PFunk1606688187

This has quickly become an object lesson in how approaching use of the A-10C from a single weapon, single mode perspective ahead of a full understanding of the way to use the systems as a whole correctly will lead to problems.

You should be able to bomb at any altitude and get effective results IF you use an appropriate release method. There's nothing that says you need to use CCRP and Level Straight Through with LGBs. Certainly lower release altitude creates a harder problem to solve and isn't ideal for learning to use LGBs, but I don't think there's any reason it can't work, its just more challenging.

Missing by 30-40m seems like a pretty normal margin if you're dropping in CCRP and failing somehow to lase it properly. Track for sure.

HOTAS Speedbrake Switch Aft/Forward.

Are you lasing the target?

I see myself as a child staring back at me....

You're speculating. You have no reason to say that based on current information. If anything the current allegations go so far as to characterize the General's comments as being not related to security and instead to the notion that its treason for Air Force service personnel to say things to Congress that subverts their budget priorities, which is clearly not treason in a legal sense. This is based on whats been allegedly said. There's no allegation to characterize things as being the General concerned that service members are giving secrets away.

I'm not seeing anything Fox News is saying contradicted in other similar reports by sources that are harder to ape on. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/air-force-probing-alleged-treason-remark-general-28553046

The article definitely has its ax to grind, and while I agree with its overall message its clearly slanted on one side of the issue and really mostly speaks to the choir. The bit about redefining CAS dishonestly feels a bit off to me. Seems more like the author should have pointed out all the dishonest bureaucratic methods used to divest the A-10 of its role on the battlefield, such as how its missions are recorded to skew statistics on its use or denying the option to request A-10s even if they're on the field. There's clearly a campaign by the Air Force to manipulate the image of things to favour removing the airframe, but I think the article misses the mark somewhat in how it goes about identifying this. Still, hard to argue with the tone too much. It rings true even if the facts are a bit off.

I find that with the A-10C you don't need more than a handful of shift state items. You don't use enough things off of the HOTAS controls often enough to really justify it and it takes forever to remember those bindings if you don' t use them constantly. What I find far more useful is freeing up the keyboard as a CDU and using the numpad as a UFC. With the saitek profiler you have to use keystrokes to take advantage of shift states which makes rebinding things laborious. If you want to change a key bind you have to rebind it, then rebind the profiler as well. With just pure joy button output you rebind the joy button and leave it at that. The Saitek profiler is very powerful for sure but I also think its not really needed for DCS, not with the A-10C. Like I said its only useful to me for turning the mouse nub, the slider, and the scroll wheel into things that can output key strokes. Beyond that I don't have a need really to shift every key on the stick and throttle and so the DCS shift state is perfectly usable. I'd just as soon press a key on my keyboard, which is now very easy because I don't have my joystick bound to keystrokes anymore and so the keyboard is like a whole extra peripheral now available to bind to things you rarely use. Reach with my left hand just like you would for a switch in the real aircraft. The other thing is I don't like using a shift button on my stick because it disturbs my control of the aircraft, which matters to me because I don't fly on autopilot like most people. :music_whistling:

I don't even use the Saitek profiler shift state. I use a DCS modifier as my shift state with the throttle clutch button as my modifier. This has the benefit of allowing me to use purely joy button bindings rather than key stroke bindings which makes it easier to remap the entire keyboard for the purpose of CDU/UFC utility. It also means I get to use my pinkie button identically to how its used in the real aircraft. I probably only have about a half dozen actual keys bound to my saitek profile such as where I use bands to output keystrokes on the mouse nub, the slider, and the scroll wheel. I think overall thats a better strategy than using the profile itself.

Are you actually suggesting that they compromise the realism of the sim in order to handicap people who don't know how to use it? :huh:

This is all academic. You don't need super secret documents to create a model for EW. Physics is physics. The only thing thats secret is the absolute capabilities of real systems, their interactions with one another, and the specific details like actual frequencies and all that. The actual methods used in things such as countermeasures or seeker head tracking, and the physical laws that go with them, are not secret themselves. Its based on math and that can't be kept secret. There's more than enough info to make a reasonable model of it, you'll just never be able to make it absolutely realistic to a degree where it mimics real life systems without that documentation, but then again so much of DCS isn't realistic anyway, even with relevant information declassified. We don't care do we? Air to ground ordnance is far from realistic but we use it anyway. Mk82s don't have their real fuzing options. We don't have fragmentation effects. The accuracy of Mk82AIRs is iffy. Etc. We know more about that specific weapon than we do about specific EW devices but we can play our little sim games with them anyway. Secret documents are overrated. The Infrared & Electro-Optical Systems Handbook. Countermeasure Systems, Volume 7

Set slider to bands. Set 0-10% to output the keystroke to zoom out. Set 90-100% to zoom in. This way you avoid the issues of spiking in the pot. Need another button for reset FOV to default as well. Make sure the profile is loaded ie. active.

Actually that phrase originated as a propaganda slogan during the first months of the United States entering WW2 and was basically a public relations cover for the extraordinary incompetence the US Navy showed in addressing the U-boat threat that ended up sinking an extremely high volume of shipping on the American Eastern seaboard. The irony is that loose lips sank no ships. There is no evidence suggesting intelligence derived from American sources aided U-boats in any way during that period. The Germans needed no help at that time. But that doesn't change how significant restricted info is.

I don't think its fake, but there are things I can't answer that the doubters suggested.

Craigslist is your friend.

I've seen people exclaim that a video of a Syrian tank shooting at a camera is fake because you can never see tank shells ever because they all fly at 25000 feet per second. The authority with which people speak is incredible. Kinda embarrassed that I know some of those people commenting though. Oh PR community....

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA566236 No, I'm not going to jail.

Comments section on that article is painful to read.

When you call your girlfriend/mom/applicable-female Bitchin' Betty.

Bad form.

We don't have proper data on a lot of things. We do have knowledge of the general way things work in various forms. Thats enough to create an approximation. We don't even need to know exactly how everything interacts, we just need the net effect. Our countermeasures in DCS are basically just a random dice roll based on certain limited parameters. I don't see why that would be acceptable but an equivalent (but more fleshed out) EW model wouldn't be. Basically our missiles and our countermeasures aren't like the real ones, not even close. They do however approximate certain parameters and the ultimate goal is to create an approximation of the capabilities and the force balance. We don't know how IR missiles reject flares but we have a way of guessing it (probably badly) that allows us to simulate the ability to shake a missile. These are not strictly realistic, but they are realistic in the sense that the pilot is faced with the same abstract challenges and problems to solve in the battlespace. Ultimately large scale study sims, when looking beyond the individual single user aircraft experience, are about just that, approximating the problems and where possible allowing us to use realistic solutions. There is no realistic modern battlespace without EW.

Not to be too harsh, but thats basically the antithesis of good pilot habits. Scanflow of all instruments is essential and in the A-10 at least the HUD is not a primary instrument. As such the core 5 instruments embedded in the centre of the front console are positioned specifically to aid the scanflow during high stress piloting situations such as low vis approach. The HUD is certainly a factor but when it comes to basic visual or instrument approaches situational awareness is gained more from the instruments than just looking outside. Visual you want to blend what you see with what your instruments tell you, but in zero vis there's nothing for you but the instruments. Good habits during good vis mean that when you find yourself 5 miles out on final in grey slop with no runway in sight you aren't struggling to find the info you need to stay 'on the wire'. As for height that should be a universal. 3 degree glideslope for any given distance is always the same. Its 300 feet per nautical mile. 5 mile final is 1500 feet, 10 mile final is 3000 feet, etc. Thats simple enough to cross check with your DME. For calculations the sink rate is the only actively important variable (assuming you won't be or already have calculated approach speed based on GW) that should be different for any given approach or part of an approach since it varies based on speed which the final approach speed itself varies based on stall speed which is based on aircraft gross weight and configuration. Now all those instruments we have such as the HUD with TVV and the AoA indexer allow us to 'cheat' and bypass the need to do math to find and fly to our correct position on an approach. Thats a good cheat because it lowers pilot workload and allows him to focus. However that doesn't dismiss the need to have the ability to do it without them. Thats whats called a "sanity check" most commonly. Real commercial aircraft use sophisticated GPS/INS autopilots that can fly very accurate flight paths but pilots routinely dial in the VOR and NDB radials and display them on the moving map or instruments to cross check them as a good habit and to ensure that the autopilot is functioning as instructed. There are aspects of combat flying that deny the ability to cross check instruments such as NOE flying or certain tactical formation situations but in general during approach to landing instrument scanflow is a primary concern. My best advice for getting good at it is to switch the HUD to Stanby and fly without any of that green stuff. Its a whole new way to look at things and it'll make you a better pilot for it.

Well with those force sensing sticks in the likes of the F-16 they have a small amount of play but I imagine they recenter if released. For the A-10C it basically works like those old force feedback sticks. Its slack til you turn the engines on then as you trim the stick it physically moves through its travel. If an aircraft is using direct linkages then the stick should mirror the positioning of the ailerons and elevators. Much of the time this system is augmented by hydraulic systems, like the A-10. If its using FBW but with an artificial feel, ie. not force sensing, then thats a computer position to mimic the same effect as a linked system. Those would then be 100% hydraulic or electrically actuated surfaces. Helos tend to be a lot more complicated. I don't pretend to understand it enough to comment.