Warsim's Point

Section 4007 has info on MAGTF sortie planning rates including surge and surge over time figures. Check it out:

http://www.mstp.usmc.mil/SPTS/MAGTFBranch/toolchest/General/1/Doctrinal%20References/MAGTF%20Planner%20Manual.pdf

In particular they say that combat a/c like the F/A-18 and AV-8B have a 2.5 sortie rate / day, with a surge rate of 4/day with an associated surge penalty.

Here's what it says regarding carrier sorties:
For Carrier-based aviation assume 10 strike sorties every deck-cycle with 8 deck-cycles in a 12-hour period. Eight deckcycles times 10 strike sorties per deck-cycle equals 80 sorties in a 12-hour period.

They had to make some assumptions about mission profiles to come up with that number, though. These sorts of numbers are not scenario independent. If you figure 2.5 sorties / day then that means 9.6 hours per sortie. Wow... that seems a little long to me. Either I don't understand that number or perhaps they're stating a conservative estimate.



Yeah... that really amounts to an assumption about mission profiles from what I can tell.

A deck cycle starts with them checking for foreign objects that could be sucked into air intakes and ends after the last aircraft has landed. If there's 8 deck cycles in a 12 hour period then a deck cycle is about an hour and a half long. Unless the carrier is really close to shore (unlikely), I doubt each mission is only an hour and a half long, so I guess that each deck cycle they're catching the aircraft launched in a previous deck cycle while launching other aircraft. There's clearly a lot of planning that goes into cycling those aircraft so that the carrier can max out it's sortie rate.

When I see the AV-8B's given combat radius at 100NM + 20min loiter... I have that question:
Why didn't the USN adopt an ski-jump on their LHDs?
Wouldn't they gain some extra load and range?
Or is the priority on the helo platforms?

Lately, they tend to use these boats (depending on mission of course) for limit air-superiority with more AV-8Bs on board.

Sounds really cool, but I'm having problems accessing that file...

Actually, the sorte rates in real life are even lower. Around 2.0 for surge and 0.7-1.1 for normal ops. The 4-per-day squadron average has, as far as I know, only been achieved once, and is impossible under normal circumstances.

OEF in Afganistan, the Carrier Air Wings sustained a 90 sorties a day as a baseline.
Each air crew flying some 70 hours a month.
Not a big number, says the USN.

The ski-jump takes several m2, and like you said, the priority are the big helos, because whit ski-jump there are 2 o 3 helo pad eliminated.


1Saludo

In the Gulf in 2003 the USN carriers produced about 70 sorties per day.

American Carrier Air Power at the Dawn of a New Century

Page 30 (56th page):


Page 26 (53rd page):

Yeah that's interesting, so only 30-40 of the 90 sorties were flown by the carriers' 50 combat aircraft. That means a daily sortie rate of 0.6 to 0.8 for the Hornets and Tomcats.

Yes, indeed, the rest being SAR, AWACS, EW, Tanking.

It says somewhere else (a good read) that:
- Flight ops 14~16 hours a day per CV
- 25% of missions lasting more then five hours 30.
- They often used the "tank or die" position when RTB (which is a bit risky)
This on is good too:

Based on 100nm sorties I think all the above makes sense and 'could' be accurate, and while more realistic for perhaps a USMC air operation, I can't think of many scenario's when would a carrier ever make a 100nm sortie in modern warfare.

I enjoy how every time this discussion pops up, the data supports the system already in place for DB2000 scenarios, if not making the case for even lower sortie rates that currently in place.

I can. For LHDs it's likely that the sortie be even shorter, in fact.

For CVs it's probably a little short, but not necessarily impossible.

You might get a little bit, and I don't know what the official reason is, but my instinct is this: a ski jump means square footage of deck space that is basically useless for anything but ski jumping. One of the biggest factors that contributes to sortie rates is deck space.

When Harriers are engaged in flight ops on an LHD, the whole deck has to be cleared so they can do a short take-off. A ski jump might help them get a little bit more weight on, but not a whole lot. On the other hand, a ski jump is space where you can't put a helo deck spot, or use for helos slinging external loads. So the ski jump, from the perspective of a ship optimized for putting troops and equipment ashore isn't the best thing.



Yes. LHDs are really mini aircraft carriers. From the perspective of the rest of the world, they ARE aircraft carriers, so if you take those with some support from land-based KC-130 they're a nice way to supplement the CV force.

The cool thing about a MAGTF is that it's mission specific, so the ACE in each one is tailored around what they think they'll be doing. There's standard ones, but that's really just a starting point to give planners a guideline to start with.

Just to keep this discussion current

A-10 Unit Marks 10,000 Flight Hours, 2,500 Sorties In 6-Month Tour in Afghanistan



Do that math on this one. It's a 22 plane squadron for probably the most robust system in the USAF inventory.

2500 sorties (not just combat, but all-in-all?) divided by 6 months then divided by 30 days followed by 22 planes... which is 0.63 sorties on average per plane per day.

edited due to double posting, sorry

Hi Ragnar, my favorite Viking
I had posted this earlier today, but it seems to have not made it through somehow.
I wanted to clarify this however, as it is the specific field I have been dealing with the past several years. The A-10 unit in the last post, did not fly a concerted daily ATO , so many days they flew more than the "average" and many days they flew far fewer than the average. As far as the carrier Airwings in OEF, also, many of the days sorties in excess of 120 were flown, the number here listed as "average" is just that, and includes days where fewer than 20 were flown. The airwings in question, met or exceeded the requested sorties in the daily ATO in theater. The only reason that some days fewer sorties were flown, is that on those days, there was no room in the ATO. In my past three years with 5th Fleet, not one day did a carrier fail to send the required number of sorties, and many days, the airwings had room to send more if requested. It was all in all a very much laid back tempo, with very few "surge" days.
Just my .02

off topic here, it's good to see you still going strong old friend.
Ron