SwingKid

Thanks for putting it to such good use! :) -SK

The first item for comparison should be detection, identification and lock range of night-vision sensors - which seems to be totally absent from the comparison. -SK

You might want to try the Su-33 "wing fold" command, I'm not sure if that works though. -SK

So would I. ;) -SK

http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~pavacic/lomac/betaforum/desktop.gif -SK

True, True, Technically true, if the F-15 in question is using ECM. The rotating blades should look like ECM on the radar scope. False. The periodicity and Doppler spread of the rotating blades give a pulse-Doppler radar all kinds of range-measurement and Doppler-gating problems. The helicopter can be detected, but not tracked in range. Difficult to argue. The distance between the earth and the moon is also "millimeters." ;) -SK

Lack of optical tracking, for one. The A-10A has its TV- and IIR-guided Mavericks, the Su-25T and Ka-50 have the Shkval, AH-64 has its nose-mounted day and night sensors... even the Mi-24 has a dedicated gunner for the purpose of manual tracking. The Su-25 has no way to lock onto a moving target, it only has a laser pointer with no feedback loop - as we see in Lock On, this can be quite hard to control for one player in a computer game. In real life, it's practically ineffective against small vehicles. For other differences, compare the shaped-charged armor penetrating warhead of Maverick and Hellfire missiles to the blast-fragmentation warhead of Kh-25 and -29, the A-10's large payload of armor-piercing DU shells compared to much lower-rate-of-fire Su-25 GSh gun, the Su-25's short legs and higher speed providing fewer firing attempts per pass, plus the non-fire-and-forget nature of laser-guided weapons (compared to A-10's fire-and-forget Mavericks). Perhaps the most telling evidence is the opinion of its own pilots, who consider that the aircraft has very little probability of defeating tanks, or its designers, who felt it necessary to create an all-new version for anti-tank warfare (the "T" in Su-25T stands for "tank"). About the only real practical capability for Su-25 anti-tank operations comes from the use of sensor-fuzed cluster munitions, that were only added recently to its arsenal, but even these require the jet to overfly the enemy's position. -SK

Mostly accurate. The original Su-25 is fairly incapable as a "tank buster", it's more of an infantry support weapon, designed very much for "one pass haul ass" tactics (unlike the A-10, which is designed to loiter for hours). I think that unlike the other aircraft in Lock On, the Su-25's field of view isn't accurately modelled. It should have the best downward visibility of all the Russian jets and is actually a quite successful observation and CAS platform in real life. It has a dedicated radio for communicating with FAC (same as Mi-24). The reduced field of view makes it harder to navigate, land, or aim bombs in the sim - the best you can do is mass rocket attacks, for which your computer needs very high performance to take the fps hit of all their smoke trails. The "transparent" map building objects that should make up the majority of Su-25 targets doesn't help the visibility problem either. You might want to assemble some parked M-818 trucks somewhere and send your Su-25 players to go attack them, since vehicles are visible from a farther distance in the sim. It seems that despite the low priority ED placed on Su-25 cockpit visibility, they did leave some opportunity for interesting missions. Landmine static "building" objects appear to exist in the sim for the sole purpose of being destroyed by FAE bombs, and I like to create co-operative night missions where a friendly Su-25 drops illumination flares over a land target, and the player needs to lock it up with laser-guided missiles within that short window of opportunity. The recent addition of myriad military "building" objects (ammunition depot, bunker, roadblock, etc.) appears to reflect a tacit admission that the Su-25 has little hope to hit the moving ground vehicle targets that were the earlier focus of the sim. Interesting topic, -SK

Whoa whoa hwoa. Did somebody say campaign? -SK

No, I think you just have to give rep to 20 people and then it lets you give to the first guy again. So yeah, if you can find 20 deserving people, you could go around in circles raising scores all day. I suppose the trouble then is to find 20 deserving people. ;) IMHO the words "This contest means absolutely nothing" would look kinda cool in the space in the lower left there. Don't worry, I'll upgrade my 1999-technology computer first thing! the moment Lock On has a 1989-technology DC. Until then, I'm just saving up. :) -SK

Didn't you already say that about rep points? You know it's time for a sig update... -SK

"We" Russians or "we" cheeseburgers? -SK

I didn't even like XP! :( -SK

Take a look at page 89 of the F-14D document linked above for a good list of what it does not contain. Basically, the NATOPS manual contains enough information to create a Microsoft FS model - flight characteristics and navigations modes only, no combat systems. -SK

True enough, the LRU arrangement in the second photo seems unusually compact. I don't know what they're displaying there, maybe an old prototype. The first photo though shows a classic Slot Back configuration common with N-001, N-019 and N-019M. What troubles? -SK

Many statements made it to print without oversight in 1992, while businessmen of a certain nationality were just beginning to discover "marketing". Photos printed in the past 14 years since, e.g. of MiG-1.42 "stealthier than F/A-22", tell a somewhat different story. -SK

It's a common error. In all photos, you'll see that Zhuk has a slotted array, while Topaz has Cassegrain. http://galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu/~lukija/razno/razno.html http://grzdud.webpark.pl/galu2.htm http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/archive/index.php?t-24497.html I have some books that confirm it, but accurate web sources are few. -SK

Are you sure you're not looking at the F-15C antenna? MiG-29A, MiG-29S and Su-27 radars should all have same type twist-Cassegrain antennas. -SK

Если лётчик пользовает пушку пока пуск не разрещён, пушка ещё работает? -SK

Spelling and grammar are tolerably comprehensible, and I like a message that gets right to the point... Too bad there's so little meaningful content here. Don't get me wrong, I like a good debate as much as the next guy and have the time to respond... and I like criticizing Lock On even more! I could put up with one or two snippy unsupported statements that were true, or even honest mistakes, but this boy isn't even trying... couldn't find a fact in a library, and doesn't seem to care who knows it. If you want a REAL post, take a look at something written by GOYA or Konkussion... those guys know how to deliver a critique that hits the spot. After reading the above, I'm just left feeling that I want my ten seconds back. What was the developer of this message thinking? Maybe the AF boys got bored and punted him over to us? Going back to other posters, with whom the life is good... :) -SK

Hmm, it may be then a semantic problem with our definitiions. Have you ever heard of Shkval optical tracking (or any other type of "lock", optical or radar) as "semi-automatic"? I haven't. I only heard of Mi-24 SACLOS optical tracking as semi-automatic, in which operator must align crosshairs on the target manually. -SK

I'm not sure I understand - in message #242, the optical tracking is specified as "semi-automatic" without exception, while radar tracking is specified as "automatic". Is there some factual disagreement with this, or with the FAS description of operator control? Or, it's an issue of choice of words? To me, "semi-automatic" always implies a manual operation. How can the radar automatically align the optical sensors to better than 2 minutes precision, when it can't even measure the target's angular position to such precision? :confused: -SK

I thought this at one point also, but I don't think it's correct. The text in your previous message seems pretty clear that the optical target tracking is used whenever missiles are used - not only when there is ECM. The reason for this may be insufficient angular resolution of the radar tracking system for CLOS guidance. For example, how can you direct the missile to fly "1.5 d.u." off of the LOS until just before impact, when the average error of the tracking radar is itself more than 1.5 d.u.? It doesn't make any sense. So, probably FAS is correct, and the target needs the operator to manually track the target with the optical sight for greater precision at missile range. http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?p=134236&highlight=Tunguskas#post134236 -SK

This is the section that is giving me all sorts of trouble, thanks for translation. First problem: the target is tracked by the optical channel? Or the missile? Or both (i.e. there are two optical channels)? FAS seems to suggest the operator must manually hold the target in the optical tracking to measure its angular position, but from this Russian text we could almost conclude that it's the missile that needs to be tracked optically, by its tracer - and that it may even be "automatic" optical tracking, since there is concern about "locking" onto a flare if the missile is along the same LOS, which would be unlikely if a human operator were at the control. More to the point, how can we measure the angle to the missile and the angle to the target simultaneously with one optical tracking system, while they are 1.5 minutes apart? So, this led to my confusion, about whether FAS was correct or not. Something, somewhere, has not been written very clearly. :( -SK

Will you guys knock it off? FF is almost at the good part! Any second now, he'll chime in to say I was right... Any second now... :) (eats popcorn) -SK