Carrier Deck Crews

[phavoc]

The Ford class will have 56 crew per aircraft, going with the minimum of 75 planes listed on Wikipedia, so if the 30 per craft for Nimitz is a correct figure I don't see how the statement of crew requirements going down holds any water at face value. Presumably the comparison "crew to aircraft" is an overly simplistic one anyway. As a minimum one should probably separate out the aircraft related crew from the crew that just operates the ships themselves.

The Ford class will have the same number of aircrew that the Nimitz class has, but the overall number of crew required for the ship itself is going to be reduced by about 800. So the numbers you are comparing there aren't the same.

That's the principle weakness of automation (at least at the moment) - it massively reduces both crew requirements and the workstrain load on those remaining but it really doesn't cope well with being shot.

That said, the argument could be made that a carrier isn't meant to come under direct attack either. The value of the cross-hairs painted on it makes it seem a relatively short-sighted view, though.

This is the same logic applied to determining optimum tank crew levels between NATO and Russian forces. Russians opted to use auto-loaders to eliminate the loader while NATO kept the 4th man in the tank. Yes, they could have opted for using auto-loaders as well, but there's a big benefit to having a 4th set of hands in a tank.

For Traveller to bridge the gap, I'd assume that the damage control drones would also need to have more mundane, standard maintenance uses to them as well. I was never in the Navy, but what I was told by buddies was one shift you worked was your duty shift, then you did another shift in regards to generalized work, standing watches, whatever, then your third shift was your sleep cycle. Any sea dogs have comments to that?

I found this article about life aboard an LCS. The crew is set for 6hrs on/12 off, but most report they get 4-6hrs of sleep time per 24hrs due to so few crew being available to do tasks.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/September/Pages/DutyAboardtheLittoralCombatShip%E2%80%98GruelingbutManageable%E2%80%99.aspx

 

[dragoner]

This is the same logic applied to determining optimum tank crew levels between NATO and Russian forces. Russians opted to use auto-loaders to eliminate the loader while NATO kept the 4th man in the tank. Yes, they could have opted for using auto-loaders as well, but there's a big benefit to having a 4th set of hands in a tank.

Different philosophies, the Warsaw Pact tanks were garbage and used the idea of overwhelming us with numbers. This was what I was trained to fight ...

 

[phavoc]

Different philosophies, the Warsaw Pact tanks were garbage and used the idea of overwhelming us with numbers. This was what I was trained to fight ...

I was trained to fight Soviets too. But getting away from the quality vs. quantity argument, the Soviet reason for using auto-loaders was to reduce the crew numbers. Which is a different philosophy than used in the West.

There's also the issue of having a spare crewmember in the event something happens. US tanks can take a casualty and not have as large an impact to their effectiveness as you would with a 3man tank crew and losing 33% of your crew vs. only 25% with a four man (that's just the math, not necessarily true effectiveness).

Same went for us in artillery. I was MLRS. We had a 3man crew (driver, gunner, commander). Having the third person was helpful when it came to doing all the work required, but not 100% necessary, as the gunner didn't really DO anything until we got a fire mission. And when that happened the driver or the commander could take over the gunner duties. But we were all cross-trained to do the other positions.

 

[dragoner]

Their reduction in numbers was to increase their numbers of vehicles. But Soviet doctrine was to ignore casualties, where for us it was to avoid casualties. The Soviets put their ammo storage in the center of their vehicles, so a solid hit was a total crew loss anyways, where our vehicles had crew survivability as the number one concern in design philosophy.

 

[Condottiere]

Someone told me it was easy to get your arm crushed by the autoloader. Also, I recall a tradition where the Soviets picked the shortest recruits as tankers.

From what I understand of Soviet doctrine, the damaged tanks were removed to a rear repair facility; presumably the surviving tankers were assigned a new tank.

I think the navy has six hour watches, with submarine crews the most put upon.

 

[Infojunky]

Someone told me it was easy to get your arm crushed by the autoloader. Also, I recall a tradition where the Soviets picked the shortest recruits as tankers.

I was told at the time the loaders where pick for being left handed too because of that autoloader...

I think the navy has six hour watches, with submarine crews the most put upon.

From the list article the LCS is really a brown water vessel in crew levels and duties, at least in feeling. I am kinda amused about the amount of press the small boats are getting, small boat in the size of the crew that is.

 

[locarno24]

Their reduction in numbers was to increase their numbers of vehicles. But Soviet doctrine was to ignore casualties, where for us it was to avoid casualties. The Soviets put their ammo storage in the center of their vehicles, so a solid hit was a total crew loss anyways, where our vehicles had crew survivability as the number one concern in design philosophy.

Exactly. Plus it also made the tank simpler to operate; manually loading a main gun isn't a technically complex task per se but it is one where operator skill & experience makes a massive difference to effective rate of fire. With an autoloader you not only eliminate crewman #4 but also make the tank simpler for recruits to operate. A lot of Soviet units were well trained (generally anything prefixed as a 'Guards' regiment, whether airborne, armoured, or whatever), but most....well...weren't. Certainly not by NATO standards.

Soviet doctrine was very big on...not exactly deliberately sacrificing troops, but accepting that when you put a largely conscript force against a largely professional one, the casualty ratio is going to be bad. As a result, the other reason for the ammunition layout was that whilst it made it easier to fight the tank, it made it more difficult to reload - but if a tank fights in a major engagement and expends its entire ammo load into enemy units, and survives, then well done, you've probably now got as long as you need to reload; after all, it's the Warsaw Pact who have multiple follow up waves of armour, not NATO.

You can see the same thing in armour design, as well - the 'big thing' in NATO cold war armour technology was Chobham and its successors; massively thick, strong, multilayer composite armour designed to resist multiple hits. The big thing the Soviets pioneered was reactive armour. Really good against the first hit but the first hit only - but if you're supposed to be overrunning people with a massive numerical advantage, a single unit should't be taking multiple hits to the same locations, whilst a hull down Challenger or Leopard might have to face anywhere up to half a dozen enemy tanks.

It's a similar logic to the AK-47; if you've got a platoon of well-trained soldiers and a maintenance workshop, give them M-16s or SA-80s because they have the ability to benefit from its performance. If you've got fifteen random ill-educated peasants you've pulled out of a shed somewhere and a hammer, give them AK-47s because the simplicity and reliability is worth far more than any increase in performance.

 

[dragoner]

The loaders were crap, no doubt about that; though I don't really see any connection between those and repair drones. I know in assembly lines, robots are more than well represented, the factories here only employ about 10% of what they used to which the rest being automation of tasks. For much of it, we might very well see the near total elimination of labor before the end of our lifetimes, the lights out autofac has come from scifi into reality.

Guards units had higher strength than regular units, but the whole Soviet military had a terrible problem with a lack of NCO's with authority, alcoholism, etc; pact forces were even worse.

 

[phavoc]

I would assume a larger size crew is required. 1 person, even with automation, should be overwhelmed with tasks when that fighter came in. Just off the cuff, I'd think there should be 2 deck crews per fighter. And then support-crew wise, you'd have like 1 engineer, 1 mechanic and maybe 1 misc support person for every 10 ships. The support guys would work on battle damage, but also be responsible for more heavy maintenance tasks, while the 2man support crews would be tasked with day-to-day operations, and overseeing refueling, rearming and very basic work when the fighter was being prepped to go out on another sortie.

Then you'd still need your flight ops personnel to oversee and manage all aspects of fighter usage. Smaller carriers would probably have say 5 people, and then you could scale it up by adding like 1 person for every 30 fighters?

So say you had an escort carrier carrying 60 fighters. Your flight wing could look like:

60 pilots (assuming no gunners)
120 deck crew
18 support
6 flight ops
204 total

This wouldn't cover C&C or anything else (flight group commander, command staff, etc) like that.

Thoughts/comments?

 

[Condottiere]

Real life or Traveller?

I don't think the Imperium Navy has escort carriers, nor do I suspect do they plan to build any. Wouldn't know about subsector ones (though I would have thought that they were responsible for convoy protection), and planetary ones probably have fighters based on stations.

 

[dragoner]

From CT, but possibly a clue: Skimkish Light Carrier (29ktons) - 80 fighters, crew 248 plus 80 pilots; Wind Strike Carrier (75ktons) - 80 fighters, crew 635 plus 80 pilots and 40 troops; and the Antiama Fleet Carrier (100ktons) - 300 fighters, crew 909, plus 300 pilots.

There isn't an actual breakdown of crew for subsidiary tasks though.

 

[Condottiere]

I can't fault it, but most crews are probably based on pragmatic experience.

Maintenance teams are probably larger for heavy fighters, compared to medium or light fighters, flight operations would be connected to activity, maintenance of facilities tonnage of launch tubes and hangars, and you might have more pilots (not weapon/sensors officers/crew) than craft, if the fighters can rapidly be turned around.

Peace time levels may be subject to benign neglect (or may just be scaled down in line with decreased activity), war time crews may be overstaffed, or understaffed.

 

[locarno24]

So say you had an escort carrier carrying 60 fighters. Your flight wing could look like:

60 pilots (assuming no gunners)
120 deck crew
18 support
6 flight ops
204 total

This wouldn't cover C&C or anything else (flight group commander, command staff, etc) like that.

Thoughts/comments?

Following current rules:
60 pilots - fine.

Deck/Armourer - Current rules say 60. I'd agree that doubling it feels about right unless the carrier has a lot of automate support.

Support - Not sure what you mean. If it's second line support to the deck crew, I'd assume that to be covered under the 'service crew' branch, which is volume dependent - i.e. there will be service crew allowed for for the flight deck.

Flight - actually more. We're told 10 per launch tube, and 1 Flight Control Officer.

 

[phavoc]

Support - Not sure what you mean. If it's second line support to the deck crew, I'd assume that to be covered under the 'service crew' branch, which is volume dependent - i.e. there will be service crew allowed for for the flight deck.

I'm referring to the support teams that carriers embark today to provide higher-level support for their aircraft and rotorcraft. They can't always get replacements out on patrol or between battles, so those engines that got pulled out of a fighter and replaced whole are torn down and repaired by the support guys. In some ways they are just depot-level maintenance guys who happen to be onboard the ship. I would think the equivalent would be present in the future in a similar way. Sure the tech has changed, but the requirement remains the same.

Flight - actually more. We're told 10 per launch tube, and 1 Flight Control Officer.

I was talking more flight-ops, rather than launch tube. I would say the launch tube personnel and the flight control officer would be in charge of maintaining and launching craft, kind of like what the catapult team does today on a carrier.

The flight ops personnel I was thinking of would be more along the lines of a miniature command staff. Somebody has to take care of all the intricacies related to flying squadrons of fighters. I didn't want to go down into smaller things like supply and spares and whatnot. But when the high muckety-mucks decides "let's attack the enemy with our fighters!", they don't plan out the attacks. That would be left up to the squadron planners (and their software) on the carrier. Command might tell them to use torps, or missiles, but how the formations are to launch, what path's they'll take, the sequence of attack, etc, all those details would be worked out by the people that know how to plan for that, and also know the capabilities of their squadrons.

Has anybody served on a carrier before, in the flight operations department? All I've got are some reference books that don't go into detail. Plus I'm basing my experience on being in artillery. We were told what targets to attack, but all the details were left up to the command-level groups that knew the best way to implement the orders (time on target, saturation, number of rounds, how long you could fire before you had to move to avoid counter battery, etc).

 

[Condottiere]

I think you're looking at a Carrier Air Group (CAG) staff of around thirty, half officers.

 

[steve98052]

On the question of personnel vs. automation, my take is that automation would be used as a supplement to people meant to improve capabilities, rather than a replacement of people. As today, people would do the jobs that don't take well to automated support, and automation would be used for jobs that are best suited to automation. People tend to screw up most when they do boring jobs, so boring jobs would be the best candidates for automation.

For example, spacecraft have endless check-lists of things that have to be in perfect working order every time to avoid mishaps, and a combat spacecraft's check-list would likely be even longer; that seems like a good job for automation. Really repetitive inspection operations (doing x-ray metal-fatigue tests on every one of a fighter's 10480 armor-plate fasteners, for example) would be a perfect job for automation; re-checking the nine that fail automated inspection and replacing those that are worn out would be a job for the human maintenance worker.

Jobs that are unsafe for humans might be a job for automation, but it might also be a job for a remote-control machine under direct human supervision.

As someone already mentioned, top-of-the-line combat aircraft are maintenance queens. Automation could reduce the need for maintenance personnel -- but designers might instead adjust the designs to assume that automated maintenance fixes all the routine things that break down, without addressing the problems that resulted from pushing the limits of technology, budget constraints, etc.

Example engineer's report: "With the Super-Creeper X-Ray Inspector we can automatically inspect 10398 of the armor-plate fasteners, but 82 of the fasteners are in spots that the Super-Creeper just can't reach. We worked out the cost of redesigning the Super-Creeper's inspection probes and equipping the fighter fleet with new ones, but a standard hand-held inspection probe does the job just fine. Since you need something for the maintenance crew to do anyway, it's cheaper to just inspect those 82 fasteners manually."

 

[Condottiere]

Flight staff size would also depend on the mission(s) the air group would be expected to perform the thirty quoted would be for mixed wing capable of planetary/deep space strikes, task group space patrol, forward recon, SAR and whatever the equivalent of mine clearing and ASW is.

The staff is probably larger for CAS, since it would have to coordinate with the ground forces, or any time lots of intel has to be soaked up through remote platforms. May even be the central coordinator for all smallcraft activity in the task group, so has supply delivery and personnel transfer transports to worry about as well.

Escort carriers would tend to have smaller staffs, since their missions would revolve more around the safety of the flotilla they are assigned to.

 

[dagrillac]

Real life or Traveller?

I don't think the Imperium Navy has escort carriers, nor do I suspect do they plan to build any. Wouldn't know about subsector ones (though I would have thought that they were responsible for convoy protection), and planetary ones probably have fighters based on stations.

The Light Carrier in HG is an example of a colonial navy carrier, described as the centrepiece for planetary navies

Regards

David

 

[Condottiere]

That's really a light carrier. Escort carriers act more as mobile platforms in the cheapest, smallest hull that is practical to manufacture. Mileage varies.

 

[phavoc]

Based on feedback and some further thoughts, I've come up with some formula of sorts for this. Formulas are nice since they scale up and down relatively easily. Of course none of this is "canon", mostly because there isn't anything out there that talks about fighters in-depth (and let's be honest, Traveller fighters aren't terribly offensive to larger ships. But swarms of them can definitely ruin somebody's plans).

Something to keep in mind is that these ideas really only apply to small craft that are expected to perform high-tempo operations. Small craft that occasionally sortie out for a task don't have the same requirements for rapid turn-around as a fighter (or drone) would. These rules could be equally applied to drone-class vessels.

Overall I tried to take into account increased automation and computer support to keep the crews to what is a reasonable accommodation between keeping humans in the loop and what better tech can do for you. I had thought, and discarded, a TL modifier since the higher the TL, the more complicated it gets. With that as a trade-off, I figured it would just be easier to keep things simple. I also didn't try to go very far into the command structure (officers, warrants, NCO's, enlisted).

Fighter Size Deck Crew
10-30 (light) 2 crew
40-60 (medium) 3 crew
70-100 (heavy) 4 crew

Deck crew are responsible for rearming/refueling/battlefield repairs to the craft. Basically they are supposed to pull any damaged part or equipment that can be quickly replaced with a spare and then ready the craft for immediate re-launch or for the next attack. They are equivalent to flight-line crew for aircraft today.

Support Crew - 3 per every 20 fighters

Support crew are tasked with repairing major damage to fighters during combat, or performing depot-level maintenance on pulled parts, engines, etc. between battles. Since carriers can be deployed to remote areas where no maintenance depots are available, ships must be able to reasonably sustain their craft while deployed. Each 3-person support team consists of an engineer, a mechanical, and an electronics technician.

Flight Operations

The type of missions the carrier is expected to perform, as well as the number of small craft carried affects the size of the flight operations staff. I figured carriers would get divided roughly into five classes:

Scout - Primary duty is to carry and support fighters far away from the main battlegroups. Would carry no more than 60 light fighters.

Escort - Provides fighter escorts to small flotilla's or convoys. Can carry a mixture of light/medium fighters, though no more than 120.

Carrier - The all-around workhorse of most fleets. Reasonably armed and armored for self-defense, it's task is to provide an offensive/defensive element for fleets. Carries any size fighter, usually up to a maximum of 500.

Fleet Carrier - A scaled-up version of the carrier, designed to carry as many fighters (of all types) available to its tonnage level. Typically a fleet carrier will have a larger number of carried fighters since it does not have to devote tonnage to heavy defenses.

Assault Carrier - Similar to a Fleet carrier, but armed and armored to protect itself during combat. Unlike other carriers, an assault carrier is much more capable of going in harm's way and surviving. And also like a fleet carrier it carries as many fighters (of all types) available to its tonnage level.

Staffing
Escort/Scout carriers with less than 60 fighters will have a Flight Operations staff of 5. For every 20 fighters, add 1 more staff person.

Carriers will have a minimum staff of 10, and add 1 per every 30 fighters.