Here’s what I thinking. I like to hang ordanance as much as the next modeler. Right after 9/11 was the first time I actually got to see a warplane hanging ordanance in person. I live just outside Travis AFB and several fighters were TDY’d there to cover the Bay area airports. Mostly F-16 carrying AIM 9 and AMRAAMs with extra fuel tanks.
So on an actual combat sortie would they go out loaded to the max of fitted out with only those weapons necessary for a particular mission? I am most interested lately in Wild Weasel missions from the F-105, F4G and A-6 to the F-16 and F/A-18.
A jet loaded up to the max looks very cool and are often used for publicity shots and to show impressive specs to potential costumers. But in reality the max load greatly decreases the range and agilty of an aircraft due to weigth and drag. In a war these are important factors, so most of the time an aircraft wil not carry the max load.
An aircraft would normally be configured for the type of mission it was going on. I have seen F-4s set up with its basic missiles and cluster bombs sitting along side another that had 750 pound bombs instead. Ths same thing goes for any other type of cambat aircraft. They need to be specificly loaded for their purpose.
I have worked on scheduling F-15Cs with bombs or practice despensers during bombing trials, a “D” carrying a 119 ECM pod centerline and two wing tanks. In one squadron we had some T-33s carrying electronics pods and an F-106 with an ACMI pod on its right wing instead of a wing tank. We kept armed aircraft at the end of the runway equipped with four Falcon missiles as their normal load but if necessary they could be uploaded with a Genie or have a gun pod added. It all depends.
A lot depends on the type of mission it will be flying. If a WW aircraft is flying with a strike package, its primary mission would be to shut down the radar site. It would carry an ARM to shut down the site by destroying the antenna. If it is on a mission to destroy the site it would carry an ARM to first disable the antenna, and CBU’s, AGM-65’s or Iron bombs to destroy the site.
WW aircraft usually operate as a hunter/killer package when destroying sites. One or two would have ARM’s loaded and other aircraft in the package would have AGM-65, CBU’s or iron loaded to destroy the site.
The weapons load out would also depend on the type of site. If it is a mobile radar detection/ tracking site one AGM-65 missile woud destroy it. For a fixed radar detection/tracking site, it would require more ordinance to destroy it. In this case the killers would be loaded with AGM-65’s, CBU’s, and/or iron. If it is a mobile radar controlled AAA or SAM site, CBU’s and LGB’s would be used. For fixed radar controlled AAA or SAM sites, a large package of killers would be loaded with CBU’s, LGB’s, MK-20’s, and AGM-65’s. The hunter would always carry an ARM to disable the site prior to the killers going to work.
Our F-4G aircraft at Spangdahlm AB Germany, on a strike package mission would carry a 600 Gal high speed center line tank (F-15 style tank), one AGM-45 and one AGM-88 on the inboard pylons. two AIM-7F missiles on the aft missile stations, one AN/ALQ-141 ECM pod on the left forward missile well station. The outboard pylons would be empty or have 370 Gal external tanks loaded. For a hunter/killer mission the aircraft would have one center line tank, one AGM-45 or AGM-88 loaded on the inboard, and a AGM-65 Maverick missile loaded on the other inboard pylon. The outboard pylons would have CBU’s loaded on MER’s. The aft missile stations would have the AIM-7’s loaded and the ECM pod loaded on the left forward missile well station.
I’ll hang everything AND the kitchen sink for the cool factor, but every once in a while I’ll do it realistically.
The A-10 has eleventy million weapon stations under it, and can lift the Washington monument (okay, that’s an exaggeration), but when you see one fitted out in Iraq it will have just two Mavericks, two Sidewinders and an ECM pod. Accurate can be boring, but it’s, ya know, accurate.
I suppose things have changed since my tour on Yankee Station in '67, but typically the ordinance load, fuzing, etc. would be dictated by the mission planners. If you were striking a bridge, for example, the target size, structure, etc would dictate whether they hung 500, 750, or 1,000 pounders (or whatever). Max gross weights off the catapult would dictate how much fuel and/or ordinance you could carry. There were occasions when the ship would steam as far north as possible so that we could carry more bombs and less fuel. In these instances they might take off the aux fuel tank(s) and hang ordinance. In any strike group typically there were a/c carrying bombs for the main target, others carrying CBUs or rockets for flack suppression, a few “Iron Hand” birds carrying Shrike or Standard Arm missiles for SAM suppression. Mixed ordinance loads on an a/c were uncommon, although on night recce missions we might carry a mixed bag of flares and bombs or rockets. A little research and you can pose your model with a realistic load. I suppose that nowadays with LGBs, etc, they probably can get by with fewer bombs than we hauled back in the day.
And as another wrinkle for carrier-borne aircraft, there’s the issue of “bring-back.” If the mission is more of a “patrolling” or “airborne alert” mindset, where it’s not really known for sure that the ordnance being carried will be dropped or fired, then what’s carried aloft can often be determined by what can be trapped - granted you can always jettison stuff, but that gets expensive and people get cranky.
The Lawn Darts that I’ve seen in the AOR (Area Of Responability) during OEF & OIF they had 4 AIM 120’s, 4 GBU-12’s, 2 370 gal ET’s, and an ECM pod I beleive an ALQ-131, with 515 rounds of 20MM HEI & AP rounds, and then some just had 2 AIM-120’s and 2 AIM-9’s but the mud moving equipment was the same, the A-10’s had a different load for each location, and the Mud Hens had mostly a mixture of GBU-12’s, Mk-82’s, GBU-10’s with AIM-120’s & AIM-9’s
If you want to know what the HAWG’s carried I’ll get back with you, but for now that’s what the LAWN DART’s carried when flying out of El Jaber AB, Kuwait in 2002 & 2003