Matrix Games Forums

This readiness slider is a good idea. I've added it to our idea list.

Mike

I think 6 hours is too long, depending on the scenario in question, and how high a priority the mission is.

during peacetime, there is less of a rush (unless your flying an alert 3 jet I guess) and more time can be taken, pilots sitting and waiting for step times etc.

during a combat scenario, planning a mission overlaps prepping that mission, even for a surface attack sortie I would not expect to see a 6 hour turn around from wanting to strike a target to getting airborne. for a commander, after he knows the target, planning is done by flight crews, ordnance can be prepared by weapons crews, a lot of it all overlaps.

I can see it taking 6 hours, but not for a fighting force that is trained to have a rapid response.

mikmyk - the readiness slider for an airfield can serve as a proxy for airstrike effectiveness or chemical warfare. A scenario trigger, say warhead detonation within 500m, would push the airfield readiness very low.

Back to the 6 hour limit, I disagree with the idea that the reload times should be automatically smaller. I think that, as mentioned above, the optimal solution is a standard reload time and a surge reload time, which could only be used for a fixed number of sorties before the plane has to be taken off the line for maintenance.

In addition, for surges, would it be possible to limit the range of the fighter? This would be a representation of the fact that you couldn't launch a long range mission using fast turn-around. I think that would be a useful limitation on surge sorties. Yes, you can turn around very quickly for a given period of time, but you can't use those aircraft for long range strikes.

USAF did it faster in desert storm...

was that extended enough for you?

I dont think, 6 hours for the Spanish navy to strap 1 penguin missile on a helicopter and refuel it.

ORIGINAL: Blu3wolf

USAF did it faster in desert storm...

was that extended enough for you?

I've found this document describing the high sortie rate for Harrier:
V/STOL in the United States Marine Corps: The Past, Present, and Future- Why We Need the STOVL Joint Strike Fighter

The other key factor to the success of the Harrier in the Falklands was its
reliability, which allowed it to maintain a high sortie generation rate. From April to June
1982 the British Harriers flew 2,197 sorties and 2,514 flight hours while maintaining an
availability rate of 96%.9 The aircraft often flew three sorties per day and had an
average cancellation rate of only 1% throughout the conflict.

(p. 12)
3 sorties/day -> 8 hours average time between sorties

The Harriers were
able to achieve a higher sortie generation rate than conventional carrier-based (CV)
aircraft because they were not tied to the limitations of catapults and arresting gear. For
example, towards the end of the ground war VMA-331 flew 56 sorties with 19 aircraft on
one day alone.

(p. 14)
56 sorties/19 aircrafts, day -> 8 hours 8 minutes average time between sorties

Although the AV-8B was and still is a challenging aircraft to maintain, the
squadrons reported readiness rates over 95% throughout the war. As seen in the
Falklands, this phenomenal reliability coupled with the inherent flexibility of the STOVL
aircraft were key to its success. The 86 aircraft deployed to the Gulf flew 3,380 sorties
from 17 January to 28 February 1991.

(p. 15)
3380 sorties/86 aircrafts, 43 days -> 25 hours 38 minutes average time between sorties

Well, yes. Except I doubt Harriers were back then all-weather fighters with night capability - or if they were, they had no business at night to attend to anyway. Moreover, the Falklands war took place during the Austral winter... Your calculations are right, but should take into account the reality of the length of the day, dusk and dawn included, and be divided by 2 or by 3.

For instance, that website
http://www.solartopo.com/daylength.htm

Gives a day length under 9 hours in early May 1982. By 21st May, it's under 8h30, and by 31st May it's only 8 hours - which would mean 3 times less than a 24 hours basis for the calculations.

The Harriers in the Task Force flew at night as well, so I cannot work out what daylight has to do with it.

Only Sea Harriers did, or the RAF Harriers too? I suppose we're talking CAP patrols here.

This topic has been discussed to death since the early 2000s. Anyway...

A typical example is a 12-aircraft F/A-18 squadron. During real life surge ops an F/A-18 squadron has demonstrated the ability to produce 22-26 sorties a day. We're being optimistic and go for 24 sorties. Since each aircraft in Command can do three sorties per day (2 hrs flying, 6 hours prepping, three times per day), you need 8 out of those 12 aircraft to fill the slots. Also, not all 12 would be flying simultaneously, and for the sake of realism some will have to be stuck on the ground. Thus, to produce realistic sortie rates AND the correct number of flying aircraft, the scenario would have 8 available aircraft and 4 unavailable ones.

8 out of 12 aircraft doing ops is 66%. This is fair considering the serviceability usually is in the high 70s during war. The difference between sorties and serviceability stems from the fact that not all serviceable planes fly sorties. Ground/airborne spares, etc.

After a few days of surge ops the sortie rates drop sharply and stabilize at around 0.6 to 1.0. Add up all the days for a 1-2 months war and you get an overall sortie rate of 1.1 to 1.4.

I would think the Falklands would be a pretty good snapshot of a relatively short and intense air battle, yet sortie rates were all longer than the six hours in game. So why is it every time someone brings actual data, there is nothing but a "yeah, but..."

So people arguing for not changing much have brought some data from a couple different conflicts. I have seen nothing for shortening readiness times. Just some generalities on Desert Storm and the Isreali air force. What were the actual sortie rates in those conflicts.

ORIGINAL: tommo8993

I dont think, 6 hours for the Spanish navy to strap 1 penguin missile on a helicopter and refuel it.

How long does it take for the ordnance guys to dig out the Penguin missile storage box, assemble the weapon, test, and possibly repeat if the first round doesn't check out?

Adding to my last...

In Command you can fly loads of CAP sorties or patrol missions per day as the ready times for those loadouts are relatively short. So fighter patrol sortie rate figures are pretty irrelevant.

What we want to model correctly in the sim is strike sortie rates as those have such an effect on the outcome of scenarios.

IIRC the Harriers dropped no more than 200 bombs during the whole Falklands war. That's 4.5 bombs per day.

What strike sortie rates do we get then? [;)] [;)]

ORIGINAL: Fishbed

Well, yes. Except I doubt Harriers were back then all-weather fighters with night capability - or if they were, they had no business at night to attend to anyway. Moreover, the Falklands war took place during the Austral winter... Your calculations are right, but should take into account the reality of the length of the day, dusk and dawn included, and be divided by 2 or by 3.

For instance, that website
http://www.solartopo.com/daylength.htm

Gives a day length under 9 hours in early May 1982. By 21st May, it's under 8h30, and by 31st May it's only 8 hours - which would mean 3 times less than a 24 hours basis for the calculations.

This is a fair point, and once we flip the switch on day/night affecting air ops (the data for this is already in the DBs), we will have to adjust the relevant ready times.

In scens up to the mid-late 80s, you will see _very_ quiet nights when this feature is applied.

Not irrelevant. Just tending toward the high end of sortie generation without acknowledging that factors pertaining to sustained air ops need attention, too.

ORIGINAL: BipBip

Each argument seem irrelevant from your point of view...

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I would think the Falklands would be a pretty good snapshot of a relatively short and intense air battle, yet sortie rates were all longer than the six hours in game. So why is it every time someone brings actual data, there is nothing but a "yeah, but..."

So people arguing for not changing much have brought some data from a couple different conflicts. I have seen nothing for shortening readiness times. Just some generalities on Desert Storm and the Isreali air force. What were the actual sortie rates in those conflicts.

http://192.5.14.43/content/dam/rand/pub ... 8.appb.pdf

RAND data here which suggests an average of only 2 strikes per day, for an "average fighter aircraft" based on data from F-15 and F-16 aircraft.

for the F-16, day squadrons would have a plane flying 2 strikes per day, and night squadrons did the same (data from keith rosenkranz book on the topic). the F-16 was only tasked with strikes during ODS, and did no air to air missions (although they did expend munitions in self defence, AND made Pk rates very poor at the same time, as a large portion of sidewinder shots from F-16s during ODS were the result of accidental pickling - launching whilst the seeker is still caged...).

I was going off of data for OCA missions, but if we are looking for sortie rates based on strike sorties, then 6 hours is not that unusual.

what would be good is the ability to alter a loadout after starting the mission readiness process - deciding to take different munitions is something Flight lead has control over, unless specified by the mission planner...

ORIGINAL: Blu3wolf

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I would think the Falklands would be a pretty good snapshot of a relatively short and intense air battle, yet sortie rates were all longer than the six hours in game. So why is it every time someone brings actual data, there is nothing but a "yeah, but..."

So people arguing for not changing much have brought some data from a couple different conflicts. I have seen nothing for shortening readiness times. Just some generalities on Desert Storm and the Isreali air force. What were the actual sortie rates in those conflicts.

http://192.5.14.43/content/dam/rand/pub ... 8.appb.pdf

RAND data here which suggests an average of only 2 strikes per day, for an "average fighter aircraft" based on data from F-15 and F-16 aircraft.

for the F-16, day squadrons would have a plane flying 2 strikes per day, and night squadrons did the same (data from keith rosenkranz book on the topic). the F-16 was only tasked with strikes during ODS, and did no air to air missions (although they did expend munitions in self defence, AND made Pk rates very poor at the same time, as a large portion of sidewinder shots from F-16s during ODS were the result of accidental pickling - launching whilst the seeker is still caged...).

I was going off of data for OCA missions, but if we are looking for sortie rates based on strike sorties, then 6 hours is not that unusual.

what would be good is the ability to alter a loadout after starting the mission readiness process - deciding to take different munitions is something Flight lead has control over, unless specified by the mission planner...

I think people always think that every plane of the squadron flies at the same time. To get full day operations round the clock, the squadron is probably on 1/3 tasking.

well I know for a fact in ODS missions varied by timeslot, but I dont have as much data on strikes... most of the stuff I have read about was interdiction and CAS.

for a wing at least, it would be unusual for all planes to be airbourne at the same time. it does not seem impossible for a single squadron though.

It is not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

Aircraft take a lot of maintenance. If you take a squadron of 12 aircraft, it would be very unlikely that all would availible at any given time, even when an order to have maximum availability is in effect.

Why do aircrafts that were marked as "Ready" in the Air Ops dialog begin rearm in the same configuration again when ordered to launch??? This is rather annoying when you launch a group of planes to eternally "form up" with part of the group rearming fr several hours on the ground/carrier.