Given sufficient road width, takeoff/landing length, and road "quality" (smoothness, etc), why wouldn't an aircraft be able to takeoff from and land on to a highway? I mean, what is the actual significance of this?
Jet engine intake is basically a giant vacuum cleaner... and the jet engine itself can be destroyed by a small debris like small stones etc which is plentiful around any kind of a road. And a damaged jet engine is kinda bad news on takeoff, especially if there's only one to begin with.
A-10's high mounted jet engines are up there for a reason. It can operate from almost anything resembling a runway.
The Soviets/Russians seem to have solved that problem, this runway [1] looks worse than many county roads around these parts of Eastern Europe where I live.
A-10's high mounted jet engines are up there for a reason. It can operate from almost anything resembling a runway.