japan defense of okinawa

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orca
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Joined: Wed Nov 06, 2013 4:59 pm

japan defense of okinawa

Post by orca »

Would aircraft based on main islands of Japan be able to help in a conflict over the skies of Okinawa or Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands? Or would the distance be too great to make fighter aircraft effective. Thanks
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SeaQueen
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RE: japan defense of okinawa

Post by SeaQueen »

The short answer is "yes. It's only ~250NM away, which for a 450kt fighter plane is about a 30min flight away. No big deal. The long answer is probably more satisfying, though.

With tanking, modern fighter aircraft have global range so the issue is less can they do it and more, how much of "it" do you need?

Think about what fighters do. They take off, they fly out some distance, they fly back the same distance, they land, and then after some turn around time, they fly back out again. That means that one sortie takes 2*D/v + TAT to fly a distance D, at speed v, with given turn around time (TAT). Your sortie rate for N aircraft of that type is then N / (2*D/v + TAT). Is that enough to strike all the targets you want in the amount of time you want given the effectiveness of the weapons you're employing? That's a separate question. Depending on the scenario, it might be quite challenging, or it might be easy. Flying 100 sorties / day might leave you with only a fraction of your target set struck in a scenario where there's 400 targets and your weapons have a Pk of 0.8. On the other hand, a single sortie might be all you need to to strike some relatively undefended fixed target with a weapon that's almost certain to destroy it.
magi
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RE: japan defense of okinawa

Post by magi »

^^^ good point… In an air ops intensive game… I find managing your tanker assets to be one of the most critical parts inefficiently prosecuting air missions… it's very educational and how important tankers are...
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SeaQueen
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:20 am
Location: Washington D.C.

RE: japan defense of okinawa

Post by SeaQueen »

They can be. It all depends on what you're trying to do. There's a lot of scenarios where I don't care about tankers at all, because the ranges are relatively short, of sometimes I care about tankers because I want to loiter a long time, or maybe I ABSOLUTELY NEED tankers because the distances are very long.

If the scenario is as the OP-er described, because the distance is relatively short tankers probably aren't essential. They might be handy for increasing the on station time of aircraft and thus reducing demand for planes to cover the same missions. That means that you have more planes to do other things. That could mean all kinds of things, like more fighters to put on strike missions because you don't need as many to do CAP, or you can give more complete MPA coverage to more high value assets because they can stay up longer. Depending on the scenario, though, it might not be necessary at all.

A scenario that couldn't happen without tankers would be something similar to Operation El Dorado Canyon, where the fighters would probably have to tank multiple times, or maybe a long range bomber raid that starts off in North Dakota and attacks a target in North Korea.
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