Logistics

[paddy]

Before I start this post I will remind you that I proudly served on 14 and 75 Squadrons.

How effective would the combat arm have been if the shit actually hit the fan?

Let's assume 10 serviceable Skyhawks carrying two drop tanks on stations 2 and 4 and a full bomb load. (That's 1 x 500 pounder MK 82 on stations 1 and 5 and a MER (6 Mk 82's) on the centreline station (3 Station) We will assume 2 sorties per day (More sorties makes it worse)

Now, let us do the math: 8 Mk 82's times 10 aircraft times 2 sorties each equals 160 Mk 82's per day. That means that, in 6 days, we have expended 1000 Mk 82's.

Did we ever keep that many in New Zealand?

Aircraft attrition makes the logistics better but the bombs on target worse.

Aircraft serviceability makes the bombs on target better but the logistics worse.

Maybe Helen was right but for the wrong reasons

To use a Pprune term, Discuss

[skyhawkdon]

We never held much of a "war reserve" of weapons in NZ, but we would never have gone to war alone. We would have been deployed overseas and embedded within our allies air combat forces. We would have relied on their logostics chain for not only weapons but also fuel, ground support equipment and possibly even spares (I'm thinking F-16s here).

It would have been no different in the Canberra days.

Aircraft losses would have been a problem with the Kahu Skyhawk as there were only our aircraft still at home to call apon as replacements. That's why the "vanilla" F-16A/B was a much better aircraft for us long term. No more Kahu upgrades - only use FMS supported kit!

[phil]

wouldn't need that many bombs per sortie though, not with the GBU-16 kit. Rather than dropping 6 bombs in a stick to try and hit your target, the one LGB would do the same job.

Unless you were after massed troops in the open.

The same applies to Maritime strike, no need to overfly your ship dropping a MER load to straddle it when you can fire a couple of Mavericks, which lets face it only have a slightly better chance of hitting the target, but better a Maverick shot down by CIWS than an A4!

[paddy]

Jan 30, 2012 18:51:52 GMT 12 phil said:

wouldn't need that many bombs per sortie though, not with the GBU-16 kit. Rather than dropping 6 bombs in a stick to try and hit your target, the one LGB would do the same job.

Unless you were after massed troops in the open.

The same applies to Maritime strike, no need to overfly your ship dropping a MER load to straddle it when you can fire a couple of Mavericks, which lets face it only have a slightly better chance of hitting the target, but better a Maverick shot down by CIWS than an A4!

Hey, I joined in 73 and left in78.
All we had were basic 82's (and 81's if you were a wimp)