Ferry missions and refueling

[kfarley215]

1. I have created a spreadsheet of Ferry missions and required Refueling stops.

2. I have created the pre-requisite Re-fueling missions and launched them prior to launching Ferry missions. I have multiple units assigned to a Re-fueling mission with the 1/3rd rule and "Continuous Operations" set.

3. I Plot Course for each Ferry mission and route them through their designated Refuel stops

4. I edit the Waypoints for each Refuel stop to Loiter, but I don't have a Loiter Time option. How long will they loiter? Better to have a Refuel instruction or something..... ???

5. Questions:

a. Did I set this up correctly?
b. Is there documentation or a video illustrating in-route, in-flight refueling that does this better / properly.

I'm running the mission now, so I'll find out what micro-management is required later today.

Thanks!

[kfarley215]

I see the Tanker Planner dialog which is not bad, but I have 3 Ferry taskings that require 2 Refueling stops and it appears that the Tanker Planner only allows 1 to be selected.

[kfarley215]

I have run the mission a couple times and had to micro-manage some refueling but the Ramsey #1 C-141B refused to refuel and crashed after numerous micro-management interventions. The DB said it would take boom refueling and I provided it KC-10As. Should I have provided it a different Boom Tanker?

[kfarley215]

Still re-running the mission and seeing other peculiarities (to be determined if they are bugs)...

1. On another re-run the C-141B refueled as expected, hence there is a certain internal state in which an aircraft becomes non-responsive to re-fueling orders.

2. On this re-run the culprit was an SR-71 coming from Western US that requires 2 re-fueling stops. I see that an aircraft seems to ignore a re-fueling stop if it doesn't think it needs it (even though the mission designer knows it needs it). I had assigned it a pre-planned re-fueling mission and it seemed to ignore it. Hypothesis - it is not in a "need fuel" state, even though it doesn't have enough fuel for a future Re-fuel stop.

3. I managed to micro-manage a fuel stop by giving it orders (forcing it to refuel over Baffin Bay, stop 1), but the plot thickens....

4. On the 2nd stop (in Scandanavia), I think the tanker it was assigned did not have "enough" fuel (some internal rule state that caused it to refuse to refuel with an assigned tanker that was partially full). At this point it appeared to become in the "unresponsive to refuel instructions state".

5. Given I was trying to re-set its unresponsive state, I tried the following:

a. Assign it to another refuel mission.....ignored....continued to Incirlik where it did not have enough fuel.

b. Assign it re-fuel orders and point to another tanker. Refused and continued the death march.

c. Order it to Loiter....refused even after ordering repeatedly.

d. Unassign it from Ferry mission and simply put it on a course and tell it to loiter. Refuses to Loiter.

e. Tell unassigned unit to re-fuel with all the refuel options (Assign to Mission, Assign to automatically choose, assign to specific tanker). Ignored.

f. Assign it to a new patrol mission in a zone with a tanker and then told it to refuel. Refused.

It crashed, just like the C-141B above.

I would like to sort out re-fueling states and test cases. I think it may be related to an event where it tries to refuel in a valid state, but the tanker cannot complete the refuel fully. Somehow the internal state of the aircraft is changed so that it won't accept any further refuel logic.

The work-around I am thinking about now is to "never have an aborted re-fuel, that is, always have dedicated tanker for a group and ensure each refuel goes without a hitch" until we figure out re-fuel recovery logic.