I've been thinking and here's a conceivable scenario so you may know what i mean
Game start
Time and place
12 August 1990 time 1300 somewhere in the North Atlantic

Group CVBG with USS Ronald Reagan

I have at al time some of the F-14 in the air as aerial defense

1301 I get a message ordering me to bomb the runways and other stuff(forgot the name of these stuff) at Keflavik airbase in Iceland

To do so I need information abot what kind of defense they have and where their are positioned a.s.o

which assistive do I have at hand so I can collect this information

Airplane
Satellite
Uboat(Navy Seals)

I chose to send 2 F-14 or F-18 with recon outfit(can't remember the exact phrase) It's several flight hours and it require refuling in the air I therefor send an extra tanker in the air(I do this about 2 hours after the recon have lifted)

OK the Recon have returned and have taken some pictures have to wait an hour or so before these picture are ready

I press some key on the keyboard and I get to see these pictures*

OK I now know what kind of defense they have. Now its time to make a bombing plan

What type of bomb should I use
What type of fighter should I use to carry these bombs
How many should I use
How many fighter should I use for SEAD
What type should I use for this task(SEAD)
How many fighter should I use for defense(AAW-loudout)
What type of Fighter should I use for this task)
Tanker? airplane for OECM and other stuff ?

So you see the only thing the game-crew has to do is load weapon of my choice on my choice of fighter plane and if needed refuel these plane and do some repair(if that comes in a future opgrade of the game) and control the speed of the ship as I has ordered and direction which I have also ordered and defend the ship


* got this idea when writing this post

Put some old aerial pictures from Vietnam war or other war somewhere in the game and when a player press some button on the keyboard one of these photos pops up.( an airfield,railtrack etc) Don't know if this is possible

I have no idea of making a game and I quess it would be impossible to connect correct phote with correct posistion of the fighter when it take some Photos

E.g A F-14 takes a photo of an airfield how would the game now this in order to present a real photo of an airfield and not a Photo of a factory or railroad

Markus

This is an interesting analysis and I think the one of the reports used to support the 6 hour ready time as in table V.3 it has an average of 1 to 1.6 sorties a day per aircraft, which if you round up to 2 becomes 12 hours on the ground and 12 in the air for each aircraft, so each flight or the time to ready the aircraft takes place in a 6 hour window.

http://fas.org/man/gao/nsiad98001/a5.htm

Welcome Aboard
 

noguaranteeofsanity!:Kaleun_Salute:

Welcome Aboard :sunny:

Actually it's a bit more complex than this.

During surge ops, 4th gen fighters can produce 2.0 to 2.1 sorties per aircraft per day. But not all aircraft would fly at the same time. Typically, 1/4 to 1/3 of them would be stuck on the ground. Also, a day/night capable strike squadron should be able to produce 3 packages per day.

So lets take a quick look at how a 12-aircraft squadron would be implemented in Command:

First make 4 aircraft permanenty unavailable for ops. That prevents the player from putting more than 2/3 of the fighters in the air as per RL observations.

Then ready the remaining eight aircraft with strike loadouts. These have 6 hr ready time. With a 500nm strike radius you need 2 hrs (++) to fly the mission. So that's 8 hrs to ready and fly. Then repeat three times (again as per RL ops), and you end up on 2.0 surge sorties per plane per day.

If you make 10 out of 12 planes available to the player you get 2.5 sorties per aircraft per day and you've probably moved beyond what's realistic. There are real-life examples where much higher sortie rates have been achieved (typically for simpler CAS missions that do not require any briefing - all you do is haul bombs a short distance) and we will look into adding a 'quick turnaround' option for these cases. Ref earlier discussion.

I'd also like to have a 'sustained ops' ready time option, where the player is limited to 0.6-0.9 sorties per plane per day as a alternative to the 2.0-2.1 surge rates we have today. Will have to discuss it in more detail with the other programmers when back from the summer break.

Thanks!

Totally agree and that is a far better answer than mine! I am certain you would have a far better understanding of this stuff than me and I was just trying to inject some facts into the debate having seen it play out time and time again since the days of Harpoon 3.6 and DB2K.

Thanks!

I have written this before

Your country may have a huge airforce but a country like mine Sweden can't effort the luxury to have 10-20-30 or more fighter jets standing on the ground for 5-6 hours or more depending on what type of loadout.

We have more than just 1(ONE) crew per plane and we have more than 2 pilots per plane.

So when I JAS39 takes ground a team of mechanics and trained soldiers take care of the jet, while the pilot get a coffee break and get information about the next target. Or a new fresh pilot takes over(and he get information before the plane toke ground)

We can't have that luxury.

I wish I had some of the old issues of Ingenjören(the Engineer) and Dagens teknik(today's technology) ´cause in these issues there was a alot about this new Swedish fighter JAS39. And the very HARD demand the Swedish government put on the flight engineer working at SAAB.

Instead of believing me I would, if I was you, the Dev team behind Command, send an email to a Swedish Airbase, e.g F17 Ronneby and ask the leader there how long it take to ready a JAS39 when it comes ot SEAD-loadout, AAW-Loadout, Air-to-ground-loadout and ASUW-loadout and how long it takes to make some type of repair.

I Can't tell if these information is a secret or not.

Markus

Was looking at Wiki and found this information about US-air force regarding how many fighter jets they have

"The USAF has 2,025 fighters in service as of September 2012"

Sweden has

About 100 JAS39 and we are a nation that are neutral.(I know the Swedish government ordered 204, but these 104 extra is for selling to other countries)

so you see we don't have that luxury

Understood. And I, too, know that Swedish crews were well-trained professionals able to ready their planes in no-time. Which is fine for simple repetitive missions like CAS/BAI, anti-invasion, or local air defence.

The problems arise when carrying out offensive air operations. These require a lot of planning along with good intel analysis and pre/post strike recon, and puts a lot of pressure on logistics and maintenance, etc. Will try to explain in greater detail in a follow-up post.