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I suppose we have to get into the engineering thought process of these Asian cultures.

Where did the idea of fortifying Localizer (LOC) come from, was there prior art specifying any degree of fortification (or lack) ? Perhaps these kind of radar (adjacent) installations are traditionally fortified, like maybe the civil air services were influenced from militry air services were things tend to be overengineered?

Perhaps saving the LOC is more important than saving a single aircraft? Some idea like this piece of infrastructure being more important that any single aircraft's safety?

The point is we might not see the reason why fortifying the LOC was obvious or straight forward to the Korean engineers.

Also, I've seen no credible evidence to support the idea the LOC is supposed to be built on a level surface, or built in a destructable way. Addressing the first point, the LOC makes sense to be slightly elevated given how they operate with near field low power radio waves. That said, these kind of slightly elevated instrument might not require an earthen mound, sourounded by concreate walls. Which goes to the second point, I can think of reasons to have these kind of LOC runways homing antenas destructable, and I can see them being robustly durrable. This thing was way past the end of the runway, and as unpo0pular as it might seems... it's a very bad thing to run out of runway. Somebody else wrote that some airports have a lack of open field beyond the end of the runway, and so it's a persuasive argument stuff could be built out there.




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