Sortie Rate and Response Time

Note: while the principles are universal, the following discussion is focused on a war with China.  Russia is simply not much of a threat and the various options in a war with Russia are nearly boundless due to the availability of the entire European continent.

We’ve discussed forward basing and closely tied in to that is the concept of aircraft sortie rates.  The problem is that most of our bases are so far from the anticipated operational areas that we are sortie rate limited due to distance.  For example,

• Distance from Guam to the center of the South China Sea is a bit over 2000 miles
• Distance from Guam to Taiwan is a bit over 1700 miles
• Distance from Whiteman AFB (Missouri), the home of the US B-2 bomber fleet, to the center of the South China Sea is around 8400 miles
• Distance from Kadena AFB (Okinawa) to the center of the South China Sea is around 1130 miles

For these cases, at a cruise speed of 300 mph, a round trip sortie time is a minimum of

• Guam – South China Sea = 13.3 hrs
• Guam – Taiwan = 11.3 hrs
• Whiteman – South China Sea = 56 hrs
• Kadena – South China Sea = 7.5 hrs

Throw in aerial refueling time, non-linear waypoints, some loiter time at the target, etc. and those sortie times increase by 25%-50%.  The result is clear.  For Guam, in a Chinese war, you get one sortie per day and that’s assuming no unusual maintenance delays due to battle damage or even routine mechanical failures.  Even Kadena only provides two sorties per day, if no significant maintenance is required between flights.  For the B-2 bomber fleet, you get one sortie every three days, at best.

Okay, if those distances are too great for useful sortie rates, what distance would be acceptable?

In order to have useful sortie rates for fighters or strike aircraft, we need no more than 6 hr sorties – and that’s pushing it.  Even 6 hr sorties means 3 hr transit times and that length of time sitting in a cockpit begins to degrade pilot performance due to physical discomfort.  A much better sortie time would be around 2 hrs with 1 hr transit times.

At a cruise speed of 300 mph, a 6 hr sortie translates to 900 miles distance to base while a 2 hr sortie translates to 300 miles distance to base.  Examine the map below and note the red rings which are centered on the South China Sea.  The inner ring represents a 300 mile radius and the outer ring shows 900 miles.  A base that can support useful sortie rates must lie inside the 900 mile ring and, preferably, around the 300 mile ring.  It immediately becomes apparent that there are very few basing options within that area.

Okay, this is looking bad but we kind of knew this so what’s the point of this post?

Well, there’s another closely related aspect to sortie rates that is rarely discussed and that is response time. 

When a naval group in the South China Sea gets in trouble and calls for air support from Guam, it’s going to take over half a day to get there and that’s if the aircraft launch the moment they get the request.  Realistically, by the time they prep the aircraft, set up tanker schedules, plan the mission, etc. it will be around a full day before help can arrive.

There are only two solutions to response time.

1. Move the responder closer to the area of interest.
2. Maintain a constant stream of responders in/over the area of interest so that there will always be a responder available.

Let’s look a bit closer at these two options.

Move Closer.  Moving a base closer is difficult.  As the US found in WWII, there simply aren’t that many possibilities.  Worse, unless we’re willing to seize territory from neutral countries, such as Philippines, our basing options are quite limited.  Some of the Japanese islands would be suitable but gaining basing rights is, again, potentially problematic.

Closer basing also carries with it the greater likelihood of attack and the US has shown no desire or capability to actively defend an operational base.  The specter of trying to operate, maintain, and repair delicate, finicky F-22/35s while absorbing cruise/ballistic missile hits is daunting, to say the least.  As a reminder, we lost many aircraft on the ground at Guadalcanal due to Japanese attacks.  It’s one thing to lose F4F Wildcats that were a dime a dozen but it’s another thing, entirely, to lose $100M F-22/35s on the ground.

Closer basing can also be obtained by using mobile bases, meaning aircraft carriers and battleships.  The disadvantage in this is the inherent limited endurance which will manifest itself as munitions limits.  This can be overcome by a combination of robust at-sea replenishment and planned rotations of fresh ships while exhausted ships retire and replenish.  The other obvious problem with this is that the locations of the ships eventually become predictable and the risk, especially from submarines, increases.

Battleships (or any form of naval gunfire support) are, of course, the epitome of timely and effective response time assuming they are within range of the area of interest.

Constant Stream.  Given the transit distance and resulting very short loiter times in the area of interest, maintaining a steady stream of aircraft would be challenging, to say the least.  The sheer number of aircraft required to maintain a constant, say, dozen aircraft in a single area of interest would be on the order of several dozen, at least.  To put it in perspective, to maintain a dozen F-22s over Taiwan or the South China Sea from Guam would require at least half our total F-22 fleet – and given the historically demonstrated low availabilities, that’s probably extremely optimistic!

What is evident from this discussion is that the US is in a fundamentally disadvantageous position as regards basing.  There are options to deal with this but no easy ones.  We need to face the reality, make our choices, and begin preparing. 

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