And sure, these are well known and mapped. And yes, an enemy could target each and every one of them. But to do so they would need far more ordnance to destroy all these highways instead of just a few runways. But there’s some additional context. So, the most efficient way to disable an air base (or improvised air base using a highway) is to destroy the runway, preventing aircraft from taking off. But, it’s also the easiest thing to fix. Just takes some bulldozers and engineers and you can get it fixed relatively easily. So runway cratering is more about suppressing an Air Force instead of destroying it. Generally, you want to follow up those runway strikes with additional strikes to target the aircraft on the ground. And that is a lot harder when they are scattered all over the country.
Not in Finland, where this military exercise occurred. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90 and the earlier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_60 . I don’t have an exact count, but the number of Highway runways available in Finland is on the order of like 50.
And sure, these are well known and mapped. And yes, an enemy could target each and every one of them. But to do so they would need far more ordnance to destroy all these highways instead of just a few runways. But there’s some additional context. So, the most efficient way to disable an air base (or improvised air base using a highway) is to destroy the runway, preventing aircraft from taking off. But, it’s also the easiest thing to fix. Just takes some bulldozers and engineers and you can get it fixed relatively easily. So runway cratering is more about suppressing an Air Force instead of destroying it. Generally, you want to follow up those runway strikes with additional strikes to target the aircraft on the ground. And that is a lot harder when they are scattered all over the country.