[FIXED B481] 6 hrs to prepare an Harrier???

[George Patton]

Hi,

I'm playing the Pincer, as british. A scenario that I'm enjoying very much. I spotted three naval contact west of the TF and I would like to send a SHAR to attack or report.
I select the plane to be armed with Mk13 1'000 GBP bomb and what I read? 6 hours !!! [X(][X(][X(]
I suppose this is a bit longer than the reality...

[Primarchx]

You should get 3-4 strike sorties a day out of a Harrier. Can bombs be strapped to them quicker? Sure. But can briefings, necessary maintenance, BDA intel and ATOs be provided in the same amount of time? Nope.

[George Patton]

Yes I agree on that, but imagine, three enemy ships spotted. Okay guys, prepare a single (just one) SHAR to strike them. Okay sir, it will be ready in 6 hours.... What? Six hours?
I suppose that Admiral Woodward didn't agree at all

[Primarchx]

There are plenty of times when carriers, especially small ones, take hours to prep for flight ops. It's a delicate balance to provide for surge sorties and sustained sorties in a way that will keep airpower from being even more, and less realistically, dominant.

[rjlee]

Why not use SHARs #6 - #9 if you want something with a 1000-lb bomb? This is the purpose of having aircraft on alert, and a planned alert cycle is what Admiral Woodward would be relying on.

Converting an air-to-air loaded aircraft involves downloading the existing loadout, breaking out the desired weapons from the ship's magazines (which in some cases will involve building the weapon itself), transporting the weapons to the deck, etc. This sounds trivial but takes time, especially under space constraints. Recall that last-minute loadout changes from Washington (i.e., with several hours' notice) was a significant part of what doomed the American strike on Lebanon in December 1983 -- and this was on a supercarrier. IIRC only one A-6 left USS John F. Kennedy with the programmed loadout, and at least one had no bombs at all.

[Gratch1111]

Actual work, not briefing and so on

During cold war on an airfield an F-16 took about 45 min to refuel and reload. A J-37 Viggen took 10-12 minutes(and this I know for a fact), and its stated that under 10 min applies to JAS 39 Griffon(Changing the Engine takes 1 hour). Takes 1 technician and 5 conscripts to fuel and reload. This time is in an international comparison very short

On a carrier, like in desert storm, they can take their time. In a war to the Death against China in South China sea, I guarentee it wont take 6 hours, but I do agree that it might take 30-90 min depending on how many planes on the ship.

So in my mind, this should be changed

[Wiz33]

ORIGINAL: rjlee

Why not use SHARs #6 - #9 if you want something with a 1000-lb bomb? This is the purpose of having aircraft on alert, and a planned alert cycle is what Admiral Woodward would be relying on.

Converting an air-to-air loaded aircraft involves downloading the existing loadout, breaking out the desired weapons from the ship's magazines (which in some cases will involve building the weapon itself), transporting the weapons to the deck, etc. This sounds trivial but takes time, especially under space constraints. Recall that last-minute loadout changes from Washington (i.e., with several hours' notice) was a significant part of what doomed the American strike on Lebanon in December 1983 -- and this was on a supercarrier. IIRC only one A-6 left USS John F. Kennedy with the programmed loadout, and at least one had no bombs at all.

At peacetime, maybe. So unless this scenario depict a sudden start of hostility with no tension build up. You would have at least some numbers of assembled and tested weapon ready for loadout when the scenario starts and have ready aircraft that can take on those loadout on very short notice. Not minutes but probably under 90 minutes.

[bairdlander2]

ORIGINAL: rjlee

Why not use SHARs #6 - #9 if you want something with a 1000-lb bomb? This is the purpose of having aircraft on alert, and a planned alert cycle is what Admiral Woodward would be relying on.

Converting an air-to-air loaded aircraft involves downloading the existing loadout, breaking out the desired weapons from the ship's magazines (which in some cases will involve building the weapon itself), transporting the weapons to the deck, etc. This sounds trivial but takes time, especially under space constraints. Recall that last-minute loadout changes from Washington (i.e., with several hours' notice) was a significant part of what doomed the American strike on Lebanon in December 1983 -- and this was on a supercarrier. IIRC only one A-6 left USS John F. Kennedy with the programmed loadout, and at least one had no bombs at all.

Cut the bullshit and admit the game is fucked

[Primarchx]

Uncalled for. What sort of response is that? Are you bringing anything constructive to this conversation?

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

Cut the bullshit and admit the game is fucked

[Wiz33]

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

ORIGINAL: rjlee

Why not use SHARs #6 - #9 if you want something with a 1000-lb bomb? This is the purpose of having aircraft on alert, and a planned alert cycle is what Admiral Woodward would be relying on.

Converting an air-to-air loaded aircraft involves downloading the existing loadout, breaking out the desired weapons from the ship's magazines (which in some cases will involve building the weapon itself), transporting the weapons to the deck, etc. This sounds trivial but takes time, especially under space constraints. Recall that last-minute loadout changes from Washington (i.e., with several hours' notice) was a significant part of what doomed the American strike on Lebanon in December 1983 -- and this was on a supercarrier. IIRC only one A-6 left USS John F. Kennedy with the programmed loadout, and at least one had no bombs at all.

Cut the bullshit and admit the game is fucked

Then get away from the forum. It doesn't look like you have any constructive thing to say.

[DrRansom]

Perhaps the problem is this:

There are two principle reloading times in mind:

1) Scramble / rapid turnaround. This is the 10 minutes, 30 minutes, times mentioned above.

2) Sustained turnaround, this is the time it average time between sorties if the sorties occur over several days.

Command Air/Naval only has one load out time to handle those two solutions. So for some aircraft, there are short turnaround times for air to air, but long times for air to ground. This single number cannot handle those two situations.

To fix it, there needs to be a concept of surge versus sustained air operations. That could be a substantial change, but I think it could add something to the scenario.

[rjlee]

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

Cut the bullshit and admit the game is fucked

Well, I could. But how about I do this instead?

From Sortie Generation Capacity of Embarked Airwings, Center for Naval Analyses research memorandum published 12/1/98 (boldfacing mine -- I would post a link but the Matrix forums think I'm too much of a newbie to be trusted to do so):

Example 1: Operational conditions. Suppose the operating day was 18 hours long and 1+30 single-cycleswere employed. Non-organic tankers are not available to support air wing operations. Twelve S-3 sorties (one each cycle) can be dedicated to tanker missions in support of strike operations. A minimum of two fuels crews will be working the flight deck concurrently. Each fuels crew can refuel two aircraft simul- taneously. The operational commander has set a cap on the pilot uti- lization rate of 3.0. Each F/A-18 squadron has 17 pilots. The F-14D squadron has 17 pilots and 17 Radar Intercept Officers (RIOs). One F-14 pilot is TAD and two F/A-18 pilots are SIQ. Each squadron requires about 40 hours each day from their aviator work force for duties not directly related to execution of a specific mission. On average, 6 hours are required to prepare (plan, brief, and pre-flight the aircraft) each strike mission, and post-mission debriefs take about 1.5 hours. Eight of the 10 F-14Ds and 30 of the 36 F/A-18s on board are MC for strike warfare at the beginning of the operation. Air plans are designed to achieve at least a 95 percent sortie completion rate. (Note: these operating conditions concur with those of the base case used in this memorandum and described in detail in the next section.)

Now, the mere upload of the munitions is not the only limiting factor, although for certain sortie types the study makes it clear that aircraft turnaround is the predominant limiting factor (and depending on the load and overall flight cycle time turnaround can vary greatly -- smart munitions take more time, loading more than 2 bombs results in a vast increase in time, etc.). And it may be that 6 hours across the board is not appropriate for land-based aircraft or for all loadouts (which is what the game currently imposes). But my point is that like all matters of logistics, this stuff takes longer than you think. The time it takes for you to change the oil in your car is not a reliable yardstick for turning around an airplane.

The scenarios start you with some quantity of pre-loaded aircraft. That is your operational reserve for emergencies. Beyond that, this is what is supposed to keep your operations officer busy. A significant portion of the "game challenge" in an operational airpower game is worrying about exactly this...automate this aspect and you're removing a significant part of the game.

[Primarchx]

In before the 'yeah, but in wartime they'll throw the book out the window' arguments...

[thewood1]

My best friend from college served as a Marine Aviator in late eighties to mid-nineties. I decided to ask him a couple questions on issues floating around on the board...

1) ready times...he said with modern tech and programming needed, one of the key bottlenecks is the actual reconfiguration of the weapons systems and reprogramming of the computer systems. He said there are a very limited number of armorers who can do this at a base or at sea. He said CAP can be reconfigured and turned around very quickly (60 minutes on a Tomcat), but anything bringing ground ordinance is likely 4-6 hours. Now he did say that while he was out in his A-6, another A-6 might be being readied...if they were on a full warfooting.

2) He also said the sidewinder has a hit rate of about 50% on a non-maneuvering enemy. That is why two are almost always fired. But he also said range, type of enemy aircraft, altitude, and bearing were huge factors. He never fired one in anger, but knew several people who did.

Not sure how useful that is, but he really stressed that this is not Midway. Modern (90's on) air-to-ground weapons have become very sophisticated and loading up an aircraft with something as simple as basic ingress/egress plans takes almost 30 minutes by itself. He said the days of landing, hot seating the plane, and turning around in 15 minutes have been gone for over 30 years.

He stated that at the peak of the gulf war, he never flew more than 2 missions in a day, and it exhausted him. He said escort and CAP might do 4 a day. Anything more than that significantly raised the risk of aircraft/pilot failure. btw, by the Gulf war he had transitioned to the F/A-18.

[rjlee]

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

In before the 'yeah, but in wartime they'll throw the book out the window' arguments...

Any peacetime study has its limitations, of course. But this isn't just an artificial set of limits dictated by a book. It was part of an empirical study to see how far you could stretch an air wing. The same group did some related work where they went to sea with Nimitz/CVW-9 for a period of something like ten days and measured max sortie generation rate on a "surge" basis. So while no model is perfect, this is supposed to be a pretty serious one.

[Primarchx]

Oh, I agree completely. I've also seen the Devs take real life data from folks who have been there and modify some refit times. I think the models here are subject to change provided reasonable info is put forth.

ORIGINAL: rjlee

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

In before the 'yeah, but in wartime they'll throw the book out the window' arguments...

Any peacetime study has its limitations, of course. But this isn't just an artificial set of limits dictated by a book. It was part of an empirical study to see how far you could stretch an air wing. The same group did some related work where they went to sea with Nimitz/CVW-9 for a period of something like ten days and measured max sortie generation rate on a "surge" basis. So while no model is perfect, this is supposed to be a pretty serious one.

[Wiz33]

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

In before the 'yeah, but in wartime they'll throw the book out the window' arguments...

And they will. So far all the recent conflicts have been pretty one sided with that one side having overwhelming number and quality of weapons. There was very little urgency factor and operation tempo was keyed more to maintain safety and by the book.

In time of a hot war. The tempo will move more toward the need of the fleet and aircraft and crew that would normally be down check for maintenance and rest will continue to operate. I'm sure you all know that ASW helo practice hot refueling where they may just land long enough to take on more fuel with a cycle time of minutes. Same with a CAP that went bingo fuel land and take on fuel and take off again? Even if an aircraft needs to be reloaded with weapons. It would certainly not take another 6 hours before it can fly again. What you pay for with that kind of tempo is crew fatigue, higher chance for mishaps and component failures.

A very old Simulation Canada PC game actually have a very elegant solution for this. After each flight an aircraft would have a random (tilted towards the fast) turnaround time. So after an alpha strike. ~50% of the planes will be available within 2 hour, 25% within 4 hours and 12% at 6 and so on. So while you can fly many sorties a day, the number of available aircraft is going to go down for each additional sorties until you reduce the tempo and let the service crew catch up.

[Stevechase]

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

Uncalled for. What sort of response is that? Are you bringing anything constructive to this conversation?

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

Cut the bullshit and admit the game is fucked

You obviously have no understanding about which you speak. Life aboard a carrier at sea or even military airfield is different than the experience you are familiar with. Tasks particularly those involving the moving and prepping of ordinance involves lots of time and work beyond just bolting a bomb to a wing. Think beyond your Micky D's fastfood existence.

[LuckyJim1010]

Interesting thread. My Backfire's are taking 20 hours to refuel and rearm, that with a single AS4.

As it stands I called my scenario '3 Days in June', might have to change that too '3 Weeks in June' [:)]

[Gratch1111]

1/ I guess we can all agree that rearming and refueling on a carrier and on land are two different things

2/ Couldnt the game have different times depending on mission?
on land Like just refuel - 10 min
CAP refuel+reload - 15 min
Strike - ?

Still Think 6 hours to reload and rearm in hot battle is stupid, big difference between desert storm scenario and desperate CW scenario