Gulf War Air Power Survey
Rationale for Differences Between April 1990
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- Aircraft Type April 1990 Assessment Rationale for Difference
- Table 37 (Continued) Rationale for Differences Between April 1990 OPLAN 1002-90 Assessment and Desert Shield/Desert Storm Results
- Table 38 Summary Naval Aircraft Readiness Data
- Time Period 10/1/90 - 11/31/90 12/1/90 - 1/16/91 1/17/91 - 2/28/91
- Table 39 Percentage of Spare Parts on Hand During Desert Shield/Desert Storm
- AVCAL
- Table 40 Army Aviation Summary Mission Capability Data
- How Large was the Maintenance Footprint and was it too Large
- Figure 71 Maintenance Population by Month 38 Figure 72 Maintenance Personnel By Base and Month
- Actual Number Deployed versus Number Computed from Unit Type Codes for Selected Bases and Units
- Figure 73 Maintenance Personnel: Planned vs Actual
- Appendix 8-A Summary of Gulf Conflict U.S. Air Force Battle Damage and Repair
- Aircraft Tail Number Date of Incident
- Repair Time Event Number Footnote
Rationale for Differences Between April 1990 OPLAN 1002-90 Assessment and Desert Shield/Desert Storm Results
Table 37 (Continued) Rationale for Differences Between April 1990 OPLAN 1002-90 Assessment and Desert Shield/Desert Storm Results
Table 38 Summary Naval Aircraft Readiness Data
Table 39 Percentage of Spare Parts on Hand During Desert Shield/Desert Storm
Army rates were similar to those experienced by the Air Force and Navy, although the Army considered the results of the conflict to have validated its equipment more than its support concepts. As noted earlier, the Army Aviation Center stated that its aviation logistics system itself broke down.726 The primary problems were lost parts and a relatively immobile aviation intermediate maintenance (AVIM) that was unable to keep up with the forward movement of aviation units. Summary data for the Army are in Table 40. Table 40 Army Aviation Summary Mission Capability Data
How Large was the Maintenance Footprint and was it too Large? A perception has apparently formed that too many support personnel were in the theater.727 The narrative record is ambiguous: some interviews created the impression that the deploying forces deliberately minimized the number of personnel sent to the AOR.728 This would make sense considering the Commander-in-Chief Central Command's cap on the number of personnel permitted in the theater. Contrary indications are that ABDR personnel worked as ordinary shop mechanics and in some cases maintenance personnel worked outside of their specialty codes. Out-of-specialty utilization can be an indication of either imbalance or “extra” personnel. A definitive count of maintenance personnel in the AOR or attached to forces directly supporting the AOR will probably never be available. Chapter 3 of this report described the deployment difficulties arising from lack of Time Phase Force Deployment Data (TPFDD); those same TPFDD that would normally be the basis for personnel accounting.729 However, data are not totally lacking.730 The Air Force Wartime Manpower and Personnel Readiness Team at Site “R”, Ft. Ritchie, Maryland, maintained data on deployed personnel through deployment manning documents during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.731 As shown on Figure 71, a peak of approximately 17,000 maintenance personnel were in the AOR (in March 1991), or 21,000 if one includes Andersen AFB, Diego Garcia, Incirlik, Lajes, and Moron.732 Figure 72 shows distribution of personnel by location.733 Figure 71 Maintenance Population by Month 38
Maintenance Personnel By Base and Month How the Number of Personnel Deployed was Decided A SAC Lieutenant Colonel assigned to the 1703d Air Refueling Wing at King Khalid captured the spirit of the deployment in a March 1991 interview. In his words: When Plattsburg was tasked to be the lead unit to come over and set up the A-models, our folks at Plattsburg had indeed built a TPFDD flow to get the right organizations and right people for a given size, the right support people packages for the given size, PAA that was supposed to be here, and so-on-and-so-forth. It was approved through 8AF and SAC, and it was the guideline that our unit was using to send folks over. Unfortunately, it never got to CENTAF forward or rear; thus it was never approved from their perspective, and they were not going by the same document at all. In fact, their document was largely an ad hoc document, built as it went along. . . . 734 Although confusion is obvious, it would be stretching the facts to suggest arbitrary sizing of the deployed forces. The evidence indicates that, in the absence of solid guidelines, the various headquarters and deploying units held down the number of maintenance personnel deploying sometimes deploying a considerably leaner force than they would have used for the same number of aircraft in the United States.735 This point was discussed earlier in this chapter. The question is, did they? Actual Number Deployed versus Number Computed from Unit Type Codes for Selected Bases and Units To answer the question, the survey team undertook a ministudy to compare the number of maintenance personnel at eight selected bases in the AOR with the number that would be expected if the deliberate planning process was used.736 Appendix 8‑B presents the detailed analysis; Figure 73 summarizes the results. The top left pie in the figure shows the number of maintenance personnel expected on the basis of the deliberate planning processa total of 7,021 for the eight bases. The deliberate planning process, however, following OPLAN 1002-90, would have placed all intermediate-level maintenance in the AOR. A significant portion of that maintenance actually went to Europe; the lower left pie adjusts for this fact-of-life change. For these eight bases, centralized intermediate-level maintenance support from Air Force Europe reduced the expected AOR population by almost 900 people or thirteen percent. The top right pie captures the actual Air Force Wartime Manpower and Personnel Readiness Team (AFWMPRT) AOR population for the eight bases (4,002 persons) and an imputed number of persons providing intermediate-level maintenance from Europe.737 The telling comparison is between the two bottom pies. The number of persons that should have been expected in the AOR, given the actual maintenance beddown, is 6,135. The number in the AOR, according to the AFWMPRT data, was 4,002, a difference of over 2,100 or almost thirty-five percent.738 Two answers are possible. Either the AFWMPRT data are grossly wrong, implying that the Air Force had no idea how many people were in the AORa damning indictment of its personnel systemsor the Air Force went to war on the eight bases with one-third fewer maintenance specialists than it thought it needed. If the latter possibility is accepted, the perception that more people were in the AOR than needed is contradicted by the results of this study. Figure 73 Maintenance Personnel: Planned vs Actual 39
Summary The tooth-before-tail deployment's effect on mission-capable rates varied differentially with maintenance concept. During the first month of deployment, the F-15 complement suffered a drop in combat-ready aircraft of between nine percent and fifteen percent compared to peacetime rates. The F-16 and A-10 complements, for which intermediate maintenance is less of a concern, did not experience the drop. Throughout the conflict, maintenance was generally without critical, mission-limiting problems, and the industrial-level and base-level maintenance capacity exceeded the demands generated by the Gulf conflict. With some exceptions, mission-capable rates during both Desert Shield and Desert Storm were roughly the same as or slightly lower than peacetime rates, although rates varied from month to month and from one type of aircraft to another. Other Services had similar experiences. Where the maintenance concepts used during Desert Shield and Desert Storm differed sharply from anticipated methods (e.g., establishing intermediate maintenance support in Europe rather than in theater) imbalances between maintenance and other logistics factors appeared quickly. The most prominent imbalance was with transportation. Even when problems arose, however, they were ameliorated by a relatively healthy supply stock and innovative procedures. The desert environment seems to have had little persistent effect on reliability. The major exceptions to sustained high reliability were T‑64 and T-700 helicopter engines (used on the CH/MH-53 and MH-60 helicopters, respectively), which, as a result of sand erosion, achieved reliability levels approximately one-tenth that of peacetime levels. The T-64 unreliability was compounded by a two-level maintenance concept predicated on a normal reliability level. Maintenance men and women accounted for approximately thirty-eight percent of all Air Force personnel deployed to the AOR and, in terms of numbers, were the single largest manpower element (although an accurate count will probably never be available). The actual tail-to-tooth ratio was larger than that visible in the AOR, since Desert Shield and Desert Storm maintenance was also supported from the Europe theater, from Guam, and from the continental United States. There is no evidence that too many maintenance personnel were in the AOR; in fact, the evidence (for eight bases) is that the Air Force went to war with one-third fewer personnel than it would have planned. Automated maintenance management support was not available until late in the gameapproximately December 1990. Absence of aircraft status information hampered the various headquarters in their attempts to ascertain the health of the fleet (although this was worked around via phone calls and messages). Absence of configuration data, especially on engines, compromised ability to perform maintenance, although, again, other factors such as healthy spares stocks prevented critical shortfalls. Appendix 8-A Summary of Gulf Conflict U.S. Air Force Battle Damage and Repair
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