Frostiken

This has been posted here... a lot :p

And yes, the TPod can "see" coordinates through clouds, because its based on slant range and DTS data.

That's... um... No, just... no.

When surviving more than four sorties made you the most experienced guy in the squadron...

Putting a ground mapping radar on the A-10 isn't impossible and wouldn't take the overhaul you guys are acting like it would. There is no problem the Department of Defense can't overcome by throwing oodles of money at contractors. I've already linked you guys to a pylon-mounted ground-mapping radar that doesn't take any special LRUs to utilize, just some new wiring in the airframe and the CICU might need an upgrade for processing / new OFP size limitations. The AN/ASQ-236 isn't actually used for ground mapping for purposes of attack, but that's because the F-15E already has a terrain following radar, a targeting pod, a ground-mapping radar, and a search and track radar powerful enough to burn a hole through the sky. But stop saying it's impossible, the A-10 doesn't need a nose-mounted radar. Those radars are for tracking airborne targets, not just mapping the ground (or in the case of commercial liners, weather). Improbable is the word you want, not impossible. The A-10 will probably not get this upgrade for two simple reasons: Age and cost. The A-10s are way overdue for the chopping block and while a replacement still has yet to be found, I think the DOD would rather funnel money into that project rather than putting fancy gadgets on a low-altitude fighter that is basically only for use in fair weather with controlled airspace anyway. I don't think they want to repeat Desert Storm where dozens of the damn things were lost, seeing as how technically every airframe is irreplaceable. Besides, given the immense complexity involved in performing the task even in fair weather with clear skies, generally if the weather is shitty enough that you'd need a ground radar to see anything, you probably have no business flying in the first place.

.... *AHEM* Granted, the fidelity of that radar array would be way too piss-poor to provide capable ground-mapping to find targets, but, hey, it's a pylon-mountable radar :D To be fair though, it's only about the same size as the dinky joke that is the F-16s radar (Trolololol) EDIT: Got one more for you :). This one *is* a ground-mapping radar and could easily find targets. Unfortunately, you have to overfly them first... it's really only for all-weather intel gathering.

I said 'sex appeal' which roughly translates into general interest and thus, sales. The A-10 has a huge amount of sex appeal. Everyone knows it, people get nerd-ons for the GAU-8, it's been in tons and tons of movies, it's unique, it's special, trust me, it's pretty much the second most identifiable aircraft next to the F-14. I'm defining "sex appeal" as a general sense of how well-known an aircraft is, how 'publicized' it is, how much your general person will recognize it... I could even add in there 'how useful it is' and the F/A-18 would still come in last. PS: UNDENIABLE PROOF Compare it to the other three airframes and the result is the same - the F/A-18 is not an interesting aircraft for most people, it's not well-known, it's never done anything spectacular or particularly noteworthy, the most people know about them is when they crash into San Diego neighborhoods. F-14s are famous pretty much only because of Top Gun, A-10s are famous because of their giant cannon of own, F-15s are famous because of their completely unbeaten combat record and some Israeli flew one with one wing, and F-16s are famous because... well I don't really know why, maybe the Wild Weasel missions and that you just hear about them a lot in the news (well, you used to back when OIF / OEF made for headlines). Good thing F-15s and F-16s have tailhooks too.

Well, sadly if it's a "dakka dakka" plane, I won't be buying it :( My interest was way too saturated in the literally hundreds of WW2 flying games that came before, not my cup of tea anymore. If it's something with a jet engine though, maybe :)

Doubt it - the F/A-18C is probably at the very bottom of most people's list as far as interest goes. I think more than a few people who don't hang out on this forum would get it and then complain about its crippled performance, as they'd be expecting a Superhornet, not the sad excuse for airpower that is the F/A-18C. The A-10, F-15, F-16, and even the F-14 have a hell of a lot more sex appeal than the F/A-18, especially if we're talking the C. It's an all-around underwhelming jet and seeing as how it literally was second-best to the F-16, well, the Air Force agrees that it sucks. Weeee 0.8 weight/thrust ratio. Weeee 7G limit even when slick. Weeee microscopic fuel tanks. Weeee terrible combat weight. For any other discussion, see my sig and avatar. EDIT: Also, carrier ops? Wowie, I'll make sure to take advantage of that in NEVADA. Not sure why that's such a massive turn-on for people seeing as how it literally involves the first five seconds and last five seconds of flight.

Heh, I learned that the hard way. I dropped one right on top of a T-72 and the whole payload just thumped off the roof. I pictured a bunch of Marines pinned down, asking for air support, seeing me fly over and release a few hundred thousand dollars of pain... and then it just bonks off the top of a tank, and the crew inside are all "What the hell."

If you're wondering in reality, I'll see if I can find out for you. We stopped using LITENING pods so I might be able to tell you LANTIRN and Sniper only.

http://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/ :music_whistling:

Is it? There's no 'hold the pickle button' on WCMDs like there is on JDAMs, which is done specifically because while you hold it you're feeding data to the guidance kit... it would make sense that it does update the INS from the aircraft since I can't imagine it's accurate for very long, but when does it do this? Periodically during flight?

Er, why wouldn't it? :P

Yeah well, that's fine because this is a game... so you can do what you want, really. This discussion mostly stems from why certain features are a certain way, and what happens in real life though.

I would imagine it's to power the weapon's INS :P It's not exactly running on batteries for the entire flight. Doesn't it also update from the aircraft to ensure the miserable little INS system in there isn't completely wrong after thirty minutes of flight?

When our F-15Es ferried to Italy for Operation Odyssey Dawn, they left with about 8,000 pounds of munitions each. I think they all had problems in-flight because when they got to Italy they didn't have anything. Seriously though, all I can really say for certain is that when we ferried from Lakenheath to Bagram, we carried like, a -120 and a -9 each. I think.

Yeah, I mentioned a long time ago that civilian casualties should be tracked as well so dropping four CBU-87s on a village to kill two guys with one AK would get you arrested when you landed.

I wouldn't sweat it too much. The F-15E is not like the F-14 where the GIB has his job and only that job and that's all he does. The avionics integration between front and back is 90% complete and there's very little you can't do from either cockpit. The pilot can designate targets (to some degree) with the pod while the WSO flies the plane if they really wanted to. I think the more serious issue would be having to buy Thrustmaster Strike Eagle for $800 which would consist of the front grips (which, despite what people say, aren't exactly like the A-10Cs) and front stick, and two hand controllers in back :) Graduating to the F-15Es avionics from the A-10s is like graduating from Duplo to Mindstorms.

The way I see it, if you *had* to dump fuel, you can fly around to burn it off. If your emergency is so severe that you can't afford to do that, then you have no business even trying to land the plane and should just punch out.

I was on the second leg of what ended up being a 1.9 hour sortie (on one tank, no externals no less!) and pulled a modest amount of Gs... when my CDU blanked off, cautions flashed on the screen, and just as quick as it came up, it went away and the CDU reset itself, booting to a 'warm start' screen. Needless to say it seriously messed with a few of the things I was doing, but I thought it was a great touch, a nice change from the old 'works fine or never works at all' problems. As an avionics guy this is exactly the kind of problems that pilots see in-flight. Now we just need component sub-failures :) I really just wish failures were documented in the pilot log at the end. Honestly for the next DCS I hope they focus even more on the random failures aspect, with a boatload of component subfailures and other problems. Actually what would be really neat would be a dynamic campaign with a maintenance aspect, where jets accumulate Code 2 and Code 3 writeups and have to undergo repairs, so if you treat your planes like crap you may eventually run out of planes to fly, or end up taking one with a handful of Code 2s like 'radio induces lots of noise when keying', 'HUD video is crunched too small', 'RWR random tones and spikes with no correlation'... Anyway, horray for simulating what real military aircraft are like :)

This. I dropped my first one the other day and it thudded into the roof of the tank :D Had to manually set the second one a bit higher, seemed a little goofy because of the way the CBU-97 works, everything is triggered by a built-in radar altimeter anyway which (I assume) is built by the manufacturer to trigger in a way that would cover the most effective area with the skeets. The skeets don't have infinite range, and by letting the dispensers blow around and separate away, you'd lose target coverage in an exponential fashion.

Yep, the VDL is easily one of the coolest features of Sniper pods. Ground guys can go 'No, not that thing, the OTHER thing!'

Why's it say it was canceled up top? Or is that why we're getting this from ED, because the contract fell through so we're getting what they had done? I find it interesting that the requirement was for a Litening pod, when they're rapidly being phased out for SniperXRs.

I would hope it's not one of the dakka-dakka WW2 planes because they've been done to death and are about as thrilling as an enema. A fighter jet from the 60s though, that would be a treat. Nobody's ever modeled, say, an F-104 before :)