[SOLVED] Maritime patrol loadout's flight altitude of 1500 ft

[Rongor]

*EDIT: thread title now matches the development of this thread, which started with noticing maritime patrols reaching Bingo fuel very early due to low mission altitude.


I always understood Bingo Fuel being something like the amount of fuel necessary to reach home plus an additional contingency reserve.
I have a P-8 Poseidon at FL400 over the South Chinese Sea which aborts mission due to Bingo fuel, although mission fuel left is still sufficient for another 5.5 hours of patrol flight at loiter speed and the additional 1.6 hours of return flight in cruise speed to the 777 NM distant base, without touching the reserve fuel.

So we lose 5.5 hours of patrol time.

What is the logic behind this?



Mission fuel left is 16850 kg.
Fuel consumption in FL400 at loiter speed is 37.4 kg/minute, at cruise speed it is 46.8 kg/minute

[Rongor]

I just noticed this may be related to this thread, since the a/c disregards the transiting altitudes defined in the mission editor and drops to 1500 ft for unknown reasons to RTB. Before getting Bingo Fuel, the Bingo limit apparently is calculated by a return flight altitude of 1500 ft.

The reason for manual altitude and speed being check marked in my screenshot above is also based on the fact that I had no chance to keep the a/c higher than 1500 ft on automatic settings, as the mission editor values were ignored.

[Rongor]

Apparently the loadout ID 15297 forces the transit altitude to be identical with patrol altitude of 1500 ft. So the bingo fuel confusion is in a way solved.

[ComDev]

The transit altitude thingie has been changed to 36k ft for these loadouts [8D]

[Rongor]

Now, the following is mainly for discussion:

Isn't the P-8A offering sensor capabilities, which don't really match legacy surveillance altitudes anymore?

It carries 2 sensors (3 with LSRS) which offer a great listening range.
According to the DB:
AN/APY-10 Radar 200 NM
AN/APS-149 AAS Radar 200 NM
AN/ALQ-218 ELINT 800 NM

As reasonable it is to have a maritime patrol tasked to ID surface vessels by E/O-sensors and/or ASW-business operate at rather low altitudes, we lose much of the capabilities of the aforementioned sensors if we perform surveillance that low.
Currently only the Hi-Hi-Hi-profile of the SLAMER-ATA loadout enables the P-8A to conduct surveillance in altitudes which bring the benefit of a maximum radio horizon distance.
So couldn't it be a good step to implement a second alternatve maritime surveillance loadout which favors the long range radars and ELINT?
The current loadout putting us into 1000 - 1500 ft certainly has to stay for vessel IDing and ASW. But a second maritime patrol profile "hi" may be necessary in the future regarding the additional ELINT-role and radar capabilities of maritime patrols.

[ComDev]

Yes exactly And the P-8A fuselage isn't designed for prolonged operations at low altitudes.

The default maritime patrol altitude in the database is now 36k ft. ASW patrol altitude is 1000ft due to sonobuoy and torpedo release altitude limitations.

So what we're waiting for is more info on the GPS-guided wing-kit for the Mk54 torps and GPS on sonobuoys. Any updates on that front lately guys?

[Sardaukar]

I don't think MAD really works over 1500 ft altitude? And Poseidon doesn't seem to have MAD? Apparently they are developing MAD-equipped UAVs to launch from Poseidon.

[ComDev]

Yeah they dropped the MAD from the P-8A since it was intended to be a high-alt platform. Thus the GPS-guided high-alt wing-fitted torps that we're waiting for [8D]

[NakedWeasel]

Well, the real-life P-8A is currently operating without the glide-bomb torps at this time. Perhaps it is just as well to keep things as they are until more info about the weapon is available.

[ComDev]

Yeah so keeping the 1000ft patrol altitude for ASW [8D] Transitt altitude is 36k ft. And 36k patrol altitude for 'maritime patrol' loadout.

Will have to make a separate set of loadouts (with 36k ft patrol altitude) when the new torps and sonobuoys enter service.

[Rongor]

This does work now in the 1.08 RC. Only the loadout description (ID 15297) still tells 1.5k to be the alt on station.

[ComDev]

Thanks, fixed for database v438 [8D]

[Rongor]

Thank you for having taken care of this!