To Drop External Tanks, or Not?

[Lt. James Cater 62]

How do AIs manage? They stop fighting when low on fuel.

 

To be quite honest, i don't know.

 

The Javelin is such a dog ( Future thread notice) that only under the most favorable circumstances will your wingmen be in a position to even worry about fuel consumption. Usually they are shot down before it becomes a factor.

[xrearl 27]

You can also drop your tanks and hope you hit some enemy on the head.

I belive this did happen in Viet Nam,a F-105 I think!

[Oswald Bastable 0]

Well, I put the settings on "Hard" for fuel consumption.

 

Even just a few bursts of AB I burned away I would say an 1/8 of fuel in my external. Seems I was already down to 40% after flight into target. I would guess I would have had to refuel along the way with that usage.

 

Not worrying about campaign resupply issues, I kicked away tanks when empty. I was basically observing the mission that I hacked so I wasn't really worried about engaging.

 

(Hope it works properly, animated gif of mission with pauses on gauges and map to see the small distance I traveled down Thud ridge on AB and how much fuel I used.)

 

[Vampyre 24]

I did a stock check tonight on a Super Hornet 480gal drop tank to check the price.... US$239,315.00 for a single tank. I own a Ford F-250 and I could buy five of them for the price of one Super Hornet tank. Taking that into account along with the fact that there are not that many actually on hand to replace the tanks that are punched off and you can see why it is good to hang on to them. I usually edit my resupply figures for campaigns to reflect close to real world supplies of drop tanks and run out of tanks pretty quick if I leave them on the AI planes or punch them off every time anything happens.

[jomni 6]

200k for a tank?

You think the contractor / supplier is screwing you?

Hehe.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Quarter of a million seems very expensive.

 

Wh are you running out of tanks if you "leave them on the AI planes" - do they not "bring home" theirs?

[jomni 6]

Quarter of a million seems very expensive.

 

Wh are you running out of tanks if you "leave them on the AI planes" - do they not "bring home" theirs?

 

They will jettison it once you give them a command to attack.

They will not think twice.

[ezlead 42]

Since I warp to the next objective,the tanks ,I believe,are always full,so I drop them.

Sometimes I forget that I have them on and when I finally drop them it makes a big difference.

 

In the real world; Vietnam 1972,we were told to drop them if we thought that it would help in the current situation.

Most of the time they were empty by the time we got on station or "Feet dry".

So we were just hauling around a couple hundred pounds of sheet metal.

We kept them on in case we had a landing gear failure. Land gear up on the drops.

It saved a lot of aircraft.

The fighter jock's that I knew usually kept them on for the same reason.

An F-4 would still go Warp 9 with the drops on. They were designed to go supersonic. :yes:

 

Oh,the cost didn't mean a damn. It takes more than 3 years and several million dollars to replace an experienced pilot.

Edited July 30, 2009 by ezlead

[Oswald Bastable 0]

I find the "Hun" to be pretty maneuverable except for extreme hard G-turns with external tanks.

 

Winging into my mission, I made a couple medium distance shots with missiles then when my tanks were near empty I dropped them to engage more closely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mynameizme 0]

I did a stock check tonight on a Super Hornet 480gal drop tank to check the price.... US$239,315.00 for a single tank. I own a Ford F-250 and I could buy five of them for the price of one Super Hornet tank. Taking that into account along with the fact that there are not that many actually on hand to replace the tanks that are punched off and you can see why it is good to hang on to them. I usually edit my resupply figures for campaigns to reflect close to real world supplies of drop tanks and run out of tanks pretty quick if I leave them on the AI planes or punch them off every time anything happens.

 

 

Isn't it just a big piece of sheet metal with a pipe running into it?

 

I'm going to reconsider the purpose of the US Navy; whether or not it was actually designed to bleed money.

[Oswald Bastable 0]

I guess whenever you tell your wingman, flight or squadron they drop tanks automatically anyways.

 

I have noticed that on hard settings the flight model is so tough that I can't wait to drop tanks.

[Oswald Bastable 0]

From reading more about the linebacker mission it becomes apparent that certain operational procedures dictated what to do with external tanks.

 

From my reading it seems normal to drop the center tank when empty and only jettison the wing tanks when aerial combat is eminent.

 

 

 

Wing tanks cost more?

 

I don't know, I would guess that the usuage of external tanks was calculated in the ordnance usage.