OutOnTheOP

Yes, they can *barely* manage 3G sustained. So... in the realm of 3-4 G for anything more than a couple seconds. Don't see how this is in any way in disagreement with what I said. But it is you that alludes that this is relevant; that WW2 aircraft will find themselves in situations where sustained G-tolerance is significant enough that the minor difference in seat angle is meaningful. Either way, the G-suit should provide as much or more benefit to instantaneous G resistance, and the sustained rates are quite low; below (even according to the charts posted in this thread) where a pilot has any serious trouble coping even with a bolt-upright seat and no G-suit. It is. Expensive, though.

I'm actually finding I liked the older version better, as far as spotting goes. Against smoke trails, the spotting range has increased significantly. But even with the rather goofy smart scaling, I have found that my personal spotting range against aircraft has dropped precipitously. Much of this seems to be because some manner of algorithm was enacted that seems to "soften" the edges of distant targets. They seem to blur quite a bit, and it is more difficult to distinguish sharp edges. This makes it very difficult to determine the direction a contact is heading, and what maneuvers it is engaged in. It is also significantly more difficult for me, even at machine gun firing distances, to distinguish between a FW190 and P-51 than it used to be. The transition between the scaled sprite and the 3D model seems to happen WAY too close to the player: if flickers back and forth right at the edge of gun firing range. Again, this messes with the perception of which direction the aircraft is pointed, and makes it more difficult to set up a tracking shot. On a semi-related note, it seems that the AI FW190 has rediscovered it's diamondtanium armor, because they're back to soaking up 7 seconds of sustained .50 cal fire before they go down. In the last patch before 1.5, they took far more believable (short) bursts to kill. Some of that I can credit to slightly lower hit rates since it's harder to get a good track on them, but the new .50 cal hit flash is pretty visible, so I'm clearly not just missing them.

But WW2 aircraft have a very hard time maintaining even 3G for anything more than a 15-20 second span; they just haven't the thrust to maintain hard G. One would need instantaneous G resistance (well, rapid-onset, to be more precise) for hard, high-speed maneuvers, but you're just never going to see the kind of G profiles like the study you reference. Anecdotally, having flown an SF260 trainer in 3-6 G mock dogfighting, I can say that, without G-suit, and what I recall as a fairly upright seating arrangement, I had no issues whatsoever with any G-related issues, aside from fighting the weight of the helmet. I am a reasonably fit man, but not trained for anti-G technique. I really can't see the 3-4 G sustainable turns achievable in a WW2 aircraft having the kind of fatigue effects to which you're alluding.

Why not? Despite how impressive it looks, I would bet a paycheck that the crew survived, and the vehicle was only lightly damaged (as in, a decent BDAR crew could return it to service in a couple days) The strike was clearly far to the rear of the turret, in the ammo bustle. It's *designed* to cook off like that. There are armored doors between the ammo and the crew compartment, and blow-off panels on the roof to vent the flame and overpressure, which are designed to work precisely as seen in the video. It's telling that the video cuts away as soon as the flames died down: the crew probably popped out immediately thereafter... or just drove off! Kind of like the times when Iraqi terrorists would take video of some bloke tripping and falling getting out of a HMMWV, photoshop crosshairs on the video, dub in a gunshot sound, and then claim they killed the guy, when in reality five seconds more into the video shows him getting up and dusting himself off. (yes, I have seen examples of that with both the edited and unedited film; hilarious) Oh... well, Chris seems to have beaten me to the reply. I *really* need to get to the end of a thread before I type a reply >.<

As it should be; the Abrams simply has a better fire control system (and perhaps more importantly, better target acquisition sensors- see the factors Shagrat mentioned, above) than any Russian-built tank, up to and including the T90.

And yet, neither of those appear to be K-kills (that is, not a catastrophic loss). It is clear that the ammunition burned off, which looks spectacular, but considering that the ammo is bunkered in a bustle rack with blow off roof panels, the vehicle itself could be returned to duty in several days by a competent recovery crew, and the vehicle crew itself clearly survives, as they can be seen running from the vehicle. The fact that the video fails to show any aftermath beyond the initial impact, nor does it show the destroyed vehicle after it has burned out, leads me to believe this is the same standard Islamofascist propaganda technique as when they take a video of some bloke tripping and falling when exiting a HMMWV (the doorframe sucks!), superimpose crosshairs on the video, and add a gunshot sound and the aloha snackbar laugh track, and claim they killed the guy. Never mind that if they let the video roll another ten seconds, you'd see the guy get up and dust himself off *rolls eyes* Unless the Saudis are such fools that they leave their ammo doors open even when not actively loading the next round, those vehicles suffered fairly minor damage: in the first you can clearly see it hits the turret at the very rear, from the left side of the turret. Nothing back there but ammo bunker; not going to kill the vehicle that way- but I suppose it LOOKS like it, so it makes sense they'd think that was the best place to aim. Appears to hit the same spot, from the right of the turret, in the second clip. The last isn't even an Abrams; it appears to be an AIFV (the 1970s proto-Bradley that was declined by the US and subsequently sold to Turkey and UAE)

and here I thought, when I read the title, that it was asking for Volcano helicopter-scatterable mines. ...which would, I think, be an excellent thing to have: artillery, aircraft, and dispenser-emplaced mines. Super-useful for CA commanders.

Nope, if you have the wingspan and range correct, it will indeed hit where you aim. That said, remember that the wingtips should be inside an imaginary CIRCLE drawn through the 6 dots, and NOT through a hexagon drawn by connecting the dots with straight lines. You also need a good, steady track. The pipper should not be drifting past the target, it should be steady on it or just BARELY creeping through the target. That said, hits to the engine bay (at the front of the target aircraft) do tend to kill them faster than hitting at the wing roots.

MAN, those are ugly missiles. ...by which I, of course, mean: those are beautiful 3D models of missiles that are ugly in reality =P

On the small-caliber stuff, I think it varies from nation to nation. I know it used to be that it was tied to the tracer element, which was, in effect, a pyrotechnic fuze: when the tracer element burned all the way down, it lit the bursting charge. I wouldn't be surprised if it still worked that way. After all, hand grenades still use pyrotechnic fuzes, and pyro fuzes are much, MUCH cheaper (though far less precise) than mechanical time (IE, clockwork) fuzes

Not precisely... WW2-era high-caliber AA guns used mechanical-timed fuzes, not rotation-counting fuzes (of the type used in modern airburst munitions like the 40mm Bofors ones or the M25 CDTE). ...or did you mean rotation as in the manual rotating of the fuze-setting ring on the nose of the fuze to set it? After about 1950 or so, both western and Russian high-caliber AA used primarily radar-fuzed proximity fuzes (yes, they are still used to this day, even in the US... mostly for naval 5-inch dual purpose guns) The ZU-23/ ZSU-23/ 2S6 have projectiles that rely on impact fuzing. They *do* airburst, but that's a very simple time fuze that cannot be set (it's factory set), and is there simply to burst the projectile when it gets past maximum effective range. This isn't so that it damages the target with airbursts: it's so that the rounds don't come back to earth and blow up your own troops that you're trying to defend! (incidentally, a lot of aircraft gun ammo has the same feature)

Ugh. Please, don't. Seriously, what is with the fixation with super-rare (or never-even-produced) super-planes? Maybe once all the models of which more than, say, 5,000 were made, THEN consider making the paper airplanes. I have a hard time stomaching the thought of servers packed with Me262 and Ho229, but without a Me109G6 anywhere to be found

The last one, under the wing, appears to be an early version of the AGM-28 Hound Dog (?).... fins removed for clearance, I would assume. Slight differences in the engine mount, though.

Shouldn't be that surprising; there are tons of decommissioned F-16A and F-15A. The early production marks are so obsolete they're too expensive to upgrade, and beyond that, many of them have reached the stress life of their airframe. They can't be flown much more without falling apart, so if they're already broken, why not get a little last service out of them as a target for training and test purposes? The QF-16 has the advantage as well that you only need to make sure one engine is in running condition, as opposed to two on a QF-4. Either way, it's cheaper than building drones (with fighter-like performance, at least in speed and RCS) for the explicit purpose of shooting them down. As to being able to survive a hit like that... keep in mind that the targets shown here appear to have been non-maneuvering, weren't using expendable countermeasures, and probably weren't using electronic countermeasures. In that kind of situation, a direct missile-to-fuselage impact is pretty likely. Against a maneuvering combat aircraft using countermeasures, you're probably going to get a proximity fuzed blast, and much less dramatic effects. Also, while it may look devastating, keep in mind that the big ol' fireball is fuel burning OUTSIDE the aircraft. The cockpit would likely keep most of that out, and once the seat fired, you're clear of it posthaste. Of course, there's a reason flight suits are fire-retardant.... Large aircraft surviving a direct hit? Depends on where you hit it, I guess. If you put an AIM-9 into the tail ramp of a transport, there's not much important there. Hit it with a contact-fuzing strike to the wing root, and yeah, it's probably done.

Agreed. I will say that I *have* seen human players attempt this from time to time, but I think that's more of a newbie thing: they read that the Dora out-climbs the Mustang, and think that they can always get away by climbing; often too steeply. The maneuver only really works in two situations. The first is if the pursued, superior climbing aircraft (the Dora, in this case) starts WELL out of weapons range. It allows them to gain altitude and reverse in a tight turn to build both energy and angles on the pursuer. As mentioned above, and Immelmann will accomplish pretty much the same thing. In the hammerhead (and to a lesser extent, the Immelmann), if the pursuing aircraft can close distance sufficiently for a gunshot, it's all over. The significant loss of airspeed in the climb makes you too easy a target, otherwise. The other situation it can work is when the pursuer is extremely close, and you can manage to get some angle-off-tail from him. You have to go into the maneuver far enough off his nose that he can't bring it to bear fast enough to get the gunshot on you while you climb and bleed airspeed. In this situation, you can force him to either drop the nose and extend (in which case you stay in the climb a few seconds to build distance, then drop the nose on him), or attempt to turn into you WHILE CLIMBING, where he will bleed a lot of energy, lose control authority, and be unable to get the nose on you for a shot before he stalls. It can work.... but it's extremely risky. A decent opponent won't let his energy state get low enough, or himself close enough, for you to do this.

I think you are misinterpreting. Think "hits like a ton of bricks". It's big, it's rugged, and it's got punch.

Why do you think the MkI eyeball is the only means of acquiring positive ID of a target? Modern radars, operating at short wavelengths, can take photolike 3d images of targets. I would be willing to bet the F-35 can show you a radar "photo" of exactly what you're looking at. And besides that, I'd imagine the FLIR sensors have a PID range against aircraft in the tens of kilometers.

I think the 'Bolt is a bit past "piano", and somewhere in the realm of "ton of bricks" ;)

The lightweight fighter role. Maybe the lightweight fighter role isn't needed. Logical fallacy of the false dilemma. Those airframes are going away, F-35 or no F-35. They're at the end of their service lives, and will eventually simply fall apart. It's already happened to a few. The costs of keeping them airborne would actually end up greater than the F-35, because instead of just building a new aircraft once, you have to tear them down, run diagnoses on the problems, *then* essentially build a new aircraft... over several iterations, a bit at a time, with extra effort dismantling it each time a subsequent component gets SLEP'd

...what are you talking about? There are more DCS-level modern helos than DCS-level modern fixed-wing (well, unless you count the two trainers, which are both incomplete, and even then it's almost even)

What replaced the B-52 in the strategic nuclear role? What replaced the F-89 in the night fighter role? What replaced the Waco in the assault glider role? What replaced the OS2U in the observation floatplane role? The answer is, nothing. Or, more accurately, ballistic missiles, all-weather interceptors (which were then superseded by all-weather air superiority), the helicopter, and radar. The point is, you don't always NEED a one-for-one replacement; sometimes sufficiently revolutionary technologies call for a dramatic shift in tactics, and therefore in the design of military equipment to carry out these tactics. We don't have heavily-armored dreadnaught-pattern battleships anymore, because they were rendered obsolete by the aircraft carrier, and then by the guided missile. But there were many of the same arguments made in the 40's and 50s about keeping them, as are now being made about the F-35's suitability in the air superiority role. The traditionalists were wrong, and battleships, while handy for massed shore bombardment, were no longer viable for the vast majority of naval duties. The "maneuver-your-nose-onto-the-other-guys-tail" dogfight is just as obsolete as the naval artillery duel, due to HOBS missiles and increasingly effective BVR missiles. Designing a fighter to fight that fight is a bit silly. (*pre-emptive edit: that's not to say all WVR fighting is done and all kinetic performance is moot, BUT, the traditional dogfight is done. Kinematic performance at cruise is probably more important now; having the energy to defeat pop-up SAM engagements is useful, but the relatively-low-energy style of turnfighting is done; it costs too much energy to bring your nose around like that, and there's no way a pilot can sustain the kind of G that would be required to out-maneuver modern HOBS WVR missiles). ...what continues to amuse me, though, is that some people seem to simultaneously argue that surface-to-air missiles are so inescapably lethal that the F-35 will regularly fall prey to them despite LO, while simultaneously claiming that the F-35 will be constantly massacred in guns-only dogfights, because... you know, missiles fired at non-LO aircraft are terribly ineffective and can't be relied upon to actually hit anything, so it'll go to the merge on a daily basis. Apparently missiles only suck if they're launched from an F-35. :megalol:

[ I'm reminded of a quote regarding fools resorting to mockery when they have nothing meaningful to say. You have added precisely nothing meaningful to the discussion. You insist that I am wrong, but fail to make any convincing argument of why: you say that I'm "naive" and make "bad assumptions", yet you have not once presented any information cogent to the discussion. You expect that if you act superior long enough, that people will assume you somehow know better. You also clearly know MUCH less about shaped charge dynamics than you seek to present yourself as. If you knew anything, you would have posted it. I can, if you like, direct you to some research papers on the subject. They all (ALL!) indicate that depth of penetration scales linearly with charge diameter (though that, in turn, requires a greater standoff of detonation, as the optimal standoff also scales linearly with charge diameter). They also indicate that penetration scales almost linearly with explosives burn rate... but good luck finding explosives that are more than marginally faster burning than those already in use. Optimal design is well known. The optimal liner angle is close to 45 degrees. So making a bigger, deeper warhead (the only option you have, when limited by a narrow missile body) is not going to greatly increase penetration. Full stop. The best charge is as big in diameter as feasible, with a generally 45 degree cone, and the more explosives you can pack behind it the better, but you get rapidly diminishing returns after two charge diameters length of explosives. So, we can either assume that the larger diameter charge has deeper penetration, OR we can assume that the Russians have somehow, in total secrecy, developed explosives with burn rates RADICALLY higher (on the order of 30-40% higher) than that used in the west, or are using some hitherto unknown element in their shape charge liners to give penetration far out of line with those designed to date. I know which I'm more likely to assume, and it's not that the Russians have magical science. Aha; here it becomes obvious you haven't a clue what you're talking about; I'm talking about CHARGE diameter. Jet diameter is an entirely different thing. Also, you have clearly never read a damn thing about wound dynamics, because overpressure is a HORRIBLY ineffective wounding mechanism against people, and even LESS effective against machinery. If you want to kill a vehicle, PARTICULARLY a combat vehicle, you want to fill it with as many high-velocity projectiles (be they spall or primary projectiles) as possible. The very best effects you can hope for are to ignite onboard fuel and ammunition; you generally aren't going to do that with overpressure (unless we're talking truly ridiculous overpressures that would lead to sympathetic detonation, but that would require absurdly large munitions to cause that manner of effect). Hot fragments rupturing ammunition, however, is quite good at that. Also: the main objective is not to "penetrate the armor plate", it is to KILL THE VEHICLE. The mechanism of the kill is inconsequential. If the most efficient way is to target vulnerable points with a warhead that is less penetrative, but produces more spall and after-armor effects, then it is aside the point whether it penetrates further or not (but, again, larger-diameter HEAT WILL penetrate further). What is important is the effect it has on the vehicle, the crew, and the overall function of both. If you're striking a point with only 40-60mm of armor, why would it even MATTER if you didn't have 1000+mm of penetration? If penetration was all that mattered, HESH would never have been invented. Go away, troll.

And yet, neither of us has the precise geometry of the Vikhr warhead, do we? So, assuming that Russians aren't "stoopid", and Americans are likewise not, then we can assume that the technological sophistication of the warheads is equivalent. All else being equal, the larger warhead is the better. Particularly when it attacks top armor, while the other attacks front or side. As to the jet being wider... no, really? I mentioned that already. That's actually a good thing in this context; it doesn't require terribly deep penetration to perforate top armor, and a wider channel means more displaced spall= better after armor effects. You have, if anything, only further reinforced my point.

Essentially, yes. Given a similar generation of warheads, the larger diameter one will penetrate a deeper, wider channel through the armor. Most after-armor effects are produced by spall, rather than by the HEAT jet itself. A wider, deeper channel means more volume of spall. Also, since the Hellfire penetrates through the top armor, where it is many times thinner than the main belt (IE, 40-70mm RHAe instead of 600-1300mm RHAe), a higher proportion of the actual shape charge liner and overpressure enters the fighting compartment of the vehicle. Note that I am not saying that charge diameter is the ONLY determinant of post-armor effects; design and liner material comes into play as well. But the warhead on contemporary Hellfire is every bit as advanced in design, and also LARGER. As a general rule of thumb, western ATGM generally uses a more efficient liner material, as well; commonly tantalum instead of copper. I'm uncertain what is used on the Vikhr liner, though, so that's not worth arguing. A great deal of assessment can be pretty accurately based on warhead diameter when it comes to HEAT warheads. Much like a great deal about the performance of APFSDS can be very accurately assessed based solely on rod length-to-diameter ratio. Please also note that, despite your failure to refute the point with anything approaching factual information or technical assessment, I still respond by explaining my reasoning in a civil tone, rather than resorting to immediate mockery. Please extend that courtesy to individuals with whom you disagree on here. Otherwise, people might think you're a biased fanboi at best, or just a total a**clown.

Ok, but the REAL-world Hellfire is a considerably more useful weapon for several reasons: 1) Top-attack profile. Strikes the weakest armor, making it actually capable of destroying modern tanks. The Vikhr, with a direct-attack profile and tiny (130mm) diameter warhead would fail to perforate the primary armor of pretty much any modern MBT. This means that unless you can set up a side-attack profile, you're out of luck. Setting up that attack profile would probably put you right in the heart of tactical ADA systems' engagement zones, though. The Hellfire's attack profile also means the missile can be fired from a helicopter in ground clutter, without striking an obstacle on the way to the target 2) LOAL launch modes. An OH-58 can provide a grid and terminal lasing. Or a COLT team can. Or FIST team. Or JTAC party. Or anything with a laser designator (even an A-10!). The launching helo never even needs to unmask from terrain to deliver them. 3) SAL guidance means you can actually ripple-fire several and slew onto sequential targets (best accomplished with LOAL launch mode). You don't have to wait for each engagement to complete before starting the next. 4) MUCH larger acceptable launch window. The missile can maneuver onto targets more freely; the helicopter doesn't have to be pointed straight at the target. Makes for much faster subsequent target engagements. 5) Better after-armor effects. The larger-diameter warhead in the Hellfire (178mm vs the 130mm Vikhr), in addition to being better at punching holes through armor (generally speaking, shape charge penetration is directly related to warhead diameter- yet wikipedia claims 1000mm rHA for the Vikhr's tiny warhead. LOL, no.), also does a lot more damage to the inside of the vehicle, simply because the shape charge liner has more mass, and the displaced spall from the interior of the armor is greater due to the larger diameter warhead. The small-diameter warhead of the Vikhr would likely have after-armor effects more similar to a PR-7VR warhead (due to charge diameter), which I've see in person effects on a light armor vehicle, and it was... uh, unimpressive. The spall managed to sever a cable on a radio junction box, and that was the ONLY damage done inside the vehicle.