These vehicles are called “Recovery of Airbase Denied By Ordnance” or “RADBO,” and they are based on MRAPS, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that the Pentagon used for patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan. MRAPs are already built to ensure the survival of their passengers against explosives, with special v-shaped hulls directing the blast force away. There is enough of a surplus of MRAPs that NASA has some, and the military has offered many to police departments as overqualified crowd control vehicles.Bombs can end up on runways for a host of reasons. The most dramatic are enemy attacks, with cruise missiles cratering the surface from afar, or hostile air forces flying close enough to try bombing an airbase from the sky. Ground attacks, too, can place explosives on pavement, like army artillery or bombardment by nearby mortars. Also possible, while less flashy, is the Air Force accidentally having a loose bomb on takeoff or landing end up on the tarmac. In every instance, clearing the runway of explosives, however those explosives got there, is essential for returning the runway to service so aircraft can safely take off and land. An explosion on a runway is an immediate problem, and provided the debris can be cleared, has an easy fix: repair the runway, and continue moving. An unexploded bomb is more complicated, as the explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) crews may not know if the bomb is a dud, or if the process of clearing it will cause it to explode.“Current procedures require an EOD technician in a bomb-resistant suit to place a charge on unexploded ordnance or to attempt to defuse it, a procedure that is ‘time- and manpower-consuming’ as well as highly dangerous,” an Air Force Life Cycle Management Center spokesperson told Air Force Magazine in February. Instead of sending a highly skilled human in a protective suit to defuse a bomb by hand, what RADBO proposes is: What if a truck shot it with a laser instead? The RADBO MRAP will mount a three-kilowatt Zeus III laser and a robotic arm, in a vehicle that weighs approximately 18 tons. Together with the Army, the Air Force started exploring the laser part of RADBO vehicles in 2015, with a vision for both battlefield and air base use cases. As a 2015 press release noted, RADBO vehicles were also proposed for immediately clearing the live fire area after a practice bombing run, allowing more pilots to train for attack runs without having to wait for the target area to be reset“We have an air superiority mission,” said Tony Miranda, RADBO program manager. “If we are in a high threat environment, and there are unexploded ordnance on the airfield, maintainers can’t take care of the aircraft and the aircraft can’t get off of the runway. These RADBO vehicles will be utilized by Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians to detonate the unexploded ordnance (UXO) from a standoff range, so we can get back to the business of flying planes.” In the meantime, having the vehicles on hand can turn an dropped or otherwise inadvertent unexploded ordnance on a base into an imminently solved problem, instead of a hazard that persists for weeks, years, or even decades..
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