I used to be fascinated by Greg Bagwell’s thread on X/Twitter final week and I can’t assist eager to share it with you.
Greg Bagwell CB CBE is a retired senior Royal Air Power commander who served 36 years, ending his profession as Deputy Commander (Operations) at RAF Air Command – the service’s most senior operational function. He commanded main operations and has over 4,000 flying hours, totally on Twister plane.
His thread breaks down one thing that sounds deceptively easy however will get complicated quick: the arithmetic of sustaining 24-hour air patrol protection.
Right here’s a fast teach-in on schedule a fight air patrol, and assess the variety of plane wanted to fill it over a 24 hour interval. In concept it really works for any plane, however let’s use the instance of a Poseidon P8 Maritime Patrol plane.
His instance is the Boeing P8 Poseidon, a contemporary maritime patrol and reconnaissance plane developed for the US Navy and allied forces, presently in operation within the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Germany and Canada. The airframe is a strengthened Boeing 737-800 with a weapons bay, sonobuoy deployment system for anti-submarine warfare and devoted army avionics. The P8 sometimes operates with a crew of 9: two flight crew and 7 mission specialists. It has a most velocity of 490 knots (564 mph or 955 km/h) with a ceiling of 41,000 ft (12,500 m). It has a fight radius of 1,200 nautical miles (1,383 miles or 2,225 km) with 4 steady hours conducting its mission on the designated goal space earlier than needing to return the up-to-1,200-nautical-mile distance to get house once more.
A P8 has the flexibility to conduct a 4 hour patrol at a spread of 1200 nm. The time it takes to get on process and return is a [circa] 4 hour spherical journey – with me up to now? As soon as one plane is on patrol a second plane might want to launch when the primary plane has 2 hours endurance left.
Confession: I’m barely confused by his use of endurance right here however what’s clear from his instance is that the P8 has eight hours gas endurance (can fly safely for eight hours).
The patrol mission is 2 hours flying out, 4 hours over the goal space after which two hours flying again.
When the primary P8 has two hours of patrol left, the second P8 should depart for its flight to the goal space, that approach it arrives on the goal space simply as the primary P8 is leaving. In any other case, they don’t have steady protection, proper?
The subsequent tweet confirms that that is what Bagwell meant: the second plane has to launch when the primary plane has two hours of patrol left.
So if the primary plane took off at 2200 to be on patrol at 0000, the second plane would want to take off at 0200 to tackle the patrol from 0400 to 0800. As the following plane must be airborne at 0600, it can’t be the primary plane, which can simply be touchdown then.
This is smart. The primary plane stops patrolling to return to base at 04:00 because the second plane takes over. It’ll arrive again at 06:00, which is identical time as the following plane must depart, so we want three plane.
So a 3rd plane will get airborne at 0600 to go on patrol between 0800 to 1200. Now, the following plane must be airborne at 1000. As that is 4 hours after the primary plane landed it may be used for the 4th patrol slot.
To this point, so good.
If plane keep serviceable and adequate crews can be found then this cycle could be continued. So, in concept, it requires 3 plane to keep up a 24 hour patrol utilizing these assumptions. Endurance could possibly be prolonged utilizing air refuelling, and decreased if extra gas was used.
OK, I’ve nearly obtained a deal with on this however I’m undecided I’m prepared to deal with air refuelling! Fortunately, the maths lesson appears to be over.
In a peacetime coaching surroundings chances are you’ll compress this timeline to achieve useful coaching for extra crews or protect fatigue (crews and plane!). So observing such exercise to make pressure planning assumptions is a false premise.
I used to be simply questioning about crew fatigue: that’s an eight-hour flying day. The primary P8 returns house because the third one is departing… however it has to show round and fly out to alleviate the third patrol in simply 4 hours, so absolutely that should require a brand new crew.
In reality, the primary touch upon the thread asks about precisely this.
Andy Medcraft:
So many questions. How does serviceability lower over time? How a lot relaxation do crews want between sorties and does this improve over time? What number of days then can a ahead fleet of 6-7 plane successfully keep this price for? How does AAR affect relaxation and serviceability?
Greg Bagwell:
A crew doing an 8 hour mission, would count on at the least 8 hours of relaxation (I keep in mind 10 hours break with at the least 8 accessible for sleep), however in peacetime you’ll solely wish to do a kind of a day. There could be a restrict on hours monthly so refuelling solely makes use of that up quicker.
These are extra for peacetime, you’ll take far higher threat in wartime.
Some snags could be carried relying on threat urge for food/want. The airframe/engines needs to be pretty sturdy, so specialist tools would be the ones to observe.
And later within the thread, Bagwell confirms that at the least six crews are wanted together with an extra plane to cope with upkeep points.
OneSadHoopty:
Is it advisable and even possible to have a fourth plane accessible within the occasion one of many first three has some sort of casualty requiring restore that takes longer than the tempo anticipates?
Greg Bagwell:
Completely.
jesper ellemose:
So what’s the variety of crews wanted to do that?
Greg Bagwell:
Sustained? Most likely 6. So it’s not an airframe numbers problem.
The purpose is that the P8s are, in his instance, not the limiting issue, however quite, the variety of skilled crews to function them.
Due to Greg Bagwell for laying it out so clearly. The person is a nationwide treasure!
