Dudikoff

Cool, glad to see it's not that the first variant is not that far away from release. Looking forward to it.

I like what I see, but IMHO it's rather strange there's no option to mount them at the end of the throttle base vertically (e.g. via some brackets that would attach to the base). Especially since they have planned to make these while they were still finishing the throttle design.

It won't be a paper launch, the new Ryzen 5XXX CPUs are already in stock in shops in my country (unlike e.g. Nvidia 3080).

You should try with Tor or maybe Tunguska land units against Mavericks. They are too small for the manual ZU-23s and Shilka to track and engage it.

I think it was more of a doctrinal issue where the major decisions are made by the controllers on the ground, rather than the pilots. Their Armed Forces on the whole followed such inflexible organization. They had AWACS since 60s, but IIRC their main role was to cover the Northern/Eastern approaches where the radar coverage had large gaps due to the vast areas and cold climate.

It theory yes, in practice it's not that simple perhaps as the F-111 was pretty unreliable in general. In the bombing of Libya in 1986, of the nine F-111s assigned to strike one of the targets, only three made the strike, one of them actually attacking some wrong target a mile off by mistake (and causing significant collateral damage). Of the other six, one went the wrong way after hitting the tanker, 4 aborted due to malfunctions and one crashed (or was shot down). The other two strike groups (of 3 and 6 F-111s respectfully) did better with only one aborting due to TFR malfunction. On the other hand, the two strike groups of six A-6Es each struck their assigned targets (one of which was a military airport) without any losses or malfunctions apparently.

I do mean 9.12 which supposedly started entering service in 1982. But, the first 250 produced units were different with ventral fins and no chaff/flare dispensers among some other smaller differences. As I wrote in my post, F-16C Block 25 supposedly started entering service since September 1984 so it's a closer match to a later production standard 9.12. It still doesn't have BVR weapons, but it has a better radar, better fuel fraction (meaning it might actually have some fuel for a dogfight unlike the 9.12) and those AIM-9Ms were nothing to sneeze at.

To be fair, the closer contemporary of the MiG-29 we have in DCS (i.e. not early production 9.12) would be the F-16C. At least Block 25 (which started entering service from late 1984), but F-16C Block 30/32 (1987) and Block 40/42 (1988 ) are not that far off, either.

It would be cool if they could get enough info on Su-27M to make it (some were produced and tested so I guess some manuals exist somewhere). It has a more modern N011 radar with some A2G radar modes, I guess it would have had R-77 support, etc. while at the same time it never entered service and its tech is more or less completely outdated.

The NM variant finally omitted it IIRC, but it looks pretty ugly without it IMHO.

Yes, you are correct, my mistake, though technically that's BAE APKWS II. The original APKWS was using a de-roll bearing to stabilize the sensor.

The Hydra rocket doesn't need stabilization as its trajectory is already achieved with fins and rotation. The only part you need to stabilize for the APKWS is the seeker head. It's the same principle as the bomb, actually, it's just that having a partly powered weapon allows you a bigger engagement envelope (e.g. from low altitudes). Regarding the trajectory, the APKWS missile locks on after launch so the Hydra rocket flies its normal powered ballistic trajectory and then engages the seeker in the final descending stage. The bigger issue is how to actually translate the seeker signals to correct the path of a rolling rocket towards the target. Again, this makes no sense. There are no gyros and INS autopilots in these rockets, it defeats the original purpose of reusing cheap rockets. Besides, how do you imagine a cheap sensor would identify a spot to hit from 2 km away if the laser illumination is stopped? It would translate to a huge CEP which is why these weapons don't work this way.

A CW radar? I always thought it was similar to Fagot/Konkurs missiles, like a SACLOS system where the missile has a flare in the back which the system (9K114 Shturm) tracks with an IR tracker, but instead of sending radio correction commands via wire, radio signals are used instead via the characteristic antenna hanged under the nose.

So, let's complicate (and make more expensive) the cheap rocket further to remove the benefit of adding the laser guidance in the first place? Again, that makes no practical sense. I presume the OP simply misunderstood something.

Where did you get the information that the system doesn't require laser designation till the impact? That makes no sense.

I'm all for any 70s-80s airplane type which more often than not had a specific set of roles for which they had their own unique systems, tactics, sometimes even weapons, etc. An Su-25 would seem to be a logical module for ED since they already have the FM done and the 3D model and even the cockpit (as a starting point at least). It has no radar or even a TV screen so its systems should be relatively straightforward to implement and some of that systems code could be partly reused for other Cold War Soviet aircraft presumably (e.g. MiG-29). If they're worried if it would sell enough, they could do some analysis on how many man-hours it would take to make it and set up an Indie Go Go campaign (or whatever) where they'd only start the development if their development cost is covered.

I'd presume it's simply a Polish name for the Mi-24V as IIRC they use letter W to denote the sound usually associated with the letter V.

AMD is announcing new CPU's (higher frequency supposedly) tomorrow and they should be available in two weeks. It might be worth waiting for those even if you insist on buying Intel as it might force them to bring their prices down.

One important factor that you've left out is the resolution you're going to use it for.

Apparently, the AN/APG-68 in Block 25 had this capability (maybe AN/APG-66A as well then?). "Beyond-visible-range capability has been added in the form of a high-PRF track mode to provide continuous-wave (CW) illumination for guidance of the AIM-7 Sparrow semi-active radar homing missile." http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article5.html

F-14D had a more modern cockpit (here shown with PTID which came later on, originally it had TID and LANTIRN image was shown on the smaller MFD IIRC).

According to all of the reviews, the 3080 offers at least an 80% improvement on the performance of the 1080Ti at 4K, sometimes much more (depending on the game). The OP is using the original Vive with a very low resolution where CPU scaling plays a much bigger role. There's still a possibility that something is not correctly setup on his system (e.g. drivers), but in any case if he had a HP Reverb instead, the improvement gains would have been much more significant.

Did you even read the quoted post?

IIRC, the VP was rare as it was the last variant to enter production and Soviet Union went broke at that point. The armament itself was a solid compromise between V and P apparently as the Mi-35M continues to use the same dual 23 mm gun turret configuration.

From reading the update, I got the impression they just meant to say 'component'. Having said that, I think they would be crazy not to sell the dynamic campaign module as an add-on to the base game. It makes perfect sense, IMHO.