Required improvements range from the resurfacing and widening of two-lane roads to the construction of multiple-lane highways and large bridges, all of which should be completed in 1 year or less, if possible.
Tactical roads.—To a limited extent a considerable part of the highway mileage of the country, especially that part included in the strategic network, will be employed by the Army from time to time in tactical maneuvers to test and practice the use of its vast new motorized and mechanized equipment. In designing improvements for this “tactical” mileage, it will be necessary to take greater account of the probability of use by the maneuvering Army forces than in road designs generally. Tactical roads include: (1) A relatively small mileage of roads connecting with more or less isolated strategical points. Traffic on these roads will be almost exclusively military; (2) other roads in the immediate vicinity of military reservations, other than access roads and routes of the strategic network, which by reason of their proximity are. likely to be frequently used in tactical maneuvers of local range; and (3) roads of similar character in areas selected as theaters of war games-areas that may not be near established reservations.
Roads of the first and second groups, and their bridges, will have to be made adequate for the expected military use. They will have to be designed to support frequent loads of military vehicles and equipment, with sufficient capacity to permit such frequent movements to occur without unreasonable interference with normal civil traffic. In respect to these first two groups of tactical roads, the urgency of improvement is substantially the same as that of access roads.
Tactical roads of the third group may lie in areas used only once or repeatedly as the theater of maneuvers. For repeated use, it would appear desirable that they be fitted for their expected military use where only a single use is anticipated, or in any case where timely provision for strengthening of the weaker roads at Federal expense is not possible, there should be an alternative assumption of responsibility for any road damage that may be caused.
It does not appear to be practicable, in any reasonably highway program, to strengthen all the lightly surfaced local roads in all areas that might be used for battle practice. Moreover, even if it were practicable, such strengthening of all road surfaces would not be desirable from the standpoint of troop training. Actual battlefields cannot always be chosen in advance, and roads that are not of the best must sometime be encountered by armies in combat. Military commanders expect to find some roads inadequate and even virtually impassable, and they have trained engineer troops for the purpose of coping with just such situations.
Observations during recent Army maneuvers in various parts of the country have indicated that, except for a few weak bridges and narrow surfaces, the main highways are reasonably adequate for Army transport. Some damage was reported, particularly in combat areas, to local roads improved with sand-clay, gravel, topsoil, and light bituminous surfaces, due chiefly to their use by trucks with tire chains and by large numbers of iron-shod cavalry horses.
