Dragon1-1

The Lima for me as well. Steam gauges FTW. Besides, the Black Hawk Down bird was a Lima. That should be reason enough to decide the matter.

You'll see a lot of that in DCS. It simulates the aircraft with all their quirks, and that involves all the crocks and bad design decisions made by the designers of the real aircraft. In this case, though, it's more or a limitation of the aircraft's weapon control systems. Remember, no computers in those days, everything was simple wires and switches.

Also, power consumption, particularly in relation to how many wires they've got. I sure hope they'd seen enough melted connectors from out of the other team to make sure not to go down the same path...

One reason why it's a waste of time to ask AI anything. Rb71 is the Skyflash, Viggen never carried the US version of Sparrow. I wish people would stop posting AI "answers", because they'll come up in search results.

It could be, there's no real standard here. Most manuals don't include RCS. MiG-21 is rather tiny, and much of the turbine disk is obscured by the cone (although it's radar-transparent because the MiG's own radar is in there, so it doesn't help as much as you'd think), so it could be on the low end.

It is. The other civilian sim is much bigger than DCS is, and it's not even the only one out there. For most people flying is apparently daunting enough, fighting doesn't even enter into it.

That's because you were flying behind him. On a jet, rear aspect shots generally won't chase flares, at least the way DCS models this. This is something you'd see before the merge, or while trying for a high aspect shot, or while attacking helicopters. I've had that happen yesterday while trying to splash a Hind. It spammed flares, and I could see the diamond get pulled off before launching when I uncaged, despite a good radar lock. Helos are harder targets for heaters in first place, so flares work much better for them.

If you can't fly a stable formation, you can't refuel, so start with that. I did AAR with a CH stick with a giant deadzone in the middle and no curves. A better stick will make it easier, but it's not necessary. In fact, try getting rid of the curves first, see if it's better then. There's no such thing as a perfect trim, but you can get close. If you release the stick, you should be able to fly smoothly alongside the tanker for at least a few moments. You'll never AAR with a constant force on the stick (this is also critical to landing taildraggers, cancel out that stick force). Closure is usually hard part. Remember, throttle movements need to be tiny, and it's a good technique to push it a little, then pull it back before you see your speed change. That way, you'll only accelerate a little. You also need to pull throttle before you actually plug, in order to stop comfortably within the zone. This is from a guy who regularly AARs in the Tomcat (a completely analog swing-wing jet, and I do it with wings in auto, no sweat). The A-10 is a lot more gentle and forgiving than that. I fly in VR, so getting a sight picture is easier there thanks to actual depth perception, but I also refueled the Viper on a flat screen in another sim, with said CH gear. It's all about figuring out how to operate you specific stick and throttle in order to keep the aircraft within the box. BTW, another taildragger tip, keep the stick held back after landing. Should stop ground loops. If this makes you lift off, you're coming in too fast.

Just finished the first one, currently doing the second. So far it worked, nothing showstopping. That said, the custom ATC can't actually manage the traffic, which can cause problems. A B-1 crashed into be after an otherwise successful mission, it literally landed on top of me. While I can understand, that it's difficult to prevent under the current ATC constraints, it remains a problem. A solution would be to set the mission as complete after landing, regardless of whether you actually taxi to the dearm area. Reflected does it that way.

Because in DCS, the values are largely arbitrary and don't appear to be based on anything in particular. In any case, radar detection range seldom causes a problem in DCS, in that it seems to universally exceed effective weapon range.

MS has killed it some time ago, I killed the updates in response (I use an external AV which updates independently). That's the only way of being sure WMR won't suddenly quit. There might exist a hack to bring it back, I think someone figured that out.

In fact, we already do have some WWII and post-war Soviet flak in core. They're still relevant, and lethal, if you stray into their WEZ. Nothing like a 5th generation stealth fighter being brought down by unguided, largely unaimed WWII-style flak shootbox (I don't think we can actually set one up yet, but we should. IRL, most flak isn't fired at anything in particular).

I'd rather not. Those assets should be in the core, because 1). We don't have a WWII Eastern Front map. 2). They're perfectly accurate for our modern maps. A large chunk of OP's list is still in service in various 3rd world countries and irregular forces. The WWII Assets Pack should only cover stuff that didn't survive into modern day (Six Day War could be a cutoff point).

We always need temporal and geographical accuracy. Of course, right now, rationale for both I-16 and La-7 is thin, with Korea being the closest thing that would make the La-7 anywhere near relevant. Remember that the I-16, as fun as it might be, is not very popular.

Just a heads up, in Reforger M7, Jester still can't do IFF properly. And only in that mission. He declares everything as friendlies, which is problematic, since there's a lot of actual friendlies flying around. Also, it makes it impossible to do a multi target pass with Phoenixes, though with AWACS DL it's possible to IFF contacts that way, then you can lock and fire manually.

Also, those brevity codes are for USAF and USN (yeah, right, "multiservice", right up until you need to report an aspect in degrees...). The Apache is an Army helo, and they use a different terminology in some places.

A nice thing is that Jester V2 will likely come with the crew chief menu, too, like on the Phantom. Perhaps then they'll finally implement the OBC and EMER GEN check, in addition to both Jester and crew chief coordinating with various other checks like lights or control surfaces. One thing I'd like it to be able to do is coordinate an intercept using a canned procedure. IRL, it's the RIO who's responsible for talking the pilot through the BVR fight.

Being able to provide recon data on demand is useful, but SAMs had gotten too good for a plane to be able to do that. There was an idea to make it a drone instead, but nothing came of it.

Yeah, longwave radio bends around mountains, UHF and VHF (so pretty much all aircraft comms) does not. If you ever tried to listen to the car radio while driving through mountains, you might have noticed terrible reception in some spots (unless you were listening to an oldtimey AM station, which doesn't have this problem).

TBH, you'd most likely be jumping between HB and ED or RAZBAM, the latter of which is notable for having... issues. I heard Aerges is pretty good with their Mirage F-1, though, I don't have it so I don't know if it's quite HB quality, but it's quite pretty. There's Magnitude 3, but they only have the MiG-21, which is old and which they didn't do a great job at updating, being completely preoccupied with (something of a vaporware) Corsair. While ED modules can be quite mixed bag, many of them are old Belsimtek releases. Modern ED modules, while lacking some of HB's more innovative features, would not be that hard to bring up to that standard. As for Deka, the Jeff is an ED-level module.

Perhaps more relevant would be the Cessna 170, aka. O-1 Birddog: What with Vietnam era aircraft starting to trickle in. The O-1 was actually modified from the 170 somewhat, particularly the cabin shape, but they were otherwise similar, and the Birddog was a key FAC aircraft back in the day.

Yeah, I think they had the touchscreen UFC, but that was it. 90% avionics commonality. While structurally and aerodynamically, it is a new aircraft, the cockpit and avionics changes were relatively minor, at least at first. That's not a bad thing. IMO, a Block I Superbug would have a lot of appeal, especially since it'd not require a lot of retraining from the Legacy, at least when it comes to avionics.

Yeah, most of them Bradleys, the shortcomings of which had been well documented by then. Friendly fire also factored in, US lost as many soldiers to accidents as it did to enemy action. Those problems had all been fixed, more or less, by the time of OIF. The point is, it's all about who's driving the vehicle. Be it Abrams or Eurofighter, it's essential to use both realistic exercises and theoretical instruction, to have it consistently applied across the entire force and to appoint officers who are concerned with delivering results on the battlefield, not playing office politics. One of Ukraine's fundamental problems is inconsistent quality of their forces. You've got some good units, you've got some crap ones, all mixed together and usually, the enemy figures out which is which before their commanders do. \ The point was, while the F-35 may approach the "I win button" level, the Eurofighter won't. The pilot is more important than the aircraft itself.

Our Legacy Hornet's avionics are almost identical to those that went into early block Superbugs. In fact, they're probably more fitting the Super Hornet than with the Legacy, which, if we were to have a "representative" version, would have the Nite Hawk TGP and monochromatic MFDs. I don't know about AdA (in fact, they seemed happy to help with the Mirage), but Dassault has a reputation for being notoriously difficult to work with. They took down, amidst much drama, a Rafale mod for one of the older civilian sims.

This sounds nice, but that experience, and this training, are both being wasted, mostly for political reasons. It doesn't filter through to the West very well (which is why our politicians are so eager to sing Zelensky's praises), but actual Ukrainians know very well what's going on. There are reports on the problems within Ukrainian military in Western press, but they're not particularly common, nobody wants to sound like a pro-Russian defeatist, after all. For instance, look up what they did to that French-trained combined arms battalion they got a while ago. That sort of thing seems to happens to much of the NATO-style training they receive. Also, you're forgetting the tank action that happened in ODS (even if it ultimately was a turkey shoot), and while we're at it, that there wasn't a whole lot of tank warfare in 'Nam. ODS and OIF veterans are still very much around.