Originally Posted by
junglyAEO
UOR route we now have so many fleets within fleets, across all types, that only certain aircraft are fit for certain purposes.
Actually there is nothing new here.
For many years I have been on aircraft that were, to all intents and purposes, at a fleet standard. On the Vulcan, OTOH, as it was effectively on front line operations in the 1960s, there were many on-going mod programmes all designed to maintain its safety and combat survivability. This of course had a direct impact on the number of airframes available to the front line.
Our bottom line was to have sufficient aircraft to cover all the assigned targets under the SIOP.
At any given moment however there were many aircraft that were 'not fit for purpose' for anything other than a nuclear mission.
We used to plan multiple training sorties as the airframe often dictated the training profile. One some days we might plan as many as 4 sorties as the allocated airframe changed through the day. Eventually it would be a close run thing between running out of crew duty time or the feeder running out of food.