mxaxai wrote:

Through a 4-year program initiated by Florence Parly in 2018, France has managed to improve the readiness rates of all systems.
Tweet by the spokesman of the ministry of defence with an excerpt: https://twitter.com/HerveGrandjean/stat ... 13/photo/1


Fixed wing:
Rafale M from 53% to 61%
Rafale C from 53% to 55%
Atlantique 2 from 24% to 31%
A400M from 27% to 35%

Helicopters:
Tiger from 29% to 35%
Dauphin&Panther from 40% to 46%
Cougar from 24% to 31%

Others:
Attachable pods from 47% to 54%

mxaxai wrote:

Atlantique 2 from 24% to 31%
A400M from 27% to 35%
Tiger from 29% to 35%
Cougar from 24% to 31%
Attachable pods from 47% to 54%

johns624 wrote:

I'd like to see comparable German figures.

johns624 wrote:

I'd like to see comparable German figures.

Francoflier wrote:

johns624 wrote:

I'd like to see comparable German figures.

I'd like to compare this with anything at all, in fact. It's very abstract out of context.

kitplane01 wrote:

mxaxai wrote:

Atlantique 2 from 24% to 31%
A400M from 27% to 35%
Tiger from 29% to 35%
Cougar from 24% to 31%
Attachable pods from 47% to 54%

How is this not terrible?

I gotta think a 777 is more complex than a Cougar, Tiger, or even an "attachable pod". Air France must get 90%+ availability.

Seriously ... this looks terrible.

Bordeauxline wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

mxaxai wrote:

Atlantique 2 from 24% to 31%
A400M from 27% to 35%
Tiger from 29% to 35%
Cougar from 24% to 31%
Attachable pods from 47% to 54%

How is this not terrible?

I gotta think a 777 is more complex than a Cougar, Tiger, or even an "attachable pod". Air France must get 90%+ availability.

Seriously ... this looks terrible.

I don't think maintenance on a airliner is more difficult than on military equipment. The stress and training on them are certainly not the same.
I am not a mechanic, but considering the number of g on a military aircraft, control and context (dust, sand for operation in Mali, projectiles and other), it's no surprise availability is greatly reduced compared to civil aircraft.

wingman wrote:

Many on both sides of the alliance have been arguing for more spending and preparedness for decades, so it's hard to imagine anyone being unhappy at the gross improvement. I say gross because it's not just the percentages relative to other allied forces but the relative cost to achieve and maintain that readiness level, consistently over time. So what does it cost Italy, Spain, Germany and France to have 25 EFs ready to fly into combat airspace against trained forces on the level of Russia's over the course of a full year? And what percentage of the overall EF fleets does the "ready fleet" represent? Most of what I read is griping about % of GDP spending on defense, but a better start might be to mandate an efficiency of actual spend target that ties to minimum levels of combat readiness for 24/7 response, one day response, or one month. One thing I'll say about the French, they take their missions seriously and in any deadly scenario I'd always want them on my end.

tomcat wrote:

I just realized that the Mirage 2000C/D are missing from this presentation while about 100 of them are still in service (as many as the Rafale C per Wikipedia). This is a significant omission.

GDB wrote:

tomcat wrote:

I just realized that the Mirage 2000C/D are missing from this presentation while about 100 of them are still in service (as many as the Rafale C per Wikipedia). This is a significant omission.

Perhaps for the same reason I mentioned above with older choppers, so well established it was never included in these figures not being a concern with availability?
The attack oriented twin seaters are still active in operations and effective in their roles.

kitplane01 wrote:

Bordeauxline wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

How is this not terrible?

I gotta think a 777 is more complex than a Cougar, Tiger, or even an "attachable pod". Air France must get 90%+ availability.

Seriously ... this looks terrible.

I don't think maintenance on a airliner is more difficult than on military equipment. The stress and training on them are certainly not the same.
I am not a mechanic, but considering the number of g on a military aircraft, control and context (dust, sand for operation in Mali, projectiles and other), it's no surprise availability is greatly reduced compared to civil aircraft.

Air France get get 90%+ on a 777. Every day every year. The French Air Force gets 35% on A400. How many G's and how many hard landings are the A400s going? Not many is my guess, but the 777s are flying 5x as many hours per year. The Cougar helicopter runs at 31%. Our local helicopter ambulance service would go bankrupt at those rates (and they don't get to preplan their missions, they have to be ready 24/7/365).

Everyone thinks the line at the DMV has to be long, school has to be boring, and military equipment readiness rates have to suck. But these things are possible to fix.

GDB wrote:

[p
that is if you are not a superpower with by comparison almost unlimited money and size of inventory to throw at any problems.

johns624 wrote:

GDB wrote:

[p
that is if you are not a superpower with by comparison almost unlimited money and size of inventory to throw at any problems.

Think how many spares spending that 2% on defense could buy? It has nothing to do with being a superpower. Maybe less on new, shiny equipment and more on maintaining what you already have?

Francoflier wrote:

johns624 wrote:

I'd like to see comparable German figures.

I'd like to compare this with anything at all, in fact. It's very abstract out of context.

Noray wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

Bordeauxline wrote:

I don't think maintenance on a airliner is more difficult than on military equipment. The stress and training on them are certainly not the same.
I am not a mechanic, but considering the number of g on a military aircraft, control and context (dust, sand for operation in Mali, projectiles and other), it's no surprise availability is greatly reduced compared to civil aircraft.

Air France get get 90%+ on a 777. Every day every year. The French Air Force gets 35% on A400. How many G's and how many hard landings are the A400s going? Not many is my guess, but the 777s are flying 5x as many hours per year. The Cougar helicopter runs at 31%. Our local helicopter ambulance service would go bankrupt at those rates (and they don't get to preplan their missions, they have to be ready 24/7/365).

Everyone thinks the line at the DMV has to be long, school has to be boring, and military equipment readiness rates have to suck. But these things are possible to fix.

Are these figures comparable at all? Are they collected in the same way?

Does readiness for civilian aircraft mean readiness for scheduled flights, while the maintenance periods aren't counted, as you don't schedule flights and maintenance simultaneously? In contrast, military aircraft are supposed to be mission ready 24/7, and if they're in maintenance, they're counted as not mission ready.

A civilian aircraft that flies during the day will get regular maintenance at night. Does the military work that way in peace time?

As long as I don't know the details of the respective analyses, I will suspect populist nonsense.

Beyond that, there are various reasons for higher vulnerability of military goods. They have more systems that can fail. They're optimised for fighting and high performance rather than routine work and maintenance. Combine this with the fact that they're being produced in smaller numbers and spare parts aren't as easy to get.

kitplane01 wrote:

Of course they are not collected the same way. And of course I don't know Air France's actual readiness rates.

But I really hope we both agree that
(1) 777 is more complex than a Cougar,
(2) Air France puts 5x as many hours on it's 777s than the military does on it's Cougars
(3) the French military says it gets a 31% readiness rate on the Cougar
(4) and whatever the definition of readiness is, Air France has way more than 31% if it's 777s ready.

You can quibble over definitions, but these claims seem very true.

geomap wrote:

Francoflier wrote:

johns624 wrote:

I'd like to see comparable German figures.

I'd like to compare this with anything at all, in fact. It's very abstract out of context.

Here is one source for USAF Fighters: https://www.airforcemag.com/usaf-fighte ... scal-2020/

Fighters 2019 Mission Capable Rate 2020 Mission Capable Rate
F-15C 70.05% 71.93%
F-15D 72.45% 70.52%
F-15E 71.29% 69.21%
F-16C 72.97% 73.90%
F-16D 70.37% 72.11%
F-22A 50.57% 51.98%
F-35A 61.6% 76.07%

Are these numbers even comparable? I'd love to understand it the definition of "mission capable" is even close to being the same.

Bordeauxline wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

Of course they are not collected the same way. And of course I don't know Air France's actual readiness rates.

But I really hope we both agree that
(1) 777 is more complex than a Cougar,
(2) Air France puts 5x as many hours on it's 777s than the military does on it's Cougars
(3) the French military says it gets a 31% readiness rate on the Cougar
(4) and whatever the definition of readiness is, Air France has way more than 31% if it's 777s ready.

You can quibble over definitions, but these claims seem very true.

It may be true, but seems like maintenance on helicopter is more difficult than on aircraft:
https://traxxall.com/successfully-track ... intenance/
https://sassofia.com/blog/helicopter-ma ... -programs/
https://www.airmedandrescue.com/latest/ ... nce-safety

But well it is also comparing apple to orange, the missions are certainly not the same.

kitplane01 wrote:

Air France get get 90%+ on a 777. Every day every year.

Francoflier wrote:

Thanks.
Now I guess the question is; is that 'readiness' calculated the same way between most western air forces?

mxaxai wrote:

I guess that's just the difference between commercial operations and the government. Perhaps France should privatize their air force?
.

GDB wrote:

[
I would be interested to see how other AF’s types fared on availability when even a small force is deployed, that is if you are not a superpower with by comparison almost unlimited money and size of inventory to throw at any problems.
I know that when a chunk of the well established and large RAF Tornado force went to the Gulf in 1990/91 the spares were stripped from across the force, same applied to the Army, I suspect that types new in service/small numbers even in US service had the same.
And this with Cold War force levels still intact at the time.

LyleLanley wrote:

It's almost as if the reliability of the aircraft in a military branch is the proportional result of investment in both personnel and spare parts, and if you go cheap in either your rates are terrible... Weird.

Think of the last 18 year old ATP you've seen at CDG, or the last time JAL had to hit up their cann bird in order to make a takeoff and you've figured out why the mx rates suck compared to the airlines. Conversely, think of the last time you've had the 60 year old line supervisor who knows every last rivet of his/her jet qualify in the M-16 or gas mask.

kitplane01 wrote:

It's also almost as if lobbyists make more money selling new airplanes, and less money when the Air Force recruits more maintainers.

LyleLanley wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

It's also almost as if lobbyists make more money selling new airplanes, and less money when the Air Force recruits more maintainers.

To a certain extent you’re not wrong, but there are two concepts not covered by your shady-salesman hypothesis: funding priorities and manning shortfalls. Basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’ll use two examples from the KC-10 to demonstrate.

Years ago, when the peace dividend was in full swing, the newly established AMC changed the KC-10 parts allocation so instead of replacing parts on a schedule, minimizing unexpected mx, they flew the parts to failure and replaced them afterwards. This saved a decent amount of money but the aircraft’s reliability suffered. Airlines pay for that reliability but AMC had higher priorities to fund (the over budget C-17) and limited ways to move money around so they raided the O&M budget to make up for the shortfall.

~ 2010, the AF had severe mx manning shortfalls in 5 and 7 levels in many heavy aircraft. The KC-10, on the other hand, was doing pretty well. Because the AF can’t just “hire more maintainers” because there are congressionally mandated manpower limits for the military branches - the AF can’t just bring in 10,000 more people because it’s short of burger-flippers, they gutted the 5 and 7 level KC-10 maintenance roster and non-vol’d them to other airframes, such as the already dying and overworked C-130E/H. This had nothing to do with shady businessmen trying to pawn the C-130J on the fleet, but manning shortfalls caused by a variety of reasons.

These changes had jack $hit to do with finding reasons for a new tanker, as the KC-10 still has AMC’s highest reliability rate. It had to do with funding priorities and manning shortfalls, just like any large business, but having a much more constrained budget and hiring ability.

kitplane01 wrote:

I totally believe everything you wrote.

Another possibility would be for the USAF to only buy as many aircraft as it could operate. This would produce a smaller USAF. But with the same manning and budget, there would be a higher readiness rate. Priorities are reveled by where you spend your money,

johns624 wrote:

GDB wrote:

[
I would be interested to see how other AF’s types fared on availability when even a small force is deployed, that is if you are not a superpower with by comparison almost unlimited money and size of inventory to throw at any problems.
I know that when a chunk of the well established and large RAF Tornado force went to the Gulf in 1990/91 the spares were stripped from across the force, same applied to the Army, I suspect that types new in service/small numbers even in US service had the same.
And this with Cold War force levels still intact at the time.

Having to do this shows that it's a political problem and not a financial one. The government is not funding the military for all the operations that that same government wants the military to perform.