CDF Air Service

The Air Service of Sober Thought is the air force of the Community Defence Forces. Its twin primary responsibilities are to transport Land Service troops overseas to face the enemy while simultaneously preventing the enemy from invading Sober Thought. All other responsibilities are collaries to this cardinal rule.

Branches, sub-branches and types

The Community Defence Forces in general and the Air Service in particular need different kinds of troops to achieve their objectives. These specialities are indicated by insignia on the upper part of defenders' shoulderboards.

Of the branches common to the CDF as a whole, all but the Justice & Police Branch are present in the Air Service. From these generic branches, the following air-specific types of units are created: Intelligence & Reconnaissance, air intelligence flights and squadrons & strategic reconnaissance squadrons and tactical reconnaissance squadrons; Maintenance, air maintenance flights and squadrons; Signals & Electronic Warfare, composite electronic squadrons, AWACS flights and squadrons, electronic warfare flights and squadrons; Search and Rescue, SAR crew, detachments and squadrons; Health, medical segments, detachments and flights, and; Supply, supply sub-units of air maintenance squadrons.

There are five branches specific to the Air Service. Propeller Pilot, Jet Pilot and Helicopter Pilot are theoretically branches even thought in some ways they relate to one another better as sub-branches. Navigation is common to all three means of propulsion and is not further subdivided. Air Weapons is a single branch but is divided into sub-branches and types according to the types of weapons and means of controlling them.

Movement among the three pilot and one navigation branches is fairly common, but movement in the air weapons branch is mainly among sub-branches and types (based on weapons systems) rather than within the Air Service as a whole. However, unlike the Land Service, the units are made up of several branches each.

Units, sub-units and formations

The basic building block of the Air Service is the squadron, although the virtually independent flight or detachment exists in Naval Air Divisions described below. If the distinction between units and sub-units can become blurred in the Land Service, it is practically non-existent in the Air Service.

Squadrons are raised whole as units, then either broken up, combined or left complete. When squadrons, flights or detachments serve alone, they have the supporting ground crew directly responsible to the commanding officer of the squadron, flight or detachment. However, when squadrons serve together in wings and air groups, the squadron's usual officers -- all pilots, navigators or air weapons officers -- return exclusively to their role as aerial combattants and the ground crew are hived off to serve under a small number of ground-only non-combattant officers.

What constitutes as formation in the Air Service is much clearer. For every hundred million in national population, the service creates one Strategic Air Corps under Air Service command, one Army Air Corps under a Land Service's field army command and one Naval Air Division under Naval Service command.

Strategic air operations

A Strategic Air Corps as originally raised organises its squadrons into two fighter air divisions, a bomber air group, a reconnaissance wing and tanker wing. It is responsible for landward air defence, strategic bombing and strategic reconnaissance. As wave after wave of SACs have been added, the Strategic Air Force can be re-arrange to provide fighter corps, bomber divisions, tanker air groups, etc., if desired.

Air support for land operations

Each field army of the Land Service has a corresponding Army Air Corps responsible for providing local air defence, ground attack, local transport, theatre transport and intercontinental transport.

The commanding officers of the Army Air Corps and the field army discuss together how best to organise their complement of specialised squadrons, then delegate those units to the next level -- land corps' air division and field corps HQs. The latter two in turn retain one air group under their direct control, then delegate those units to the final level -- land division's air group and field division HQs. The latter two may temporarily delegate a wing or squadron to a brigade or brigade group, but this is rarely on-going. Remember too that the top commanders always have the right to reshuffle the deck as it were on their direct and indirect subordinates.

Air support for naval operations

The totality of the Naval Service ships build for each wave of one hundred million national population supports one Naval Air Division. Unlike its Land Service counterpart, naval-dedicated squadrons are far more stably assigned to units and formations.

The 90 fixed and rotary wing aircraft of the Carrier Air Group are stably organized into three wings with six short fighter, two helicopter, one tanker and one composite electronics squadrons. The Coastal Defence Air Group's three virtually independent wings each have two maritime patrol, two fighter, one helicopter SAR and one composite utility squadrons. Each of the nine landing ships has one composite helicopter squadron, theoretically organised into a group of three wings of three squadrons each.

The remainding two wings of the naval air division exists only on paper at even the squadron level. The naval escort helicopter wing nominally has one squadron based on cruisers, two on destroyers, and one on frigates and tenders. Similarly, the naval transport helicopter wing nominally has one squadron based on troopships and another on supply ships. In practice, the squadrons are broken up (into flights of 2 or 4 helicopters, and detachments of a single helicopter) and directly subordinated to the senior naval officer afloat.

Aircraft nomenclature and models

The Air Service names its aircraft with a combination of letter types, a single sequence of numbers and a textual nickname. The code can be decyphered according to the following chart:

Helicopters always begin with H, e.g., a transport helicopter is an HT, a ground attack helicopter is an HA. When two letters for fixed wing or three letters for rotary wing aircraft are needed, the first letter(s) represent(s) the main production line and the last represents the variant, e.g., a transport converted to a gunship is a TA, a fighter converted for reconnaissance is an FR, an AWACS adapted for maritime patrol is an EB, a naval utility helicopter converted to search and rescue is an HUS. For aircraft normally based on land but with a sea-going naval variant, use N for Naval.

The textual nickname is a personal given name and reflects the starting prefix so it can serve as a nemonic, e.g., B-10 Bertha, HUB-77 Hurbert, FR-1 Fred, FN-1 Fannie, T-40 Terry.

Currently, there are 14 basic types, the most important of which are: the F-1 (nine additional variants, including the carrier based FN-1 attached to the Naval Service and and the tactical reconnaissance FR-1 attached to the Land Service), the B-10, the T-40 (including the TG-40 gunship variant) and the HU-77 (including the HUB-77 anti-submarine variant).