Fromthedeep

As far as I'm aware, this is a very complicated topic. IRL there are certain calculations that have to be done to compensate for the wind and it also relies on the host aircraft having a proper wind model and that it compensates during the designation.

You win some and you lose some. Anything with contrast lock, TGPs, coordinate generations, lasers and ground radars are much better than in real life.

The avionics are not necessarily going to 100% reflect how fleet jets operate or what their TTPs are. There can be a lot of superfluous features or things that may sound nice to an engineer but it doesn't actually work out in practice. With that being said, TOO can be used but realistically speaking it has very limited use. If you're going up against any kind of moving targets, conventional JDAMs are not going to be useful. If you're going up against any kind of static target, a factory, a radar site, a fuel depot, a bunker or whatever else, you'll know where it is in advance. You can get much better coordinates through the intel apparatus than you'd get with ownship sensors. The only situation in which you'd probably use this feature is CAS. The issue however is when using onboard sensors to designate for a JDAM, the coordinates will only be accurate in certain conditions. No matter the jet, you can't willy nilly designate something and expect to get useful coordinates. If you're using the TGP, you'll have to adhere to specific guidelines and you'd only designate at a certain range, altitude and with a specified angle looking at the target. If you're outside of these parameters and you designate an apartment complex at 40 nautical miles at 30k feet with a few degrees of look down angle, I can guarantee you that you won't get accurate coordinates for the object you want to hit. In a CAS wheel, close in with an autotrack and laser ranging, I can see it working out. But if the coordinates given by the JTAC are more accurate, even in this situation it'd be better to punch them in and drop it in PP. Even guessing at classified systems can be very problematic because the people who would investigate the issue do have the ability to check out how the real system is supposed to work. And then it's on you to prove that you didn't use illegally obtained material when modelling the system. How do you prove a negative? That's the issue and that's exactly why ED refuses to even guess at sensitive systems, like the IFF or electronic warfare capabilities. Things change really quickly if you're just Joe Schmoe talking about things on Reddit and if you're an international military contractor with hundreds of employees selling actual products. The other big issue is that info on the JDAM in the Hornet is in fact available and if you model it in an accurate way, it's very simple to assume that illegal material was used to model the system.

ACLS isn't used as an autoland but it's the definitive instrument landing system during Case 3 recoveries? Lower minima, reliable data during bad weather operations or pitching deck landings and so on. Mode 1 is extremely rarely used while Mode 2 is used virtually all the time unless there's some kind of malfunction in the system.

There are light clear, highly detailed and very well written documents that describe exactly how the JDAM works in the Hornet. It's also described that the reason why TOO isn't used doctrinally has nothing to do with the avionics or implementation but rather the fact that on board sensors are very limited when it comes to generate coordinates without too high of a TLE. An ATFLIR autotrack with lazing at low slant range and high grazing angles is the only authorized way to do this accurately. But yes, the initial implementation was correct, both TOO targets can be saved to the desired weapon and undesignate doesn't remove the coordinates. Using JDAMs in TOO mode is less of a thing in real life because the vast majority of targets that an aircraft would employ weapons against are fixed buildings and the US has a good enough intelligence apparatus to obtain mensurated coordinates that allow a low enough TLE to achieve the desired weapon effects. What I suspect is that this was changed on purpose to be inaccurate so that ED can avoid the accusation of using illegally obtained material to simulate the Hornet. Same thing was said about MSI, same thing was said about EOM mode, the RWR functionality, same deal with the flight model and so on. The Hornet is a sensitive, classified aircraft where many systems are changed in game to avoid getting into confidentiality issues.

No one has them outside of the military, they are still classified. Wags talked about it on the fighter pilot podcast and specifically mentioned that the Hornet's flight model doesn't even use all the publically available data because the military told them to do so (https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/gkj3dn/with_the_a10cii_in_the_works_i_hope_ed_will_take/fqvwkj0/), let alone real EM charts.

I've played around with it a little bit more and the STT RAID does indeed show two L&S targets at the same time. This is in line with the description of the behaviour in the document, so I strongly suspect that this SAM mode is in fact the same thing as STT RAID.

So, this stuff is obviously not perfectly documented, but this is how I believe functions currently. Raid assessment (the details are available online) is using some radar magic to change the actual radar processing and try to break out if there are multiple returns near one of the targets. (Helps break out a formation for example). In contrast, EXP mode doesn't do anything to the radar or the mission computer track files and it simply zooms in on the display. The APG-73 has a few different type of raid modes. 1.) SCAN RAID: This is available in TWS if you have an L&S designated, and it concentrates on the L&S with a 10nm zoomed in area at 22 degrees of azimuth. If you designate a different L&S, you move the raid area. You can enable it with the SCAN RAID/FOV/HARM button on the throttle. 2.) 1LOOK RAID: This is an automatic function when you're in STT, it's available when boxed, and it looks for targets near the STT track and produces trackfiles for them. 3.) SAM mode: I unfortunately don't know for sure what this does, the documentation I have doesn't describe its functionality, other than noting that it's an option for RAID assessment in STT. Now, so far this is stuff that I'm reasonably certain to be correct. My speculation is that when you press the raid button in STT, you go to the 'STT raid mode', now calling this SAM mode would make sense, since this has a TWS scanning function interleaved with an STT tracking function. I believe that when using this function, you can have an 'STT' track on two different targets at least and you can have multiple L&S designated at the same time(based on the document), but I'm not entirely sure. The functionality of this mode in DCS seems to be fairly finnicky at the moment, when I was testing it sometimes it messed up my radar and I had to reset, so further testing is definitely required.

TA is terrain avoidance, one of the currently unimplemented radar modes.

I'm really not trying to start conspiracy theories but is it possible that the original face melter was supposed to be something else, something completely new that was cancelled or indefinitely postponed for whatever reason and they officially announced the Apache that we knew was coming all along? Considering how openly Wags and Katia talked about the Apache before and how it was teased like a normal module it just seems strange to me that it was a 'secret' all along. I'm really glad to have it but I was expecting a surprise, something we haven't even heard of before. And a few months ago Katia said on Hoggit that she didn't want to talk about the brain melter yet in case it gets cancelled and it would seem like a broken promise and ED don't want that. But at that point Wags had already confirmed that the Apache is a when, not an if.

I really like the Apache but I've been following this thread for almost a year now and Nineline very often suggested on Hoggit that the new module was going to be something completely new that was never mentioned for DCS. From Katia's interview and Wags' statements, we already knew that an Apache is going to come eventually so I don't really understand why it was hyped this much.