ASAP

Big airplanes and fighters work that totally different with regards to fuel planning. A tanker can take off, fly to an area, give gas, and fly for hours on end, come home and land, all without a full tank. They also know what altitude they will be at and can accurately calculate fuel burn rates. Fighters have to take off, drive to a MOA, which are rarely right over the base, and then fight until bingo, which will invovle being in max a lot. If they are going to get worthwhile training they need all the gas they can get. I could be wrong, but I thought they have other forms of explosion suppression materials in the wing tanks, so I wouldn't think it would be a big deal. Otherwise they'd have to take off and fly around for quite a while before they could go kill something. That just doesn't sound very "attack pilot" to me.

I’m pretty sure it’s generally full fuel every time. Unless your at a base at high altitude and it’s super hot outside and takeoff distance starts to become a factor. the jet is designed to be able to fight with a full tank. The only thing carrying less fuel would buy them is less training time. big exception is the demo team. There’s a video they put out where right after takeoff he says he’s only got like 1800 lbs of fuel total which explains how he can whip the jet around like he does during the demo.

Sorry, I'm not the best artist in the world. Flight lead is blue, wingman is red (normally reserved for the bad guy I guess, but my kids stole my markers, so this is what I got). Based on what was written above, here is how I interpret that and would draw it out. I'm making assumption that this is done from flying in a line abreast formation. 1) They are flying straight ahead in line abreast when the lead calls "circle". 2) Lead starts an aggressive turn into WM turning inside the formation, WM drives straight ahead and watches FL at this point (lines and angles are not exactly to scale looking at it now FL's line 2 should have overturned another 45 degrees or so). 3) once FL's nose passes through the WM, the WM starts a much gentler turn toward the FL. When WM starts his turn, the FL reverses his own turn back toward his wingman (FL would delay reversing his turn and/or play out how hard he is turning to set the spacing between the two in the circle.) 4) Now FL and WM have started their circle, they flow out to the correct spacing. 5) Circle is established, now they can get a rotating 360 degree lookout so a mig can't sneak up on one without being threatened by the other. (right image)

No worries mate. I can see how people read my comments and think I’m trying to be confrontational sometimes. I’m just another guy who really likes this game and I’m a bit of an A-10 enthusiast. I’m never trying to argue, I’m just excited to discuss a topic I find really fascinating. I wish I could fly them myself. Instead I play this game, I do a lot of reading and have the pleasure of having a few A-10 pilot friends. The only point I was trying to make is that the pilots make sure they take things like this TGP jump issue (if it’s accurately modeled) into account and know how to safely use their weapons without this impacting things. Sometimes it seems like engineers give the military less than perfect equipment, but adapting and overcoming those challenges is kind of the military’s whole thing.

Interesting, never noticed that before. I read the 80% thing, and I never bothered to look at the brakes in a dive. I'll eat my humble pie on that one. I have no idea if the game is accurate or what I read is. I agree. I would definitly think its a rare exception to the rule. My understanding is when pilots do any kind of diving deliveries its not just "point your nose at the ground and let 'er rip" They are actually trying to meet some specific parameters for dive angle and airspeed for lots of reason (safety is one of the big ones) and being on the right bomb triangle. Speed brakes would only be used if you are way above speed and trying avoid being too fast.

I've been in the military for the last 17 years. Not that it is at all relevant to the topic of the TGP's gimbal unwind. Like this quote below ago that I was responding to? I get it, your very tough. This is a video game that is a simulation of a real world airplane. We are in a forum where people discuss that airplane and how it flies in the game and in real life. If you are this irritated by discussions of what airplanes do in "real life" Don't post an opinion about what they do in "real life" and get upset if someone wants to discuss it.

Pilots are also trained to know the characteristics and behavior of their targeting pods. This isn't a problem in real life because they use real world tactics that account for this kind of stuff. Its only an issue for DCS users because we don't know or use real world tactics.

Pretty sure that's not true. The speed brake is limited to 80% in flight and 100% on the ground. The wing is plenty strong enough to withstand the stress. I've heard somewhere that the speed brake will be forced closed, or you cannot open them if you are going at extremely high speeds close to the barber pole, but that's because of aerodynamic force overcoming hydraulic pressure available. Can't find a source that states that anywhere, so feel free to believe it or not. But I'm fairly certain there's no in between limits based on airspeed , its purely "is there weight on wheels or not" with how much the jet will try to open them. I've heard there are times when they would open the boards. when doing high angle guns passes they can get going very fast, at least cracking the boards open isn't unheard of.

For the same reason you don’t have one switch that turns on every piece of electronics in your house all at once. You want to be able to manually decide what you want to turn on and off. Also if something breaks you want to be able to isolate it and turn it off without causing problems. The kind of automation you are talking about comes with a lot of interconnection that makes things more complicated, costly, and more difficult to troubleshoot. Also it makes maintenance on the jet a lot easier which means it can be done faster which means the jets can fly more missions which means they can kill more stuff. That is very important in war. More modern doesn’t always mean more complex and automated.

My understanding is that they are taking off with full gas unless the weight is a factor for a safe takeoff. If they have to offload fuel they’d hook a fuel truck up to the single point refueling port and offload fuel.

I was able to find a copy of the A-10 dash 1 online. Not allowed to repost it here, but the first line of the section on servicing has a note that says to refuel the tanks immediately after flight to the max extent possible to avoid the issue of water condensation. The Air Force does routinely refuel the jets after flight. I’m sure it’s a very overly conservative precaution. also this solution is obviously only practical for small airplanes that always take off with a full tank of gas. It obviously wouldn’t make any sense to do this with an airliner. That’d use so much fuel and also the airplane would be well over max weight in many configurations. I’m sure they solve the problem a different way for jets that sit around and don’t fly for long periods of time.

True. I would imagine the fuel trucks and equipment probably have some inspection schedule or something to minimize that risk. Immediate refueling is just one way to help mitigate the risk, not the end all be all. I remember reading there were numerous F-86 crashes in the Korean War because of water contamination in the fuel trucks but I can’t remember specifics and my google search is coming up empty *shrug*.

Not sure how it is in other Services but the Air Force have POL guys (petroleum, oil, lubricants) that have to take samples from all the fuel tanks and analyze samples taken from the jet on a regular schedule to make sure the fuel is good to go, that way the pilot can focus on killing bad guys. To be clear I have no idea how quickly water contamination would be an issue in the A-10 (if at all) or any other jet, or how often the fuel gets sampled. I have just always heard that as a general best practice for any aircraft is to leave it with the tanks full.

because when fuel leaves the tank it is replaced by air. Even with tank inerting there is some amount of water vapor that is in the air. When gasses get colder they can hold less water molecules and they condense. That’s certainly not the only reason to keep tanks filled. Overall convenience for the maintenance squadron and having he jet ready for the next go is also a big reason. here’s a link to a website where you can read all about fuel contamination. (https://www.aircraftsystemstech.com/2017/04/aircraft-fuel-system-servicing.html#:~:text=The water vapor in the vapor space above,However%2C time is required for this to happen.)In the military this is more an issue for POL guys and maintenance to worry about than line pilots. Most civilian guys starting out in small planes are used to regularly checking the fuel sumps pre flight specificity looking for water and other contaminants. here is the relevant paragraph from that link if you don’t feel like clicking on. The bold font for emphasis is my own: “water can enter a fuel system via condensation. The water vapor in the vapor space above the liquid fuel in a fuel tank condenses when the temperature changes. It normally sinks to the bottom of the fuel tank into the sump where it can be drained off before flight. [Figure 1] However, time is required for this to happen. On some aircraft, a large amount of fuel needs to be drained before settled water reaches the drain valve. Awareness of this type of sump idiosyncrasy for a particular aircraft is important. The condition of the fuel and recent fueling practices need to be considered and are equally important. If the aircraft has been flown often and filled immediately after flight, there is little reason to suspect water contamination beyond what would be exposed during a routine sumping.An aircraft that has sat for a long period of time with partially full fuel tanks is a cause of concern” To be fair a military pilot wouldn’t check this. The crew chief and fuels guys worry about all this. I’d wager airline pilots also aren’t taking their own fuel samples either

It’s a feature (although not tremendously useful if you ask me). You can put a steerpoint number in there and it will use that coordinate when you drop IFFCC SPI. Or you can just leave it at the default value of 9999 and drop it steerpoint SPI on the exact same coordinates. Plus now you can use the weapon profile on any target vs just one.

Yeah I tried to find a breakdown but that was the best I could find. I wonder if the Air Force hasn’t bothered to do any more testing because the gun proved itself against the Iraqi tanks so well that no further testing was necessary.

https://www.2951clss-gulfwar.com/statistics.htm#:~:text=Iraq Assets Destroyed by A-10's During,the Gulf War 987 tanks destroyed 987 tanks pretty sure it was mostly maverick and gun kills I think A-10s were mostly dumb bombs still

Yeah I bet dive angle and open-fire ranges and burst length really matter and make a huge difference in your chances of killing a tank Also, A-10s killed a lot of Iraqi tanks with the gun back in the gulf war, so there’s that.

On the bright side it’s over very very fast. Possibly, but considering the A-10 and the DU API round was designed to kill main battle tanks, and we are talking about penetrating thick armor I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that the word tank here is referring to MBTs. Armor also means IFVs and APCs but In every conversation I’ve ever had in the Air Force “tank” is a general term for MBTs. Fuel tanks would normally be called POL, fuel trucks, etc…

my understanding is the API is still A very effective kill mechanism against modern tanks. from everything I’ve read/heard it only takes one round penetrating even modern armor to achieve a kill. They fire longer bursts to get bullet density to basically ensure they get good penetration since some of the rounds will probably ricochet. ERA as I understand it is more geared toward defeating explosively formed projectiles from shaped charges. API rounds don’t work like that. Here’s an interesting article I found about it. the API rounds are pretty grotesquely lethal to tanks apparently. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/a-10-warthog-armor-piercing-incendiary-rounds/

A JFO: "provides targeting information in support of CAS; and performs terminal guidance operations (TGO). JFOs cannot perform terminal attack control of CAS missions and do not replace a qualified JTAC/forward air controller (airborne) (FAC[A]). A JFO is allowed to brief a CAS 9-line, but you still need the JTAC to say the words cleared hot and authorize weapons release. It makes sense what EricJ's saying because the JFO is used in a situation when a JTAC would not be able to see the target himself and relies on a JFO to provide the information to a fighter. The JFO isn't allowed to clear an aircraft hot, and if the JTAC could see both the fighter and a target there would be no need for a JFO. That does not mean that a JTAC is in any way restricted from doing type 1/2/3 controlls. From what I understand they want to be as little restrictive as possible, which usually leads to type 2 controls because type 3 has been too unrestrictive for the type of wars we've been fighting the last 2 decades. Based on the video this could have been either a type 1/2. The pause in giving the pilot clearance after he called in suggests to me that it might have been a type 1 because the JTAC delayed to analyze the fighters nose position. But it could have also been the JTAC being slow to respond because he was taking enemy fire. I'd call that unassessable. It's not a request. Its also explicitly stated in the JPUB that giving a direction like "south to north" is still a restriction. It means 360 +-45 degrees. Any time a cardinal direction is passed its that direction +- 45 so its very specific, just a big window and "less restrictive" for the aircrew. Less restrictive means that it is just easier for the pilots and they don't have to try and hit a 10 degree heading or anything. It does not mean its not a restriction though. The only time it would be a recommendation is if the JTAC says something like "all final attack directions approved, recommend ____" All services have JTACS. JTAC is a qualification, not a branch specific role. The majority of JTACS that conventional army guys work with are probably Air Force though because that's the deal between the services. But tons of special forces guys of all branches get JTAC qualified. Marines most the time will have their own JTACS. Its not that the JFO isnt' trusted or that there is a negative view of them, and has nothing to do with an inter service rivalry. Its just they are not trained to the same standard and haven't done the same training and don't have the qualifications. Thats a DOD wide regulation. It's just about who's able to give the control. JFOs can't say cleared hot. For a type 1 the person saying cleared hot needs eyes on the target and fighter. if the the JTAC is there and meets both those criteria, the JFO isn't necessary. The JFO is the method by which the JTAC has the requisit target information and situational awareness to clear a fighter hot. Even for a type 2 the pilot cannot drop or shoot without a cleared hot call. Even if the JFO passes the 9 line the pilot is still going to call IN and a JTAC would call cleared hot.

Yeah I totally thought the same thing the first time I heard all friendlies are to the north. After watching the rest of the video it was a lot less concerning. He never says what they are north of though, and he throws it out as the pilot says he’s visual the friendly position and the target. Based on context I think he meant all friendlies are north of his (the jtacs) position that the pilot called visual on. Either way it wasn’t very clear or situational awareness enhancing comm for us armchair quarterbacks watching after the fact. But based on the fact that the friendly position was marked to the west of the target it makes the most sense. the easy thing to forget is that these guys had probably been flying overhead and talking to these guys for a while and were probably supporting their operation and understood where everyone was. The pilot probably didn’t query the JTAC after he said it because he understood what they meant, knew they were safely out of the way and it wouldn’t be a factor. If we had the full 9 line along with ground commanders intent remarks and restrictions this whole thing would probably be a lot more clear cut.

I'm pretty sure it would melt my graphics card, but this would be awesome. I want.

Well I'm not sure where that assertion comes from. The risk estimate distance for the gun is about a third the size of a JDAM, and I've seen A-10's shooting out at the range from 500 feet away. They are extremely percise. every round within about 30 feet of the target, most of them struck the vehicle they were aiming at. That vs a 500 lb with significant blast and fragmentation effects... Whatever, danger close numbers speak for themselves on that one. Whats "this" refering to exactly? That's a strange thing to doubt. The pilot had the steerpoint called up for a reason. Presumably the JTAC passed his grids. No A-10 pilot that could pass a checkride would not at least plot that out. That would mean he could also see where they are on the TAD. Plus he had visual on the friendlies, as he stated multiple times throughout the video, so even if the steerpoint is off (unlikely), it doesn't matter as long as the pilot was visual friendlies and able to make sure he had a clear line of fire and he was complying with the JTACs run in restrictions. The JTAC most assuredly does give his distance and direction from the target in the CAS 9-line brief which happened before the video, its a requirement. The video picks up as they are doing target correlation, which is a few steps further down the timeline after the pilot was already briefed on the target and given attack remarks and restrictions. The pilot was visual the friendlies and they were visual the A-10. Also there are more than 4 directions in real life. North does not mean they were 360 degrees north of the target. In CAS Its generally accepted that cardinal directions are +- 45 degrees. But again the pilot had eyes on both the target and friendlies, and was able to determine there was no danger to the ground party. The JTAC also had eyes on the aircraft and target and came to the same conclusion. Both JTACS and A-10 pilots are very very familiar with the capabilities and limitations of gun, and all that is weighed in the weaponeering decision. The ground commander also allowed the JTAC to call in that strike and the JTAC was probably talking to the ground commander as it was happening. Lots of people had a chance to step in if they saw a problem and nobody did. Saying the word "north" alone doesn't make anything unsafe. Your assertion here seems to be predicated on the idea that everyone here is braindead. The pilot obviously wont point directly and friendlies on a strafe pass. The pilot absolutley cannot change the run in without the JTACs coordination. He asked the JTAC if he (and by extension the ground commander) wanted to change anything and the response was do the same thing again. So clearly the ground commander, JTAC, and two pilots all disagreed with your assessment that it was unneccessarily risky.

LOL. Did we watch the same video? Luck had absolutley nothing to do with it. Superior training, discipline, and teamwork kept the friendlies safe. Man I love these forums. CAS pilots are not hillbillies with shotguns shooting at anything that moves. Those are very experienced pilots working with a very experienced JTAC following strict JP 3.09-3 procedures, and have done their due diligence to make sure they don't shoot the wrong guys. The pilot does an excellent job of pumping the breaks and methodically identifying where the target is and doesn't let his wingman shoot on the first pass becasue the wingman doesn't have high enough situational awareness. Pointing guns at friendly forces is bad. Never said it wasn't. What I'm saying is that is very clearly not what happened in that video. Obviously a steerpoint isn't going to prevent weapons effects on the friendlies. I pointed it out because it shows the pilots knew exactly where the friendly forces were when he employed. Since we clearly had very different takeaways from the video... I'd like to point out a few things: At 28 seconds into the video he fly's up the river valley and says "I'm visual you, I'm in for a low pass show of force. I have white smoke in sight (The JTAC said the enemy is marked by smoke a few seconds earlier), confirm that's the enemy" While doing this you can see that steerpoint container which is labled "FRND" is on the west side of the river about a half mile from the white smoke (bad guys) which is visible on the east side of the river. He's on a 355 heading which is roughly his attack direction later. you can see that the friendlies are west-north-west of the bad guys, well clear of any strafe fan ricochet pattern. The JTAC responds "That's the enemy PUT ROUNDS ON THAT TARGET NOW" The pilot then says "copy I'm repositioning" and sets up for a directly south to north run in after having just established that the friendlies are well clear to the west along that attack axis. Also indicating that is probably the run in direction the JTAC told him he wants when he passed the 9 line (I'm making an assumption because you never here the 9 line passed). He then calls "HAWG 01 is friendlies in sight, building in sight south to north run in, in hot" Then he rolls in, calls "IN" again and gets cleared hot. Here's why that is important: the "IN" call means means they were using TYPE 1 or 2 control, and the delay in the JTACS response probably means that the JTAC didnt' clear him immediatley because he was doing his job and analyzing the A-10's nose position to make sure he wasn't pointed at friendlies. If the A-10 was pointed at them the JTAC would have spoken up and stopped the attack. When the A-10 shoots you can see that the good guys are so far west of that river that runs between good and bad guys that they are well outside of the A-10's HUD. Again the A-10 pilot knows this. The wingman didn't see where the bad guys were so the flight lead told him to cover and wouldn't let him shoot because he didn't have the required level of SA. The JTAC was so comfortable with the run in direction that both he and the pilot picked that he said "GUNS GOOD" and subsequently approved him to use the exact same run in direction even after the pilot says "Confirm you want another south to north run in?". to which he respons "good copy south to north run in" Here's a screen shot from the video showing the relationship between friendly forces and the target. Notice how they friendly's are slightly north but mostly west of the target. Why did the JTAC say all forces to the north? I don't know, maybe he was referencing a different reference point that he was north of other than the target. Maybe he mixed up directions while talking on the radio in the middle of a fire fight. I'd bet the 9 line restrictions probably sounded something like "make final attack heading south to north or north to south, keep all weapons effects east of the river" or "north to south, don't over fly or point at friendlies." Also the 9 line has a line that says where the nearest friendlies are in relation to the target. The utmost care was taken to protect friendlies. This got long winded... my point is... This is not a video of anyone doing anything reckless or dangerous to friendly forces. It was skill and training that keep the guys on the ground safe not luck. This is a perfect example of a highly trained pilot working with an expert JTAC to dispense very percise destruction on enemy forces and saving the guy on the ground. The dude probably got a well deserved air medal for it.