OutOnTheOP

This technical document (testing and acceptance standards for the M23 armament subsystem; IE, the door gun pintles) seems to indicate 180 degree traverse limits (or 90 left, 90 right, if you prefer): http://mil-spec.tpub.com/MIL-A/MIL-A-45941/MIL-A-4594100017.htm

I am almost certain the gun mounts do allow 150-160 degrees of traverse; in another thread around here is a link to home-camera footage from a Huey gunship pilot in Vietnam; in at least one of the clips, it shows gunfire hitting right around the area they're engaging with rockets, and he is quite clear that this is from the door gunners leaning out and shooting to the front. Given that it's a gunship model, it would have the proper armament subsystem mounts, rather than bungees.

Funny that everyone saw the new banner and thought "why is the Su27 in space".... when I saw it, I figured it was just supposed to be flying through a snow storm, and that it was nothing more than a seasonally-appropriate banner.

Well... keep in mind that at date of introduction, it gave stand-off from the vast majority of air defense threats, so re-attacks aren't quite so bad as with gravity munitions. I agree that 12 is very excessive, but what WOULD have been handy is the ability to carry one maverick on each of four stations: that way you'd lose the ridiculous drag of the LAU88 launcher, and avoid the problems with scorching the tires and all.

"Home made" plate steel targets. What alloy? What type of heat hardening? I very much doubt it was an armor steel alloy, or properly hardened. Not all steel is created equal. "500 rounds to destroy": ok, 500 rounds into how small an area? I'm guessing less than a square foot? So, in order to get that kind of round density, you'd have to hit the BTR with 12,500 rounds (assuming you're opening fire at a range to ensure hits on the hull, therefore a 5x5 foot dispersion). I've been in a Stryker hit by 7.62x54R AP ammunition fired from a PKM at a range of approximately 350 meters. It did nothing more than chip the paint. It didn't leave a scratch (with the exception of breaking a vision block, from which we recovered a penetrator. The WIT guys said it was a tungsten-core round, but I don't know about all that; I thought Warsaw Pact AP was hardened steel penetrator). The real problem is that in DCS, there is no damage model; only hitpoints. Unfortunately, this means that low-damage, high-rate-of-fire weapons that should bounce off armor instead wear it down. Until DCS implements a proper armor model- even a very basic one that does not take varying thickness or angle of incidence into account- this will be a problem.

You also have to keep in mind the "rules" the MILES system works by: it knows what type of weapon system is firing at it, and doesn't "kill" the target unless the weapon is assessed large enough to kill it. With MILES lasers, you could put infinite 5.56 or 7.62mm into a helicopter, but never kill it. Leaves and obscurants will also stop MILES lasers. Real life doesn't work that way. ...oh, and that's assuming OPFOR even had their sensors mounted. They've been known to not wear them (especially the head sensors for infantry. Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill OPFOR in bunkers, buildings, or fighting positions when they're not wearing their head sensors? #$(*&ing impossible, that's what)

Yeah, except... they don't. Possibly the most abhorrent movie I've ever seen. The Bradley was always designed to be turreted, always designed as an IFV, and never went through the silly bloat that film portrays. The only thing sort-of true is that it took the scout role when the XM800 was cancelled- but didn't make design compromises for the role, and certainly didn't add the turret for that purpose. Also, the main point of it seems to be that "omg, aluminum armor bad!". Problem is, the M113; the vehicle it was replacing... also had aluminum armor. Yet it had never had issues with after-armor effects from the armor material. We're supposed to believe that aluminum is highly flammable, I guess. Protip: iron also burns when in particulate form in the presence of oxygen. And aluminum combustion products are supposedly "highly toxic"? Funny, I don't recall aluminum oxide; a major component of the earth's crust, being terribly toxic...

Problem is, I'm pretty sure the turret crew doesn't have access to the ammunition. At least, I know they don't on the ZSU-23/4, and given that open storage of ammo in crew compartments is avoided to reduce the chance of explosion and fire when hit, I doubt the 2S6 has the ammo where the crew can get to it. I'm not even certain it's belted at all; I think it runs on a linkless feed system (like the GAU-8 ). It doesn't look like a simple gun malfunction to me- that one gun doesn't have the recoil to push the turret around like that. More likely, there was something wrong with the tracking software, it went into automated mode, and THOUGHT it was engaging a moving aerial target. Heck from my experience with portable counterfire radars, they'll track birds- and even generate ballistic solutions for them! *edit* ok, after another look, the radar wasn't turning when it went nuts, so maybe it wasn't tracking anything that way... but it still looks like a fire control malfunction to me

Exactly- it's kind of like how radar and laser are now considered proper English words, and not just acronyms.

It's just one of those words that has taken a different evolution of meaning in English than in German. "Flak" is now an accepted English word: the etymology goes something along the lines that in WW2, pilots were briefed about FlaK in the proper context: German for anti-aircraft cannon. When under attack by AAA, they were "taking flak fire", which became just "taking flak". The US then devised "flak jackets" to defend against the fragmentation from FlaK. Later down the line (starting in Korea, and with widespread dissemination in Vietnam), ground troops were issued fragmentation protective vests, and the name "flak jacket" came to refer to the vests for ground troops as well. I've never heard anyone in the US military refer to fragments (IE, from a grenade) as "flak", though they do still call fragmentation vests "flak jackets". For that matter "taking flak" has become a euphemism for receiving criticism. Maybe it's derived from the similar notion of having an idea "shot down"? :D By the same token, the phrase "shrapnel" these days is used wildly out of the original meaning: it originally referred to a very specific type of projectile, designed by Henry Shrapnel, which was much closer to the modern APERS round than to an HE-Frag projectile. Just roll with it: every language has borrowed words. If you think English is bad about it, you should learn some Japanese. They really go hog wild on re-interpreting words!

Really? You don't think that the common man can identify with being alone, confused, helpless, and terrified? Funny, people that have never been in combat seemed to have no problem identifying with the characters and emotions in Band of Brothers, even though they had never been in a situation vaguely similar. The point of making good film isn't to make a specific situation that the audience knows all about, it's to evoke emotions they can understand and characters they can identify with. The audience doesn't need to know the difference between WEP and MW50, they just need to know that being separated from the group and threatened with mortal danger is terrifying. That type of situation acts on very primal emotions, and is pretty well universal. As to getting old, look at the Band of Brothers series: I could say the same thing about it: "oh, geeze, they run into some Germans and shoot at each other a bunch. Man, that gets SO old after the first time". Only... it doesn't. The reason it stayed fresh was because each episode tended to run a mini-story arc around a very particular theme, emotion, or facet of humanity: an entire episode is devoted to man's unwillingness to kill other men, even when they're trying to kill you (the Blithe episode), another episode dedicated to exploring survivor's guilt (the Medic episode), etc... You also seem to assume that the entire (or even a significant majority) of such a series would need to be flight scenes. This is kind of silly; I would imagine that 2/3 to 3/4 of the series would be on the ground. You have lots of potential scenes to play with there: depicting the nervousness and psychology of preparing oneself for a mission, coping with the loss of friends, the tension of waiting on the field for the flights to return (not knowing who will and will not come back)... you can even dedicate an entire episode/ story arc to a shot-down pilot being smuggled out by the French Resistance networks. My point is simply that there ARE interesting things you can do in cinema exploring situations of isolation. By the same token, the "hold your buddy while he dies" bit has been done to death, too. So, I look at it a bit different. Even, say, a scene where the (pre-Mustang) fighters have to break off from the bombers- knowing that the Germans will pounce as soon as they leave- and watch helpless as the Luftwaffe cut them to pieces while still in sight, could make a very evocative scene. That level of frustration, helplessness, and the sense of failure are powerful stuff. What would make it a good series isn't Michael Bay planes-flying-everywhere-and-shit-exploding scenes: it's an effective use of a range of human emotion. You could quite effectively play out that scene by depicting the range of human responses: the guy that gets angry at the Germans and just loses it to his fury, the guy that gets angry with himself for failure, the guy that blows it off as just fate, the guy that begrudgingly respects the German's proficiency, the fatalist that's just glad it's not him, etc. And even in a scene depicted in a single-seat fighter, you can make this effective: as all these different responses are depicted by the voices through the radio, the camera focuses on just one pilot: the one who's just confused and doesn't know what to think about it, or for whom reality hasn't fully sunk in. It puts the audience then in the same shoes: they (at least should) identify with that guy, sorting through all these different reactions assaulting them, and figuring out how they feel about it. I'm just saying that, yes, it COULD be made into a workable- and even GOOD- series

If you fly in SEMI mode, doesn't it only transmit when you hit the commit/ transmit button on the HOTAS? It should only light you up for a few seconds at a time, and the only time you should be hitting the button is when there's an emitter already active against you.

Wow. That "Mighty Eighth" trailer looks horrid. The exterior scenes look laughable, and the dialog is really cliched- I suspect it's something a couple film school students put together for a project.

The flip side of that is that with good cinematography, you can really stress how lonely and terrifying being alone in a fighter in enemy territory- like a scene where a pilot has a brief and terrifying run-in with enemy fighters he barely escapes (captured by trapping the camera-angles to in-cockpit views, liberal use of the Saving-Private-Ryan-Shakeycam, soundtrack set to sensory overload), then is separated from his flight and spends a few minutes unsuccessfully trying the radio with increasing panic (thinking something like extreme closeup of pilot; soundtrack suddenly becomes dead quiet and camera shake becomes dead still as soon as he shakes the bad guy- but the calm highlights how completely alone he is)... Of course, this requires a very strong actor. Depictions of extreme loneliness can still be very effective in cinema; just look at Cast Away... or, for that matter, almost any horror movie: if they want you to identify with a character's terror, the one of the most effective ways is to isolate them.

"There has to be a way to fly without the HUD, what if it dies?" "There has to be a way to fly without the CDU, what if it dies" "There has to be a way to bomb without CCIP, what if it dies?" ...Of course there are ways to fly the aircraft without the primary displays, but if the HUD (be it mounted to the aircraft or your face) goes out, you abort and get it fixed. This is nothing new.

It sure is big of you to happily note that you're not allowed to discuss politics while you make a political statement. Classy. Kaktus; as far as US military procurement goes, you are trying to make the connection that the US military is pursuing the folly of buying systems that are too advanced, and therefore too expensive, and will therefore find itself short on the numbers needed. This would be true, if it weren't for the fact that the US generally has both numbers AND capabilities on its side. Yes, they buy very advanced F-22s. But they have 187 of them: almost the size of the Russian Su27 fleet (355). Yes, the US buys expensive M1A2 SEP tanks. But they have 1500 of them, where Russia has only about 350 T90s. It's hard to make that comparison to Nazi German production numbers stick. ...though in reality, even the Nazis didn't build things the way armchair generals seem to think they did: up to the very end of the war, over half of their tanks were Panzer Mk 4, NOT Panthers or Tigers or any other "uber weapon". Personally, I think you just wanted to make an underhanded attempt to associate the US with Nazism. I have yet to see you write anything positive about the US in anything you've posted to this forum, and I've certainly seen you take every opportunity to belittle them.

Not sure about the A-10s, but for some aircraft, they are required, by international treaty, to be visibly dismantled and displayed somewhere other nations' satellites can confirm their destruction, in compliance with arms reduction treaties. To the best of my knowledge, that applies mostly to nuclear delivery platforms, though. Also keep in mind that parts of the aircraft are made with exceedingly rare metals, and it only makes sense to recover the metals. Rhenium and Niobium come to mind; both are quite rare, used in making high-temperature alloys for the engines, and there's just not enough to meet world demand (and that demand is almost exclusively for jet engines!)

Can't tell if serious.... I do hope that's sarcasm... I mean, y'know, between a subsonic attack aircraft, a prop-driven transport, and a supersonic fighter-bomber, it's clearly the supersonic one holding everyone back. :doh: ...even though the F-35s are clearly at high angle of attack, with leading edge slats deployed, hardly struggling to keep up :megalol:

Really? Have you ever been in a real firefight, in a real war? I have. I was a fire support officer; among other things, controlling CAS and combat aviation was part of my responsibilities. The AH64s were, universally, more responsive, and faster on target, than the fixed-wing aircraft. You clearly do not understand how FARPs work. Funny, I had, on at least a dozen occasions, successfully employed Hellfire within 70 meters of friendlies in urban terrain. I also once employed a 500lb JDAM without even damaging the adjacent buildings (aside from broken windows) less than 20 meters away. SDBs only increase these capabilities, and the new generation with IIR sensors are additionally able to track and hit moving targets like tanks or APCs. By this logic, the F-35 is better than the A-10- it is faster yet. The damage in '91 was almost all 23mm and higher, hardly "AK47s". Also, the engines, fuel system, and other systems on the A-10 are no better armored than the F-35. It is also a moot point; the A-10 took such horrific damage because it's weapons employment capabilities and flight envelope FORCED it to fly into the heart of the AAA threat. The F-35 would not, and has no need to, fly nap of the earth through small arms fire to employ it's weapons. When did the definition of CAS change to "the airplane must buzz right overhead of the enemy and strafe them"? Last I checked, CAS was "fires from aircraft in support of friendly troops in direct contact with, or about to make direct contact with, the enemy". If you can positively identify the enemy forces and friendly forces from 40k feet, and then deliver a PGM onto the enemy forces, you ARE accomplishing CAS. The A-10 HAD to be low and slow, because with 1960s-1970s era sensors, navigation systems, and target location systems, they could not successfully ID targets from high and fast. Nowadays, the friendlies have GPS and can tell you within meters where they are, and where the enemy is. The aircraft can self-locate itself accurately, and the sensors are capable of being rapidly cued onto a target designated by grid coordinates. Also, I would note that during the first gulf war, the aircraft with the most tank/ AFV kills was NOT the A-10. It was the F-111, flying high, largely at night, dropping 500lb LGBs- with less than half the airframes, flying less than half as many sorties as the A-10s flew. I suspect the F-35 will do just fine.

17 years? 17 YEARS? He should be executed. Life without parole, minimum.

Far infrared laser. No, you cannot see it. However, if it hits you, you COULD feel it. It puts out a LOT of energy, and you would feel it as heat. It is also quite capable of blinding someone. That said, I'm not sure the suggestion of a KA50 pilot using a SOFLAM designator from inside the cockpit would work, either: the cockpit glass may well not be far-IR transparent, either naturally, or because laser-resistant coatings were added to prevent the pilot being blinded by, say, AH64 designators.

...you know, I strongly suspect all that misses the point: I'm pretty sure the complaint he had about the "the good guy is here, the bad guy is there" narration wasn't about the simplicity of determining which side is the good guys, it was about the paucity of narrative in the show regarding what actually goes on in a dogfight Instead of saying "Pilot A is here: he's nose high, low on airspeed, in an aircraft with an inferior roll rate to Pilot B. The position is vulnerable, because he doesn't have the energy to out-dive or out-climb the opponent, and the roll disadvantage means he can't count on a rolling scissors...", etcetera, they just say "bad guy behind good guy. Good guy in trouble. Oogh, grunt"

Ok, I am also US Army, combat deployed, etc. I respect that, but experience with new-production .50 cal tracer has little bearing with how SECOND WORLD WAR .50 cal ammunition performed. Without doing the research to say for certain, I would STRONGLY suspect that the chemical composition of the tracer compound was different in WW2. It certainly was for other items: for example, next time you're at the M67 hand grenade range, you might note that when the spoon comes off and the fuze starts burning, it produces no visible smoke. The fuze compound used in the WW2 Mk2 grenade, however, makes a quite visible smoke trace Totally agree. Rounds tend to start tumbling when they ricochet, and that makes them into kind of wild curveballs. Ricochets do NOT fly straight. Again, I suspect (actually, very close to KNOW) the propellant mix was not the same in WW2 as in new ammo- mostly the changes have been in kernel coatings- things like flash suppressants. Modern powders tend to also burn a lot cleaner. Next time you go to the rifle range, go shoot some Warsaw Pact surplus 7.62x39mm (or even that Wolf Russian commercial import)- notice how much more flash and smoke there is than US-made commercial ammo. You'll also note it smells like cat piss; there's a lot of ammonia in their powder compounds. Yes, agree that the flash from rifle-caliber ammo impacts (.50 cal and smaller) is only visible when striking hard targets, but disagree regarding why. For 7.62x51mm AP and SLAP (and similar), it's not an explosive- it's just that if you have steel striking metal at high speeds, it turns the kinetic energy into heat, and turns the steel into dust, which burns (if you don't believe that iron/steel can burn, go take a match to a piece of steel wool. I guarantee it will burn. In fact, put a 9 volt battery to it, and it makes an awesome, easy firestarter for camping). With tracers, you additionally have any unburned tracer compound powdering and burning rapidly on impact. My concern with tracers in DCS is less the shape (though skinnier, longer lines would be kind of nice)- rather, the tracers for the Mustang need to have that smoke trail. Every gun camera footage I've seen has it, and, hey: there's something BURNING in the tail of those rounds, it makes sense that it would leave smoke... but not newer ammo, which has better tracer compounds, and virtually no visible smoke.

...it was also known for the spontaneous loss of wings when hit; the cannon ammo had a nasty tendency of detonating when hit, and it's right near the center of mass, where an attacker is likely to hit.

Or $75,000 is not the entire production budget, it's the gap between the funds they have available and the budget they need. They may have funds saved up, or the ability to take out a business loan, but not enough to cover the full cost. After all, it's not like traditional production methodology has had production costs paid upfront: they aim to recoup it with the product afterwards