March 3, 2026: Finland has joined India, China, Taiwan and several other countries in using highways for operating combat aircraft. After testing the concept in 2015, India decided to adopt the increasingly popular practice of training pilots and ground crews to use designated sections of highways as temporary air strips. This practice became popular during the Cold War, particularly in Europe where most countries either regularly used the practice or had the procedures available in case needed. In Asia, North Korea has been a long time user of this practice while Pakistan and China have revived the use of highway airstrips.

In 2014 China held air force training exercises involving the use of designated stretches of highway for emergency airfields for fighters and transports. This technique had not been used since 1989 and now at least ten stretches of highway in Liaoning, adjacent to North Korea, Shandong, facing South Korea across the Yellow Sea and Fujian, opposite Taiwan provinces were designated for such emergency use. There may be others that have been designated but not practiced on, so their location has been kept secret.

China is following the example of Taiwan which began regularly practicing using highways as emergency air strips for fighter aircraft back in the 1970s. Then that sort of thing was halted for 26 years as Taiwan tried to make peace with China. In 2004 the highway landings were resumed, and now it's done every few years. There is some preparation involved, at least for the peacetime drills. Troops walk down the length of highway to be used and remove any rocks or other objects that the aircraft wheels might hit or their jet engines might ingest. Then cars go down the road, honking their horns, to flush out any birds which might be sucked into the jet's air intakes. At that point, the F-16s can come in and land. And then turn around and take off again. China apparently follows the same drill as the Taiwanese.

Taiwan resumed these drills in 2004 and included actual use of superhighways as secondary airfields for combat aircraft in their military exercises. For example, in one publicized event two Mirage 2000 fighters landed on a highway which were serviced, including refueling, rearming or minor repairs, and took off again. Parts of Taiwan's system of superhighways were designed just for this purpose but actual use of the highways during training exercises lapsed for over two decades because the Defense Ministry did not want to block traffic or annoy China. The resumed training exercises on highways were done more for diplomatic reasons; to remind China that Taiwan had many defensive capabilities. In 2007, the highway drill was carried out once more, and again in 2011.