Carrier air ops resources?

[Harlikwin]

Are there any resources for how "average" carrier air ops are done.

 

i.e. How many aircraft would be in the air at a given time, Awacs? Fuel? in a vaguely hostile area.

Same for alert aircraft?

 

I've found resources of what a CVBG "looked" like, in terms of composition and at least vaguely deployment, but no info on what was going on air wise.

 

I also doctrinally this changed somewhat by decade, I'm mainly interested in the 80's/90's

[Harlikwin]

Man, nothing, down to page 4 in a day. Am I just a fool for not knowing all this stuff?

[Possum]

Can’t speak for pre-2000. But, normally 10-14 airborne for each cycle.

The amount of gas airborne depends on what’s being supported. You’ll have at least one hawking the recovery, and sometimes others for mission support. I may be wrong, but I thought they usually had a fuel alert set as well. Each fighter sq. kept 5 on the flight deck and would launch 2-4 each cycle. E-2s and Prowlers kind of did their own thing so I can’t speak much for them.

Alerts were set based on threat condition.

[Victory205]

Wow. Things really changed after the Cold War! Makes sense.

[Harlikwin]

So what would it have looked like cold war style, more/less jets in the air? That's more the type of missions I'm interested in designing. And how long is a cycle? 4hrs 8hrs?

 

Also what did a patrol look like? Fly out to WP 1,2,3 come home? About how far out would the various planes be?

[MooneyTail]

Nowadays a cycle is most commonly 1 hour 15 minutes or 1 hour 30 minutes. That said this can vary for a multitude of reasons. I've seen as short as 30 minutes and on the somewhat rare event of a Hawkeye going airborne alone (such as on a dawn patrol), it will be scheduled as a 4 hour cycle. That said, aircraft can stay up for multiple cycles depending on the mission. For example, the Hawkeye normally stayed airborne for 2-3 cycles at a time.

 

Normally at least one tanker would be airborne during the whole flight schedule with the TTLR (Turning Tanker, Last Recovery) being manned on deck during the last recovery of the night, plus whatever gas was needed depending on the missions going on.

 

I am curious to know what the cold war stance was like...

[Harlikwin]

So would there be an instance where nothing was in the air due to time of night or bad weather etc?

[Harlikwin]

Are there any resources that are available on the subject? TM's?

[ChuckJäger]

When I was deployed we generally had a 12 hour flight schedule, this would allow for a mx window both for the boat and the squadrons (catapult's, arresting gear, even the flight deck is in constant need of mx.) Typically starting early afternoon. This would vary though depending on current operational tempo/temperature.

 

There is always an E-2, EA-6B and S-3 in the air during the flight ops window. As well as at least one Helo. These aircraft would generally always be last on the recovery cycle.

 

There isn't anywhere, to my knowledge where you'd find information on the subject because air plans are classified generally. They don't want too much of that data getting out. They are also air wing/carrier strike group specific I'd imagine.