"How many aircraft does the RAF have serviceable?" Topic

These figures were revealed recently, showing that RAF has 25% of its fleet in deep maintenance.

defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/152646/one_fourth-of-raf-aircraft-unserviceable.html

That sounds ok, except that the 75% "forward fleet" includes all aircraft that are unserviceable but not undergroing deep maintenance.

The "forward fleet" includes aircraft "undergoing minor works, forward maintenance or any other unforeseen rectification or technical inspection work that can arise on a day-to-day basis."

This includes jets that are unserviceable due to being cannibalised for spares (as recently happened with Eurofighters) or that are awaiting spares.

And short term could be quite a long period of time too, especially with spares problems etc.

The RAF used to have 4 categories to define aircraft serviceability but that has been simplified to 2.

The net result is overblowing available aircraft rates.

So how many aircraft does the RAF really have available is anyone's guess.

Not something I would want to plan a war on.

Not to worry, like the other 2 Services their numbers of Flag Officers has been rising in direct contrast to the decline in ships, aircraft and Regiments…

So everything is fine really….

That doesn't sound unusual, really.

Every so often, you need to put a plane into the depot to overhaul. For commercial birds, that's every 18 months or so, and it takes a good month or so to do all the work.

I think military birds might stretch it to 24 months, but it sounds about right to have a full quarter of your air fleet in the shop for an extended period, especially given how hard military birds work.

Lion In The Stars,

I don't think there's a problem for the birds in deep maintenance (though there might be a case for greater efficiency but I don't know).

I think a bigger problem is that they don't differentiate between serviceable and unserviceable birds.

Imagine Britain is going to war and is assuming 70 serviceable Tornados and the government deploys 24 of them to the conflict.

Then it turns out only 50 are available, thus leaving only 26 serviceable in Britain (50-24 deployed). All of a sudden training and reserve planning is thrown out the window.

60% – 67% serviceable is the usual, historical standard.

Perhaps a bit higher, if few ops are ongoing, so say up to 75% – 80%, assuming spares are readily available, and a major push to keep them in prime condition.

40% – 50%, or so, if ops are ongoing at a relatively high tempo, for more than a day, or two.

Given that, probably about 50 Typhoons, and 40 – 45 Tornadoes would be my guess (with 60 – 65 of the former, and 50 – 55 or so of the latter, if they aren't flying much, and are being kept in tip-top condition).

Mako those numbers seem realistic given what I've read.

Logistic systems are something a lot of armchair generals (including professional defence analysts) ignore.

No point having the best gear if you can't keep it up and running.

It would seem sensible to buy a few more

Worth pointing out that, if needed in a hurry, many of the ones in dock could probably be made ready quite quickly – if you're in no hurry, things take longer.

Realistically – if you need them in a hurry then this is ALL you have, you can't suddenly speed up production. All you could do is ask whomever is in the queue ahead of you if they wouldn't mind letting you have their ones that are nearing completion.

They'll probably say "no", but will kindly offer you their most knackered ones from their in-service fleet…..

Sparker you are missing the point. Britain's armed forces are 'in transition' and, as all management consultants will tell you, transition demands very careful management; hence the need for more staff officers – who hire managemet consultants to advise them. It also helps Ministers, who are usually incapable of grasping the essentials of running the armed forces but who can talk the hind leg off a donkey about 'management', 'skill sets', 'going forward' (hate that phrase), 'right sizing' (hate that one even more) etc., etc.

It's also worth mentioning that in wartime the minimum serviceability standards are lowered to make more available for combat. In essence, certain bits of kit that are deemed 'essential' in peacetime are not so essential in wartime.

There's also a reserve pool not listed in the above figures – i.e. aircraft in deep-storage that will be dragged out to replace losses. These airframes require some work to get them airworthy.

R Mark Davies wrote:

It's also worth mentioning that in wartime the minimum serviceability standards are lowered to make more available for combat.

Aircraft carry defects all the time; I doubt that they carry more on ops than in peacetime. Indeed, availabiity has been observed to increase on operations, partly because the fixers no longer stick to normal office hours, but mostly because the war emergency stocks of spares mean that, for once, there is adequate spares provisioning.

It's also fantastically easy to achieve aircraft availability rates above 95%; just never, ever fly any missions. As availability is fairly easy to measure, and pilot skill fade isn't, guess which "metric" the eager business consultant will "optimise"?

Despite all this, the RAF historically has, and I hope still has, an abilty to squeeze very high sortie rates out of the airframes they have.

All the best,

John

That's absolutely true, but equally there are many serviceability issues that are allowed to 'slide' in order to maintain sortie rates, which would not be tolerated on normal home-service ops.

RAF Techies work night-shifts in the UK, as well as on ops, but the proportion of Techies performing shift-work (and the hours worked) is always exponentially higher when on ops.

As you say, the real issues seem to be maintaining crew training currency rather than hardware serviceability.

"It's also worth mentioning that in wartime the minimum serviceability standards are lowered to make more available for combat. In essence, certain bits of kit that are deemed 'essential' in peacetime are not so essential in wartime".

Yea, like the Balkans model, where you sortie your Mig-29s, even if they don't have functioning radar, weapons, etc., and then watch as they get blown out of the sky by US/NATO aircraft.

Iraq had the same issue during the Gulf War, also. Those pilots/planes that could fled to Iran. Others were found buried in the desert under mounds of sand.

Penny-wise, and pound-foolish.

Aircrew will carry snags that they can live with in wartime that they would raise job cards for in peacetime. Also low level planned maintenance could be extended until after the conflict.

Mako,

Don't be silly. I'm quite certain that the USAF works the same way.

As Ascent says, in peaacetime there are invariably many niggling faults and routine servicing matters that would require taking the aircraft out of the line. A lot of those can be delayed/ignored without compromising operational effectiveness.

For example, do you REALLY need your Tornado's grumbling arrestor hook mechanism to be repaired if your operational base isn't fitted with arrestor wires?