A FOD walk by Spanish and US personnel on the runway of the Naval Station Rota

The Naval Station Rota is an important joint military base in Cadiz, in southern Spain, with a dual naval and air use.

The US Navy shows its intention to remain at the Spanish naval station of Rota
The atypical repair in Spain of a C-5M Super Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the US Air Force

The naval station has three large piers for mooring warships in its southern area. In addition, almost 2 kilometers north of the piers is a runway, 10/28, 3,690 meters long and 60 meters wide (slightly larger than runway 04/22 at Torrejón Air Base, which measures 3,658 meters). The Rota runway is oriented east to west, with a parallel service taxiway located 75 meters south of the runway, and a large apron to the south, 2 km long and approximately 365 meters at its widest point, for aircraft parking. This apron has a passenger terminal on its southern side.

The Naval Station Rota has the second longest runway in Spain (the longest being runway 18R/36L at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport, at 4,179 meters) and one of the longest in Europe. This runway allows the operation of NATO's largest military aircraft, the Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy of the United States Air Force, which are among its regular visitors.

Maintaining this runway involves frequent monitoring of its surface through FOD walks (acronym for foreign object debris), in order to locate small objects (screws, pieces of rubber, nuts, metal pieces or stones) that may have come loose from aircraft or vehicles traveling on the runway or may have been carried by the wind, objects that could cause damage if they are sucked into the air intakes of aircraft engines, whether jet planes, turboprop planes or helicopters.

FOD walks are typically conducted daily at air bases or during each active flight window, meaning whenever flight operations are scheduled from those runways. The walk is carried out by deploying a line of people across the width of the runway, who visually scan the tarmac for objects. Any objects found are placed in bags. These walks are also performed on the flight decks of aircraft carriers.

The US Navy has released a series of photos showing Spanish and US military and civilian personnel conducting a FOD walkdown at Naval Base Rota on July 10. In this photo, we see that most of the personnel on this FOD walkdown were members of the US Navy (wearing AOR2 pixelated camouflage uniforms) and USAF airmen, recognizable by their OCP camouflage uniforms (derived from Multicam). Most of the USAF members are from the 725th Air Mobility Squadron (725 AMS), as can be seen by the patch they are wearing on their right arm. We can also see members of the base's fire service and some sailors and naval aviators from the Spanish Navy, which has its Air Fleet (FLOAN) base in Rota.

This FOD walk was conducted from east to west. Because it was done in the morning, this direction allowed for better use of the sunlight at sunrise. As we can see in the background of the following image, the walk was also carried out on the service runway, since, being an aircraft taxiing area, it must also be examined for foreign objects.

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Photos: U.S. Navy.