I remember seeing them on the ramp at Misawa AB back in 91 and 92 when I was on active. I enjoyed watching them climb into the air; it made me think of WW2 bombers from the movies I saw when I was growing up. Plus, they didn’t make the building I was in shake like a rattle when they took off, unlike the Japanese F-1s and US F-16s.

6 planes and 12 crews per squadron?
2 crews per plane, check. Makes sense.
No spare planes to cover maintenance down time – nonsense magical thinking detected!

I can remember the times when we had a hot Soviet contact in the Yankee Box. There were always three P-3s airborne airborne, one enroute to the area, one on station and one returning to Barbers Point. There was an airplane taking off and landing every four hours. One P-3 Squadron with 9 planes could handle it for a while, but the maintenance department had a difficult job at times trying to keep enough birds Mission Capable and the crews supplied with birds to hunt and track the Soviets. It was a stretch but it worked most of the time, until we ran out of the parts in the supply system and the parts the Maintenance Chiefs had squirreled away.

Now the nation’s ASW capability has been slashed to the bone there aren’t enough airplanes and crews to prosecute our enemies. With only 12 squadrons we might be able to put up a good defense in the Atlantic, but we would have to recall every plane and crew from the Pacific to make the effort and abandon the VP airborne contribution to ASW. If the threat were in the Pacific, all 12 squadrons couldn’t cut it supporting forward deployed surface forces as well as sweeping shipping lanes and also providing coastal surveillance to Hawaii and the west coast.

Our timid “leaders” have let us down by allowing VP ASW to atrophy to what we have left today.

I note today in the snooz – heh – that a throwback technology was and is being monitored.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/us-tracking-large-chinese-spy-221300297.html

Aside from these ignorant comments;

“Retired Col. Steve Ganyard, an ABC News contributor, said the balloon appeared to be a standard research vessel — which would mean it was unpowered and drifted with the jet stream.”

“China intentionally deploying a reconnaissance balloon over the U.S. would be highly provocative, with little value, Ganyard said, noting that Chinese satellites are able to collect information in a similar manner.”

in which the “worthy” Colonel is talking out his ass, as most of them do when paid by the snooz, there is no limit to the efforts other couhtries will go to for info collection, because they do not like us, hate us, or consider us weak, from their political bias, but they do not consider America is not the government. And some of us are not weak.