Kersi wrote: ↑02 Aug 2023 10:35 any combat aircraft could be based in any air base. This probably means that the necessary spares etc are stocked in every base
It's unclear if that is referencing pre-positioning of weapons, ammo, fuel, maintenance equipment , spares etc or just the ability to move and deploy them at some notice. The latter seems more likely as just prepositioning can leave those stores to rot or be expensive inventory sitting elsewhere, causing logistics issues.
It will also mean upgrading those airfield for navigation and communication and conversely the aircraft also to have those.
Oh and protection, both active and hardened shelters of relevant sizes.
---------
For illustration. Rand suggests one time costs of re-basing can be similar order of magnitude to upgrading training ranges.
And below talks of issues in deployment and dispersal
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/dispe ... ategy-ace/
or instance, the service needs to refine its prepositioning of materiel—the weapons, ammunition, fuel, and maintenance equipment needed to generate air sorties from austere bases. Base protection is also increasingly important, running the gamut from passive measures such as hardened aircraft shelters, camouflage, concealment, and deception, to active air defenses such as PATRIOT systems or other surface-to-air missiles. Rapid runway repair capabilities will also be needed to reconstitute damaged airfields.
“To be successful we need to have the right amount of prepositioned materiel, at the right scalability, so that it is available or arrives in time to meet the need, but not overdoing it to the point that it rots in the tough climate and environment that we face in the Indo-Pacific,” said Birch. “Base protection is also imperative, and it can take many forms. At the same time, being a target isn’t our main focus. Rather, the focus is getting our airpower off the ground in a way that is lethal.”
The model of dispersed basing dictated by ACE also puts added strain on command-and-control, logistics, and manpower. In each arena, the challenges of working in an austere environment will be greatly magnified in a time of conflict.
“When you think about having to operate in an austere environment where you don’t have a lot of the infrastructure and support associated with a main operating base, and then consider how that looks in a ‘contested’ or even ‘denied’ scenario, it can become really challenging,” said Ryan Bunge, the general manager for resilient networking and autonomous solutions at Collins Aerospace. “If you think of what the first nights of a conflict might look like, an expeditionary commander’s ability to pop up on the command-and-control network and get an intelligence update or a new air tasking order might be impaired. To help the Air Force meet that challenge, we’re looking at providing more resilient connectivity.”
Such resiliency could be offered by commercial and military satellite communications systems, or even high-frequency radio enabled by digital mesh networking.
