Statistics of Carrier Fixed-wing Flight Operations During Desert Storm


        During Operation Desert Storm (from 17 January to 28 February), the six U.S.
airaaft carriers deployed to the theater flew a total of 18,117 fixed-wing aircraft sorties.
of these sorties, 16,899 were combat or direct combat-support missions. The remaining 1,218
sorties included logistics flights, functional check flights for newly arrived or repaired
aircraft1 or other indirect support activities.

        Table 1 shows the combat and combat-support sor?ies flown by all the carriers
according to an analysis of carrier launch and recovery logs, air plans, and steam catapult
logs. The number of sorties is broken out into the eight mission categories reported in the
dally Central Command situation reports. These mission categories include offensive
counterair (OCA), defensive counterair (DCA)1 interdiction, close air Support (CAS),
suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), aerial refueling, tactical airlift, and other
support, including electronic support measures (ESM), electronic countermeasures (ECM),
airborne early warning (AEW) and other support activities.  Figure 1 shows the daily
distribution of Navy sorties by mission area. Figure 2 depicts the same data in terms of the
percentage of the total sorties flown in a given mission category each day.

        Because the breakdown given in table 1 does not include all Navy fixed-wing sorties,
and because the definition of mission categories imperfecfly reflects Navy operations, table
2 employs a different set of mission categories to obtain another view of carrier activity.
This set of missions includes OCA and DCA missions as defined in table 1. The theater
strike mission includes interdiction, CAS, and sorties that were capable of both SEAD and
strike. Maritime strike missions include armed surface combat air patrol (SUCAP) and
armed reconnaissance missions (which attacked not only ships at sea but some coastal targets
as well). The SEAD/EW mission includes not only SEAD missions (those armed with
HARM or other air-to-surface weapons targeted against surface air defenses) but both ESM
and ECM missions as well. Combat support is equivalent to the category other support in
table 1. The general support category in table 2 includes logistics and other missions. A
small number of sorties could not be categorized based on the information available at the
time of publication. These sorties are list~d as uiiknown. Figures 3 and 4 show the sortie
breakdown in terms of numbers and percentages in a manner similar to figures 1 and 2.


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