What factors determine an aircraft's "sortie rate"?

>>30078288
How many missions the aircraft and crew are fit to fly, and the logistics involving refueling and rearming the airframe...

>>30078288
Largely the amount of maintenance needed.

It's shocking how much downtime many modern aircraft require, to the point that they literally have to spend most of their time on the ground even under ideal circumstances.

>>30078316
Don't forget maintenance! Aircraft need a lot of that.

>>30078288
Well there's a couple of different "sortie rates" you can go by, the two most important ones being
>Standard
>Surge
standard sortie rate implies that it's something you can maintain indefinitely assuming supplies keep coming. Surge means you're throwing the plane into the air literally as fast as you can.

What effects those includes
>turnaround time - how long it takes to refuel and rearm
>maintenance
>distance from the battle area
>mission profile
>crew stamina

>>30078336
>Aircraft needs downtime

The fuck?

Do they run on muscle?

No seriously why do they need downtime?

>>30078288
Reliability and crew fatigue, so far as I know.

Are there any places that one could look up the comparative maintenance needs of various aircraft?

Like what planes require less maintenance than others.

>>30078342
>crew stamina?

I'm assuming this is mostly mental? Is it really physically taxing to fly a combat aircraft?

>>30078501
Maintenance. Can be 3-5 hours of maintenance per one hour of flight time, do the math.

Crew fatigue, getting refreshed for another mission.

Probably the only two things that determine an aircraft's sortie rate.

>>30078556
Bro, they are pulling 3+gs normally, imagine fighting a controllable Rollercoaster and staying mentally alert for 5 hours.

>>30078602

more the former than the latter.

>>30078556

8-12 hours in a cramped cockpit with no bathroom isn't fun. and that's before you start pulling G's which require both good stamina and lower body/core strength so that you don't black out and die. i've finished flights soaked in sweat during the summer in just standard training sorties.

>>30078602
Why does an aircraft need X hours of maint for Y hours of flying?

Can't you just fill'er up and just replace parts?

>>30078637
Because its a multi-million dollar death machine with a lot of moving parts under high stress (G's, temperature, exposure to metal penetrating its body, etc..).

So, you'll want to ensure you take care of your assets so they don't fall apart in the sky.

>>30078637

think of it this way. you change your car's oil, replace washer fluid, fill the tires, etc. every few thousand miles.

same with an aircraft. except when it breaks, you can't just pull over to the side of the road and call the tow truck. so you check everything. and there's more to check than just gas - there's flight control systems, weapons, sensors, various assorted avionics systems... even the lights need to be checked out since there's no fender benders in the air.

>>30078556
Yes. Absolutely exhausting.

>>30078340
That would fall under "how many missions the aircraft is fit to fly."

>>30078637
I mean, if you desperately need to you could in theory keep landing for fuel and munitions for a substantial period of time, but after several days, or even A day, of this you're going to want to pretty much take the thing entirely apart and replace a lot of it. Just think of the stresses involved, and if even a single bolt comes loose, or a single bit of the radar gets out of whack, you risk catastrophic failure.

>>30078556
Are you literally this retarded?

>>30078675
>>30078720

also something else to keep in mind: aircraft often break. because they are subject to 3d loads and vibrations and G forces and such, they don't always work as they're designed. the other day one of my rudder actuator servos was acting up, so we got out of that jet and flew the spare jet.

>>30078637
A&P here. No, you can't. Some parts are life limited, and require replacement at a certain interval no matter what. Other parts are subject to inspection at certain intervals, and that takes time too, more time if the inspection must be performed with the part off the aircraft or sent out. Additionally, working on most aircraft isn't like working on cars. Stuff is rarely easy to get to, and so little jobs take longer than you'd think in a lot of cases. Additionally, a lot of the parts on combat aircraft are under significantly more stress than their automotive equivalents, and thus must be kept in peak condition or the aircraft becomes unsafe to operate. Besides that, even little stuff like pre-flight checks/inspections take time and must be done before a pilot leaves the ground, same with fueling.

>>30078637
crew chief here. depending on the discrepancy, replacing a broken part can take hours, days even, depending on the part. Also if you're downrange and don't have the component in stock, odds are that aircraft is going to be awp for a fuckwhile. Downtime also consists of inspections, ranging from a simple bpo/pr to actual isochronal inspections.

aircraft are constantly breaking. the whole x hours of maint for y hours of flight is just an average value across the board for the shred. some acft are pretty beast and won't break at all, some will be constantly grounded.

>>30078720
>>30078637
But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Regular maintenance to prevent a complete overhaul is a net win in terms of total repair time for an aircraft, especially since doing those complete overhauls (which you'll have to do every so often anyways) often requires sending them to a specialized backshop at a different location than their operating base.

Helos especially you don't want to just keep flying, those things have tons of vibration as they're practically slowly shaking themselves apart, and military ones at least are often leaking inside from 50 different spots--especially true in the MH-53s I saw.

>>30078556
>>30078637
This must be a weeaboo who's seen/played too many series/games like Ace Combat where you can fly as long as you want as often as you want and shoot down 50 enemies per sortie.

Whereas in reality, even keeping a single sortie of strike aircraft ready to fly at an hour's notice is incredibly taxing on the pilots and support crew of a medium fighter base.

>>30078767
Yeah, and if your car breaks, you pull over to the side of the road and call a tow, usually. A major inconvenience.

If your plane breaks, you may get to attempt an ejection or crash landing. If very lucky, you may just have to abort the mission, which is still a major problem in a wartime scenario. It's a danger, not an inconvenience.

>>30078830
I just wanna learn ;(

>>30078928
then get off /k/ and read a book

>>30078793
>>30078772
>>30078767
>>30078762
This, in fact, is why the A-10 is obsolete for anything but killing durkas. Low and slow leaves you vulnerable. When they flew against the Iraqi Republican Guard, they got shot to shit.
>but muh armor!!1
Sure, the aircraft were a credit to their makers and all returned their pilots safely home. They were then grounded for a long time, doing absolutely no support for the Army. Guess how long it takes to fix something like pic related? The fighting was basically done by that point.

So all the ones that weren't shot up got pulled from doing any more sorties in hostile airspace and the tankbusting job was given to the F-16s, who did it without sustaining any damage because they didn't have to fly low.
>well whatever, muh gun, muh brrrt
Can't punch through modern tank armor. More expensive and less effective against personnel than dropping a guided bomb like a JDAM or Paveway.
>yeah well loiter
B-1s can do that just as well, while also getting to the CAS location faster and carrying a hell of a lot more bombs. Which is why they've been getting most of the aircraft kills in Afghanistan. Hell, the F-35 with its giant fuel reserves will probably be able to provide a pretty similar loiter period, while staying out of harm's way and being able to get to the location needing CAS much faster, and oh hey, being actually useful against conventional targets.

File: a-10 battle damage.jpg (45KB, 600x450px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 600x450px

>>30078938
>I won't forget to add the pic, I won't forget to add the pic...
>fuck I forgot to add the pic

>>30078501
It takes hours just to run through an aircraft maintenance check list. That is hours of just CHECKING spots on the aircraft designated on a list. That doesn't even include the actual maintenance itself.

>>30078549
You can look up costs per flight hour, as that would be some indication.

>>30078772
>some acft are pretty beast and won't break at all
Interested taxpayer here: Which ones come to mind?

>>30079159

he's not saying that certain models of aircraft are more or less prone to breakage. he's saying that an individual (say) F-22 has a reputation of being less likely to have something broken as another F-22

>>30079159
>>30079169
Not him, but non-rotary that aren't pulling high-G maneuvers should be less prone to breakage in general. Newer planes also break less than older ones. I seem to recall the wrench-turners having great things to say about the C-17s, for instance.

>>30078793
I'm just illustrating that surge sortie rate is pretty much only limited by how long the sortie is, how long the pilot can keep flying, and how fast they can refuel and rearm the plane, but that you'll pay for it big time later on.

>>30078928

r00d

>>30080627
meant for >>30078937

>>30079159
>>30079169
Exactly, after time you come to realize a lot of these planes have their own personalities. Despite being the same model, one aircraft could have an awesome mission capable rate, yet another may be perpetually broken.