slowly. Very slowly. If the damage is bad enough that gear leg can’t roll, there are dollies you can use. Jack up that corner of the plane, slide the dolly under whatever’s left of the wheel / tire assemblies, then set the airplane back down. Now you’re really towing slow. After a very long delay to get everything ready to move.
[story time…]
On a similar airplane, 2 main tires on each of two legs = 4 total, I once blew one main tire on landing. This was a long time ago and a silent failure in the comparatively primitive antiskid system meant that, unbeknownst to us, one wheel brake was locked while the others were free-spinning as we touched down.
That was an uncontrolled deflation within about a half second of the immovable tire being dragged across the very highly textured concrete runway at ~150mph with ~30K lbs of airplane pressing down on it. We came to a stop on the long runway with no great difficulty, but it was obvious from all the vibration and a persistent rightward pull in the steering that we had a tire/wheel problem of some sort.
Fortunately this occurred at a well-staffed station. It still took about 40 minutes to muster a tow crew out there, inspect enough to decide it was towable, and hook up. Then another 20 minutes to drag us, a couple of company pickups, a couple of airport authority vehicles, and a complete fire station-worth of crash/rescue trucks across a large airport to the gate at 5-10mph. It was quite a retinue for so minor an issue.
ATC was overjoyed when they finally got their runway back after 45+ minutes and their taxiways back a few minutes later. I’m sure that once any concern for the safety of the people was past, they said lots of bad things about us and our predicament among themselves. We certainly inconvenienced the shit out of everybody.
One we got to the gate I went downstairs to see. A big hunk of tread had separated. It, or the madly flailing sidewalls, tore off a hunk of brake line, and left a dent in the underside of the wing. Shredded rubber was stuck to everything nearby. The adjacent tire appeared fine, but I was told it would get changed too because in supporting the entire half of the airplane’s weight from touchdown to parking, it had been overstressed and the manual required its replacement. I was later told the repair cost topped $100K. Turns out an antenna about 30 feet aft of the gear was also ripped of by passing tire shards.
Certainly my most expensive landing ever.
At least we got paid for all the time we were towing or waiting. A pilot has to have his priorities straight. 
I can’t imagine the stress the tires would put on the rims considering the weight behind them.
Little Jimmy - “Dear Lord, I’d like a cool military plane”
The Lord - “Your prayers have been PARTially answered”
(C-17 tail cone lands in church parking lot)
At least it was a tail cone; it could have been a lot worse; I mean, the front could have fallen off
Whoops.
You won’t be surprised to learn there was (is?) a USAF Form to fill out for exactly this eventuality - the Dropped Object Report Form. I can’t recall the number and it’s probably changed twice since I was there. But hey, there’s a Form for that.
After the Mars Bluff incident, I’m not at all surprised.
Small bits fall off airplanes of all sorts with some regularity. Other than weapons designed to be dropped (but not right now Kato! ) most of what falls off is lightweight (“low sectional density” in aero-speak) and tends to flutter down, not plummet. But still plenty fast enough to hurt people and crunch cars.
A wing flap section off a widebody is on the order of the size of a 2-car garage door. I know I don’t want that falling on my house, car, or head. But better that than something dense like a whole engine arriving with 2 or 4x the speed and far more penetrating power.
Surely they just call it “The DORF”.