[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

Now lets say we put the regional Command base in Upstate New York, it has two commercial Lear Jets, the 55's for simplicity's sake.. Left overs from when the Project was in its start up stages. Because the Council of Tomorrow had to get around right?

First, why would these be Morrow assets, and not part of the corporations that the CoT was drawn from? Second, to the best of my knowledge the CoT were not frozen with the Project (if at all) so why would the Project have their planes? Third, why would they all be the same, when each CoT member was likely to have different needs that they would need to justify to their corporations? Last, even if they were commandeered, how do you justify the supply chain and personnel, like fuel, jet parts, and turbine technicians?

Originally Posted by mmartin798

They have Five Blackhawks for Security Sweeps, Supply Runs, and for use by the bases MARS Team. That's 4 crew for the two Lears and 10 pilots. The Crew Chiefs and Gunners are not counted. That's 14 pilots right there.

Per region, are you going with the canonical ten regions?

Originally Posted by mmartin798

The Supply Hubs have a dozen C-130's with two pilots apiece and a loadmaster. That's 3 crew right there apiece. And these guys are going to be busy! That's 39 crew right there, 24 of whom are pilots. Now we have a dozen Blackhawks doing the midrange supply drops, reinforcements, and going places the C-130's can't. 24 Pilots and another dozen Crew Chiefs right there. Last we have the Little Birds Two Crew apiece. Another 24 Pilots.
Total Number of pilots: 38 and various crew chiefs and Loadmasters and Door Gunners all of whom can be cross trained personnel and have other jobs. Joe the Door Gunner can be Supply Base Security Joe who sits in the coffee room all day.

The only place I have seen that kind of ratio of aircraft to personnel is for experimental units where the expectation is that most days any given aircraft is under modification. Seriously, you have the expense of acquiring and supporting all those aircraft, and your best case scenario has 2/3 of them idle for lack of pilots? What happens when one or more of your pilots gets killed?

Ignoring all that, with ten regions, ignoring the Prime Base contingent, you have 520 pilots, 170 crew chiefs, an unknown number of non-flying technical and support staff, and 430 aircraft. In case you are wondering, that is about 1/13 of the USAF, an organization that has about 500,000 full-time personnel (and admittedly more duties than just operating aircraft, but that is their primary mission!). Heck, acquiring the aircraft alone is going to be well more than $10B, not counting parts, training, storage, or conversion!

How big do you see the Project as being, overall?