Frostiken

Everything you'd like to know about PAC. Everything you'd like to know about the CH Fighterstick trigger.

They may have at some point, but at this point in time they probably sold them all for spare parts, fired all their pilots, or pushed them off the end of a carrier into the ocean to save money.

While we're on the topic of Google Earth.... Wingless A-10s are the most ridiculous-looking things ever :D For those that don't know what's going on here, the A-10 wings have been having severe problems with cracking and stress, so much so that they pulled off nearly every wing from the Boneyard to keep the operational ones flying. I believe they've started up manufacturing for the wings again because it's such a widespread problem.

Especially if we're calling into question the stealthiness of fan blades which has been a known problem with stealth aircraft since they've existed - as I tried to point out with the clumsy stupid screens they fit on the F-117A :P While installing baffles in the intakes could very well be an option for the T-50, the drop in engine power would be significant. Also I think I figured out how those mysterious missile bays on the wings work: :D

And the study of flight originated with the French and the Dutch. And fission research originated in Germany. And space exploration originated in Russia. And you say stealth technology did too? I like this game :) I resent that comment - I guarantee you that I'm far more qualified to comment on subjects of radar and stealth features than you will ever be.

I mentioned it one of my posts. I can consider myself an SME as far as this goes: The F-15E's undergone, in the last five years, two major revisions and upgrades - Suite 5 and Suite 6. Suite 6 notably had the larger impact as it introduced JHMCS to the front cockpit (Suite 7 will introduce it to the back) and allowed capability of Small Diameter Bombs (wheee!) and the AN/ASQ-236 radar mapping pod. There's oodles of other features that both suites introduced, such as the replacement of the 8mm VTRS for a DVR (the 8mm player itself is being deprecated in Suite 7 IIRC), as well as the obligatory secret squirrel kind of stuff. Regardless, the point is the pilots need to learn this stuff. I've used the simulator that Boeing offered as a 'trainer' and it's really not the most impressive thing I've seen. Now the argument could be that Boeing's offering is good enough, but given how lackluster that thing was (it basically focused only on the core features of the new upgrade, with zero integration with older avionics) I definitely see a fat juicy contract for the F-15E in the future, especially if AETC was pleased with ED's offering for the A-10C. I've thought about this before and while I don't know what's going on in the F/A-18 world, I do know that the F-35 is supposed to replace them, so I'm skeptical that the F/A-18Cs (the legacy Hornet, not even the Superhornet) would have any interest for the US military, which would tell me that if a 'military' trainer for the F/A-18C is in the works, it would be for a country such as Canada, Finland, or maybe even Kuwait. That said, the F-15E is getting a batrilljion dollars invested into it to make it even better and, well, someone has to learn this stuff at some point. So on the 'which has more contract potential' we have: A) Clunky old useless pile of crap that's already been rendered obsolete by two different airframes... or B) A state-of-the-art fighter getting new upgrades on a regular basis that has zero replacement and is forecast to be in use for the next 15 years.

I've had the blacked out radios thing with easy comms on before, usually cycling radio power fixed it. Even still sometimes simply using the radio anyway would work...

I can never get over just how huge the Hind really is...

The inlets are straight "box" style with exposed engine fanblades. First, the duct itself is making a nice big flat reflective surface from the sides, but most importantly... Engine fan blades are the single most obvious reflector of radar energy from the front and rear aspects of an aircraft. Due to the fact that radar waves bounce you can get some feedback at angles off of them too. The F-117A had special screens fitted over the ducts to try to reflect most of the radar energy away from the fanblades, while on the B-2 they're hidden deep inside. Both of these aircraft also have their exhausts inside the airframe itself to both serve to hide the fanblades as well as diffuse the hot gasses to present a smaller IR profile. The F-22 and the F-35 have very obvious serpentine-shaped ducts (the F-35's inlet duct is incredibly short and uh... yeah, Crew Chiefs are going to *hate* jumping tubes on that thing) to hide the fanblades from front-aspect radar acquisition, and while the F-35's engine is hardly stealthy from the back, the F-22's thrust vectoring nozzles were designed to minimize the RCS from the rear. In the case of this Russian beast it has no such features. I can swallow that new engines may be bolted on, but you can't just redesign that inlet duct. If that thing is flying towards you, you *will* see it.

YES! Welcome to the hate-club! You can check back the last 10 pages or so for my posts, to see all kinds of exciting reasons to hate it :) Or just this post.

Does it matter what time of day it is or visibility? Anti-Ks really don't do anything for you during the day... at night in clouds or fog they're going to light up the entire area around you and make you even more noticable...

Sad but true. Not all of it is classified, but it's almost impossible to sort out what is and what isn't. Almost all of our theory books for the AN/APG-70 is wrapped up inside a Secret TO. Even knowing the system inside and out I can't specify what is and isn't classified about it. I know a few things, but for all I know certain modes of operation are classified which give it capabilities Russians would drool over. Well, Russians 25 years ago, maybe. I've heard this expressed a few times, I personally don't get it. There's next to nothing in terms of games that approach those weapons with anything more than a console gamer's moronic mentality (see: HAWX) so those don't count, whereas the whole dakka-dakka-dakka WW2 approach to air combat and dive bombing is so insipid, repetitive and dull I swear I will never play a WW2 flight sim ever again... I guess something like the F4 is a compromise, but I personally prefer the modern theater as the larger variety of bombs gives you a lot more options in mission design and execution, whereas in an F4.... what, you have iron bombs, some rudimentary CBUs, and napalm. Hey, don't be so mean - F-15Es have all kinds of exciting and new parts inside them :) We just haven't gotten our fancy new AESA radars yet... :( F/A-18Cs probably don't though, because that's the only way I can imagine that insipid, hateful little thing - terrible even under the avionics panels.

+1, looks good to me. PS: Please don't tell me that picture reflects your acceptance of 16:9 ratios on PCs... RAGEARGHABLRHGH

Doesn't that usually involve a breaker bar and an angry scowl?

I have a question - I was doing the Smerch hunt and, as I normally do, brought up the WP page, typed in 'SMERCH 1' and hit the LSK to make a new waypoint, then typed in the appropriate information. Good to go. I went on and hit 'SMERCH 2', hit the button for a new WP, typed in the information, but it ended up making a WP called 'SMERCH 3'. The next time I did this I ended up with like SMERCH 6. By the time the mission was over I had something like SMERCH 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12. The 'missing' numbers didn't exist anywhere. What the hell?

While the content of this thread is old, I for one would like to see this, or at least future DCS modules expand the failures Rainmaker described. We both do the exact same job - he's 100% correct. For those reading the thread, one thing that wasn't brought up by him was that Speed kept throwing around this "200 hours" number - 200 hours is a very, very long time in ANY aircraft, especially a military aircraft. While the CADC failure rate was excessive and has been fixed, I can safely say that yes - all displays - to include the HUD and MFCDs, are almost guaranteed to break by then. When you suffer display failures you can have bad color channels (annoyance), it could be slightly crunched (annoyance), it could randomly blink off and on (annoyance)... these are all failures, but would be reported as Code 2 more often than not. Unfortunately due to time and budget constraints we couldn't get all these kinds of failures modeled. BTW: There's talk in here about 'preventive maintenance' - sorry folks but as far as avionics goes there's pretty much zero preventive maintenance. We only really have two kinds of fails - internal or external to parts, and if it's external that means wiring, and that means it's going to take a while. What little there is we can do (RFTLTS cables) we probably don't even have time for because there's 4-page recaps coming out of debrief of pilots who set up their IFF wrong and wrote up 5 Code 3s for 'No reply on Mode C'. **** YOU IT WORKS FINE, LERN 2 FLY.

It's a lot more realistic to have A-10s flying in Georgia shooting at the Russian Army. Even though none of that has ever happened. Would you prefer Afghanistan, where you realistically just fly around shooting at infantry who can't even fight back? Because you do realize the moment you put Russian tanks in it it's ridiculous and "disappointing", because it's completely fictitious again... right?

:puke: Oh god, not this again. Considering no American forces have ever even been deployed to Georgia yet you're content to shoot Russians by flying out of an airbase there, I don't see how shooting Russians in Nevada is any different. In one theater, there's Russians in real life yet zero American forces. In the other theater, there's American forces in real life, but zero Russian forces. So who gives a crap?

+1 If the aircraft is truly stealth with a miniscule RCS, yeah, ECM wouldn't be that necessary as the stealth features will do most of the heavy lifting, but this aircraft doesn't seem to be really that stealthy, certainly not with those engines and the inlet design. It may be LO at best, in which case an ECM suite would be a great help. Between the landing gears and the 'missile bays'... what exactly holds the wings on? Cutting big hollow holes for both of those doesn't leave a lot of structure for the front 2/3rds of the wing faring to handle much stress... I still think it's just an actuator housing. I just don't see any way there could be enough room - we can't see any actuator housing for the leading-edge flaps, nor for the inlet ducts, and putting actuators in there would work for both of them - it's in the right spot, at least. If it was an opening bay, that means you have to have two actuators for that as well, and that's a lot of stuff to move around. If it is an internal bay, I'd be thoroughly impressed, that's for sure.

I imagine this is typically because the average 'air mission' isn't performed with extremely vital goals in mind. Most of the sorties over Libya were to hit vehicular targets of opportunity, so in the big picture the heavy lifting, when we went in there and dropped a single bomb through every HAS at their airfields, counted for very few numbers of sorties, but neutralizing an entire airfield completely and thoroughly was an immense strategic victory - no possibility of planes. It took one mission to do that, and a hundred more missions to plink away at tanks. But the point of a dynamic campaign is to entertain the player and if that means consolidating the 'interesting' missions, then so be it. Only a complete tool would want a super-realistic flying sim that involves orbiting for nine hours waiting for a JTAC to call. And maybe they don't call, and then they fly home. What is that supposed to mean? That a Chinese air campaign would last for the entire war? I seriously doubt that. ANY sort of conflict *will* open with an air war first and foremost, do you agree on this point? The entire reason the F-22 and the B-2 exists is to specifically get in there first and knock out any aircraft in the air and as many aircraft on the ground, and then pop major targets like radar sites and C3 facilities - basically, they exist for executing the first blow. Do you have a better reason for the massive investment in stealth technology? Aircraft are limited assets, and airfields are even more limited, and the best part is we know where they all are. Unlike in WW2 you can't really just plop one anywhere you have a flat strip of land. No country on earth could ever replace modern aircraft fast enough to make up for how quickly they will be lost, so yes, an air war will be 'who runs out of planes first'. And it won't be the US. We have an entire desert full of airframes, many of which are intended to be put back together if they're needed. If we are talking actual combat on Chinese or Russian soil, the air war would be quick, brutal, and bloody. If we're talking limited engagement in a third-party country, you would certainly have only losses on each side as much as commanders permitted them, but that's really stirring the pot as far as possibilities go.

Yes, obviously whatever aircraft you are *not* flying should have roles taken up by the AI, but you just spent 10k words going off about supply and logistics, so let's consider the possibility that you don't have those assets available, namely because the AI is only going to be so smart no matter how much ED invests in it and it's extremely likely to get completely shot down. So your plan is to give a dynamic campaign that's not tailored to A-10s and suddenly you're getting missions that are completely unwinnable, being put into situations no A-10 would ever be put, and the entire thing gets rather ridiculous. Any campaign needs to be tailored to 'win win win' as long as you successfully accomplish your goals. Failing to fully complete them should provide the fudge factor for enemies to win - for example, taking out tanks before they run over a FOB - if you don't destroy enough in time, you lose the FOB and the enemy gets stronger there. The most irritating part of any game is failure due to factors complete out of your control, and this is exponentially frustrating if it's because of failures of the AI. It's already possible to watch SEAD flights get shot down by the very things they're supposed to destroy, how well do you think an AI's management of a war could possibly be? Do you even remember what started this? The original point was whether or not a single flight of aircraft could ever have a dramatic impact on a war. I said yes even if it's not immediately apparent, others said no and based that logic off of how ineffective individuals in WW2 were in aircraft, and I pointed out that that doesn't compare due to the general ineffectiveness of air warfare in WW2 in general. It's apples and oranges. It's like comparing modern infantry operations to the Civil War, it really just looks like we had no idea what the hell we were doing back then. Our entire air war doctrine has changed since then and our immediate strategic goals are nowhere close to what they were in WW2. I don't think anyone can say that X modern aircraft scales to Y WW2 aircraft like it's some sort of golden ratio across the board - because it isn't. There's so many factors in play, and so much has changed over the years. I can see where you're coming from but it's really just speculation, neither you or I are in any position to be able to accurately judge this. I can only go off my experience working on modern military aircraft that these things are, as far as a war goes, completely irreplaceable. Again, the problem with strategic targets in WW2 (bomb this factory) was not only was it really hard to accomplish that goal (getting the bombs on the factory, and actually managing to destroy it were two different things), but the goal was a minor victory as it was possible to retool just about any factory into something to make tank parts, because that's what everything in Germany was practically doing at the time. The real difference here is that I don't think the US, or Russia, or China would even waste bombs destroying Honeywell's avionics parts plant in Kansas City, because they all know that any war will be fought with the assets immediately on-hand - starting production to maintain losses in a war simply isn't feasible like it was in WW2. Our strategic goals and the way we conduct air warfare are so distant that drawing parallels requires extremely tenuous logic. Huh? You would have to tailor any kind of dynamic campaign to the aircraft it's being played under, because every aircraft has completely different roles. Of all the aircraft that could and would participate in the opening of a modern conflict, the A-10 will not be one of them. Any kind of A-10 dynamic campaign will have to operate under the assumption that a war has been going on for a while. Likewise, an F-15C or F-22 conflict will have to take place during the opening of the war, because these aircraft have little to no use (especially the F-15C...) once the air war has been won. Helicopters and the like would come even further down the road than A-10s. The ground forces are not going to move where they don't have air cover, and A-10s and KA-50s are designed to specifically support and engage ground targets only. I think what confuses me the most though is that you keep enforcing this idea that this 'campaign' is going to feature symmetrical forces when, in your first post, you openly stated the balance of power is firmly in the hands of the West. As long as we're flying USAF aircraft, odds of losing this dynamic campaign are going to be pretty damn low.

There aren't any trees in the entire god damn state.

I, to this date, have yet to suffer a CADC failure :P

Only time I've ever seen a dumb bomb carried was for training, usually the big blue duds, sometimes lives. Wartime it's JDAMs and Paveways all the way. Very rarely will we fly live PGMs for range training. VERY rarely.

Elmendorf and Lakenheath spring to mind. We have an entire forest on Lakenheath. There's a bajillion Rooks all around, I'm amazed we don't have bird strike problems. Never seen one at this base, maybe they're smart enough to avoid the runway.