TOT planner issue with tankers

[Dannyp19]

Been away from CMO for awhile but the new planning tools have drawn me back.

Any way, been wanting to try Operation El Darado Canyon with the planner and it will not let me do a flight plan.

Says the reason is that the tanker must be between target and take off location and within range of the strike aircrafts current location. I really dont understand how to make it work. This operation will involve 4 tanking stations, yet trying to plan this with the planner is not working. Any ideas??

[JFS737]

Not sure about 4 tanker locations, but for one (tank inbound and outbound), the "Create FLT plan" inthe mission planner will give you a message if you have placed the tankers too far. It gives you the exact max distance to place them from launch (may want to cut it by 5 or 10%). You can place them closer, but further will generate the error message with the max distance info.

The other value is the distance from the tanker to the target (Tactical range, say 450nm). This is very optimistic, so you should pad it in many cases or they will Bingo before hitting the target. It should be reduced 10% minimum or more (Say from 450nm to 405nm... or 0%).

When and how much to pad? Pad this by 10 to 20 % on all missions, and increase to 20 to 35% if you have either a). LO altitude on the attack section b) "Dash" on target greater than 25nm each way.

This is due to a bug or mis-guided info on how the AI figures fuel. It uses the "at the moment" fuel setting and does not take into account that later it will climb and reduce throttle (fuel burn rate) and easily make it back to the tanker/base. So it knows it will dash at lo altitude 100nm into and out... so it goes to MIL and drops.... Bingo fuel level goes temporarily way down and before it reaches the target it "bingos" and RTB's. If it "knew" that it's fuel burn for 80% of the leg home would be at 36,000' and Cruise.... it could have pressed the target even at MIL and LO. But it does not know that later it will cruise efficiently. That's why you must pad the distance after tanking.

That's just one tanker setup, might be able to daisy chain them. Also, in the FLT PLAN editor, you can add "Refuel" points to force them to refuel and also choose to make them ONLY refuel there. Might help with 4 tankings.