Increase aircraft repair rate

[Gotthard]

Yes, it was smaller. But some numbers, if you will.

WWII cost something in excess of 4.5 Trillion dollars (inflation adjusted)

It took about $50,000 to kill a single man in WWII.

Now? Inflation adjusted turns out to somewhere around $550,000. 10-11x as much. But we only have 2-3x the income.

If you want, I've got a lot more information at home on the subject... man hours devoted to making all aircraft in the U.S. in 1945 and now, costs of planes then and now, ect.

And I'm not saying that is th eonly reason. there are other ocmpelling ones too. But we'll never attack Korea for this exact reason, even if you take away all the others. (IMHO anyway... who knows how stupid our presidents could get...)

[magogian]

Yes, it was smaller. But some numbers, if you will.

WWII cost something in excess of 4.5 Trillion dollars (inflation adjusted)

It took about $50,000 to kill a single man in WWII.

Now? Inflation adjusted turns out to somewhere around $550,000. 10-11x as much. But we only have 2-3x the income.

Simply incorrect. I'll refer you to http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/gdplev.xls

It lists out our nation's GDP each year in terms of the 2000 dollar. In 1942, our GDP was 1.4 trillion. Now, it is 10.8 trillion, almost 8 times the amount. All of WW2 cost in today's terms not even half of what our country produces every year currently. Back then, it cost the equivalent of our entire GDP for several years. Those are some pretty vast difference.

[Gotthard]

I said cost, not GDP. We've already got a 7.7T dollar deficit... from overspending.

WWII caused a vast overspending if you will.

The income itself can be endlessly debated, I'll certianly give you that. Social security, benifets, ect. Can be argued. (disposalable vs. real...)

For the sake of this discussion, I'll accept 7x as much. (Using the spreadsheet in the link.) I'll be back tommorrow hopefully with some more information, if you're interested. I always find discussion of war fascinating.

[magogian]

I said cost, not GDP. We've already got a 7.7T dollar deficit... from overspending.

Yah, but I was referring to how you said that put in today's dollars it is 10-11 times as much and we only have 2-3 times the income.

My point was that our income is 7-8 times greater, but is was only a small point.

I love this kind of discussion as well.

Are you saying that you don't think GDP is a good measurement? It is by far the most common and trusted measurement for a nation's income and output. I mean I don't think any particular issues with it are large enough to really affect the nature of our discussion.

What would be useful is to get a table on military spending as a percent of GDP from WW2. I could try to find it but you sound like you are likely to have that information more readily available. I take that back, I just found one.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/militar ... e-size.php

During WW2, it ran in the high 30s as percent of GDP. Currently, with the Iraq war and all it is in the mid 4 percent I believe (if you include all the appropriations not included in the main defense budget e.g. the supplementals Congress always passes).

Already we field a formidable force in the world today granted it is smaller than during teh Cold War. But even then spending only usually ran under 10%. I can't imagine how large our military would be if we actually spent anywhere close to what we did in terms of percent of GDP during WW2, today.

[Kriegsspieler]

As has been mentioned air units do not send off orders to the manufacturer AFTER they have losses. That makes no sense and is pretty unrealistic. Every air force has a reserve pool that is used to replace front line aircraft within days. When that reserve pool runs out then I 100% agree that the "repair" times need to be high as indeed the airecraft are being made from scratch. But no DoD minister with an ounce of sense would leave airplane replacement orders till after they are needed

An interesting discussion here in this thread . . . .
I want to return the discussion to how modifications of the aircraft repair rate could be modified, and that's why I brought myris's post back in here.
As I see it, an esay way to offer players a chance to speed up aircraft repair rates would be to reward players with an existing stockpile of military goods a "repair bonus" of some kind. At first, I agreed that it appeared to take FOREVER to have one's air units back in action, but then I noticed that during warfare I tend to run the game on the slowest setting and that in terms of the actual number of days spent getting a unit back in action it wasn't really TOO bad.
Still, it might make sense to put in a modifier to represent the existing military stockpile. It wouldn't be a direct model of the aircraft in inventory, of course, but perhaps not a bad mirror of preparedness.
And best of all, I expect that something like this would be easy to implement in a patch, although it would have to be tested quite a bit to get it right.

[Thud]

I generally agree with Gotthard.

I'm not sure where people have gotten the impression that the United States holds reserves of advanced fighter aircraft. The F-15 is an extremely expensive piece of equipment. The United States simply does not maintain warehouses full of replacements. The USAF deploys every one it has.

In real life, there are very few circumstances in which an F-15 would be shot down. But if a squadron were not a full strength, it would indeed take a long time either to repair such an incredibly complex machine or to build a replacement. I see the long repair times as appropriate.

If you think you should have reserves, then build them. Simply construct units and then send them into battle when your frontline units are exhausted. I don't see any need to build a game mechanism to represent this.

[magogian]

I generally agree with Gotthard.

I'm not sure where people have gotten the impression that the United States holds reserves of advanced fighter aircraft. The F-15 is an extremely expensive piece of equipment. The United States simply does not maintain warehouses full of replacements. The USAF deploys every one it has.

In real life, there are very few circumstances in which an F-15 would be shot down. But if a squadron were not a full strength, it would indeed take a long time either to repair such an incredibly complex machine or to build a replacement. I see the long repair times as appropriate.

If you think you should have reserves, then build them. Simply construct units and then send them into battle when your frontline units are exhausted. I don't see any need to build a game mechanism to represent this.

To get a little more authoritative answer I just called my father who is an aerospace engineer in the DOD. He designs the guidance and control systems for such weapons as the GBU-15, AMRAAM, and the current spat of GPS controlled cruise missiles and bombs. Additionally, he helps design the wargame simulations for the Air Force so he is quite familiar with Air Force tactics and doctrine. (To establish his credibility other than that he is my father )

It turns out that Fighter and Bomber squadrons do maintain reserves. Roughly, 2/3 of a fighter squadron's aircraft are used for missions. However, 1/3 are held in reserve and in maintanence. That way they are easily able to replace losses and stay out in the field. Additionally, if a unit sustains more losses than it is able to replace they obtain fighters from units not in combat as replacements. My father explained that it is generally much easier to just replace fighters losses than to move around whole units.

And, a lot of damage can be fixed fairly easily (if nothing vital is hit), and if not the fighter is rotated to the reserve for more extensive repairs, however as mentioned before a fighter is then rotated from reserve to the combat role, so the unit's integrity and strength is maintained.

Hopefully, this helps to settle the discussion.

[jfbbis]

I find fascinating that the discussion is only concerned with the planes themselves, as if trained pilots grew on trees.

[Decimatus]

I am not saying that the US military today has reserve planes sitting about waiting for one to get shot down. Reserves are pulled from other units that are not on the front lines. Not reserve planes as much as reserve units.

The difference here is, what happens during a real war for survival. During WW2 the US factories produced 90,000 tanks, over 2,200,000 transport vehicles, and 240,000 planes(that is about 12,000 squadrons give or take).

There were indeed plenty of reserve aircraft during WW2. Producing more planes than we had pilots to fill them by far. We also had extensive boneyards all throughout the cold war which were kept for the sole reason, that we knew if it came to war with the USSR, we would need every last plane we could get our hands on.

If the US today, suddenly found itself on a two front war between China and the EU, we would begin building so many aircraft and general war equipment that in 2-3 years we would be swimming in it.

In war, squadrons aren't built in the factories, planes are. And the planes are shipped out to the squadrons to replace the losses. In most cases, ready to go pilots and planes are rotated from the homeland to the waiting units on the front. The planes come to the squadrons, not the squadrons flying all the way back to the states to pick up a few extra planes.

[magogian]

I am not saying that the US military today has reserve planes sitting about waiting for one to get shot down. Reserves are pulled from other units that are not on the front lines. Not reserve planes as much as reserve units.

The difference here is, what happens during a real war for survival. During WW2 the US factories produced 90,000 tanks, over 2,200,000 transport vehicles, and 240,000 planes(that is about 12,000 squadrons give or take).

There were indeed plenty of reserve aircraft during WW2. Producing more planes than we had pilots to fill them by far. We also had extensive boneyards all throughout the cold war which were kept for the sole reason, that we knew if it came to war with the USSR, we would need every last plane we could get our hands on.

If the US today, suddenly found itself on a two front war between China and the EU, we would begin building so many aircraft and general war equipment that in 2-3 years we would be swimming in it.

In war, squadrons aren't built in the factories, planes are. And the planes are shipped out to the squadrons to replace the losses. In most cases, ready to go pilots and planes are rotated from the homeland to the waiting units on the front. The planes come to the squadrons, not the squadrons flying all the way back to the states to pick up a few extra planes.

There is no disagreement between what you and I have said. Unless, you are making a point to someone else.

[Decimatus]

I was just making the point that how it works today, is not nescecarily how it will work if the US got into a real war. A good old fashioned world war between equals(more or less) where the stakes are higher than someone's political future, or a possible terrorist attack.

[Xetal]

It certainly would be interesting to have a 'reserve' of aircraft and vehicles that you could use to quickly replenish losses when your aircraft (or landcraft for that matter) was at their appropriate bases.

If you had a strategic reserve of F-15's (for example), then would you add another tab to the interface to show how many you would have?

Would they be able to instantly move to the location where they're needed (much more plausable for aircraft than for M1A3's)?

How much would their maintenence be?

How fast could they get to the new location to 'replenish' the losses?

etc...

This game is quite polished, strategic, and well designed, which I think is what makes aircraft stick out as ackward to me.

-You can't give them a 'home base' to return to after missions.
-You can't make it so they don't drop all their payload on the same 1-2 targets (with 90% of it hitting the dirt after those units are dead).
-You can't replenish their numbers (causing long repair times for squadrens, even though half of the aircraft are still flyable)
-You can't pack them into container ships to move them across oceans

Ideally what I would want is to be able to set it so that I would have xx% of all my current aircraft being held as reserves to replenish squadrens. If some are used or for whatever reason the number is below that percentage, then I would start autobuilding the appropriate aircraft to correct the situation as quickly as my production will let me.

A general improvement to the aircraft AI would help to make my aircraft 'more usable' also.

[Baloogan]

I keep a "strategic reserve" of F-35s in airbases at home. When a unit is quite damaged I just cycle it home or merge it with another unit of F-35s. I don't think the devs need to worry about this. The only thing they should be working on is a "game option that can be turned off to remove any limit from your missile capacity" please.

[Viperace]

Agree that something need to be done wif the air units. They get out of action too fast. The idea of reserve pool of aircraft seems viable.

And I'm not saying that is th eonly reason. there are other ocmpelling ones too. But we'll never attack Korea for this exact reason, even if you take away all the others. (IMHO anyway... who knows how stupid our presidents could get...)

I especially like ur last comment XD

[M1911]

I tend to disagree with the statement that aircraft get chewed up too easy, but I seem to be in the minority. That may just be a result of my play style. I tend to use my combat aircraft for four things:

1) Air superiority. I never hesitate to throw my aircraft in if my ground troops are getting plastered by enemy aircraft. I usually back up my ground troops with some good long range AA, so these fights are usually over pretty quick. Once you've chased off the enemy fighters, it's tempting to want some payback, but if there is enemy AA in the area it's not usually worth the cost. I usually round up my planes and send them home.

2) Battlefield prep. Before any major offensive, I use missile-armed aircraft firing from friendly territory to soften up big enemy concentrations and pick off artillery.

3) Battlefield cleanup. Rather than wasting my mechanized forces precious petrol chasing down retreating ground units in unsupplied territory, I'll finish them off with a quick missile strike or bombing run. One less unit the computer has a chance to refit and send back out.

4) Fire brigade. If the enemy achieves an unexpected breakthrough, I use air power to slow them down until I can get ground troops in position to deal with it. I pull the aircraft out as soon as the situation is under control.

In most scenarios, you are fighting forces that have equivalent, or nearly so, technology. I think trying to mount a Gulf War style air offensive in such a situation is an unrealistic expectation. What would Coalition losses have been like if the Iraquis had been equipped with F-16s and Patriot batteries and had comparable training?

As far as a reserve pool goes, that's already in the game. All the forces in the reserve pool are is stockpiled equipment waiting for personnel to man it. I don't see a need to complicate the interface with another tab to manage this. If you want 2/3 of your aircraft deployed and 1/3 in reserve, build three squadrons for every 2 you want to deploy. Whenever a squadron goes in for repair, pull out a reserve one. Merge understrength units to keep them operational longer. Keeping your air force operational just requires a little advance planning.

On the other hand, since the reserves are equipment stockpiles, I can see an easy way to accomplish what people are asking for to eliminate some micromanagement. Add a check box to the defense minister that says "Use reserves as replacements." When this is checked, units in reserve take damage at regular intervals and the strength points lost are added to similarly equipped deployed units. This could apply to not only aircraft, but also ground forces. There may be the need for restrictions on this like minimum supply levels in a hex or the unit has a "Refit" order, but it's a fairly no hassle system. You could even toggle this separately for air and ground forces (the navy is just SOL, since they're individual ships).