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From: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: F117 in Gulf
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.030346.2272@amd.com>
Date: 5 Apr 91 22:35:53 GMT
References: <1991Apr5.091656.7511@amd.com>
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From: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen)


In article <1991Apr5.091656.7511@amd.com> js43+@andrew.cmu.edu 
(James William Stepanek) writes:
>... told me (it is from a... was that the F117's flew 30% of
>the bombing missions. This is an outrageous amount of flights for only
>around fifty planes 
>	[Hmm, half of 65,000 sorties times 30% divided by 40 days
>	 and 24 planes is a sortie rate of 20 per plane per day.
>	 If you halve the number of sorties again to represent bombing
>	 sorties and double the number of planes to 50 that's still
>	 5 missions per plane per day.  ....      --CDR]
  
   Now, don't everybody jump down my throat, I'm not listening...  I saw
this 'figure' as it was being 'created' day after day during the 'war'. I
as many others watched CNN & Network, but along with only a few others, also
got to see the entire briefings on C-SPAN every day  (There were 3 briefings
per day, and the broadcast media was only allowed to carry 1 {after complaints
by the print media}, and the others became snipletts for the headline's and
broadcast media.  C-SPAN however, being a non profit government service was
NOT restricted from carrying all 3, complete.  Now, that all said...
   I agree with our stand in moderator that the numbers don't add up to any
kind of reality.  That means that the figures are a construct of govern-speak.
Thinking in this vein, I have constructed the following model. 
CLAIM: (well...) the f117 flew 30% of all bombing sorties.
1. Define a sortie as a 'strike' on 1 specific location. [No way --CDR]
   (The f117 can carry 4 devices, drop 1 device on 4 different sites.  That
   inflates the f117 sortie by a factor of 4).
2. Define all combination fighter(air-superiority/defense/whatever)-bomber
   sorties such that all combination missions become fighter sorties not 
   bomber sorties.  Example: A F16/F4/F14/F18/whatever leaves on a bomber
   sortie.  The plane is equiped with some sort of non-bomb weapon (a a-a
   missle or a-g missle or even machine gun), and on route to drop the bomb
   load, encounters some kind of resistance, and uses it's alternate weapon
   to neutralize said resistance.  If it continues on to the bomb site and
   completes it mission OR is unable to (for whatever reason...), that mission
   is now redefined as a fighter mission.  Since most/all f117 missions were
   done at night and from high (er) altitudes, few if any it's missions would 
   be affected by this ... er.... definition.

If both of these 'rules' were implemented, and a redinition rate of 25% were
done under rule #2.  I estimate that this would lower the calulated mission
rate to 1 sortie per plane per day.  If 2 sorties were actually flown
(both at night and very possible), that allows a possible down time of
50% for the plane due to.....(everything).

al
-- 
Al. Michielsen, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Syracuse University
 InterNet: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu  amichiel@sunrise.acs.syr.edu
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