PFunk1606688187

Which is unfortunate because most people who sim a lot and don't just stop playing a sim after a few months know that the harder stuff becomes far more engrossing as time goes on. Those people also know how discouraging it is when you realize that those same hard things are harder than real life because they're broken. Goddamned JDAMs.

Put a radar on top of the rotors where it belongs. Give it a modern RWR. Give it a proper fire and forget weapon.

I read something about tracers possibly being used very early in the A-10 testing because at the time they were testing the GAU-8 as well. This would count as before LASTE, but what I recall reading almost certainly would have been before front line deployment and definitely not in combat. @Mastiff - Are you hitting the target and seeing no round effects, or are you missing and unable to tell by how much? Certainly when the GAU hits something you should see an effect. If you're missing an air target then you're not going to see much because you missed and you don't get to see the rounds impact the ground because its not there. How far are you typically shooting from?

The second one you bolded appears to indicate that they fixed the CDU's wind direction. Does this mean that CDU winds are read as blowing from now? With respect to the first bolded item, again, I repeat my question, wtf did they fix with the LASTE wind page? I mean, there's no explanation from them as to what we're supposed to use it for, and no explanation as to what was fixed or was previously broken. New item for the wish list: more explanatory patch notes. :P

See this is where I detect your own prejudices colouring the conversation. I never said China was omnipotent, I just said that cyber warfare posed a credible threat. You're comparing me to the government too. Lots of tasty generalization there. Direct action, kinetic engagements, are so costly politically, economically, and militarily, not to mention that ever looming nuclear threat, that a softer alternative that is harder to use as a lightning rod for war should become more and more of a clandestine tool. I don't think China is omnipotent, but I do think that security systems are limited in the long run, that anything can be broken, and that China's been very effective so far at breaching classified information. That is by far the most positive spin I've ever seen put on the US's crumbling infrastructure. How does it go, the US is a first world nation with a third world power grid? But I digress. Good, we finally get to the "Im an expert, and you're not" argument so prevalent on the internet. I'm not going to give you specific examples, but you're not listening to half of what I say anyway. Like the part about attacking non military things to create an economic impact or whatever other kinds of attacks you can make to target less secure data. Look at what happened to the markets briefly when somebody hacked the AP's twitter feed and reported explosions at the White House. With our whole society linked in you can be awfully creative in finding vulnerabilities. I also think your treatise on the next total war is itself as vague if not more so than anything I've said about cyber warfare. You keep making comparisons to Nazi Germany and Soviet mass production strategies, but those political and economic systems are defunct. Nazi Germany's late war ideological drive towards superior tech was part of mad Hitler's scheme, but was also a function of a hopeless situation with an industrial capacity which was degrading daily. Comparisons between Germany's end game and the US make no sense. However, if we were to give it another go, looking at Germany at the outset of the war their technological superiority in many fields was significant. Superiority of tech is nothing to scoff at, and it was only as the German situation degenerated that its development took on a desperate tone. Conversely, the Soviet reliance on basic utilitarian tech was a product of their own dysfunctional situation, not the least of which was a tactical inferiority owing to officer purges and a reliance on overwhelmingly superior manpower as a weapon on its own. It wasn't just T-34s that made up the Soviet strategy, it was a wholesale mass strategy. Human bodies as much as tanks were sacrificed in scores, even if they didn't have the equipment for them, especially because they didn't. Your supposition that an attempt to create a production model with the best tech is a failure to conceive of the expendability of your own pilots is just wonky. Even against pathetic inferior opponents, everytime the US has fielded aircraft they've lost some, they know its going to happen. To want to make your pilots, or soldiers, or crewmen, as invulnerable as possible is a good thing, it means they can kill more people before they die. The kill ratio I've read for the German Tiger Tank was something in the range of 10:1. The gun had better range, it had better penetration, and it was armored such that it was only through numbers that the laughably inferior Sherman could outmaneuver it to get kills. It wasn't the Tiger Tank that was the problem. The funny thing about the US is that they make more advanced aircraft for themselves and NATO than Russia or China can right now. All heavily advanced Russian aircraft are numerically inferior to similar American aircraft, and the numbers keep getting worse. The US is going to do two great things at once. Produce one of the most advanced aircraft in history, and produce a lot of them. Lets not forget the fact that its widely accepted that had the Germans had a better industrial situation their wonder weapons could in actual fact have had a profound effect on the outcome of the war, even if in the end they would have lost. It wasn't the tech, it was the timing. EDIT. At the moderator. I'll drop the cyber warfare stuff. Above post is the last I'll post about it.

Right, well thats why I always quote the people I'm directly replying to. Whoops.

I suspect you're wrong. ;)

WW1 was unstoppable because of a chain of guarantees that bound nations, and because nobody knew how war would be fought. We are very aware of our guarantees now, we are aware of the likely outcomes, and unlike WW1 we spent most of the late 20th century guarding against it. To assume that because we didn't have a war we're due for one doesn't track logically because you're assuming all those near misses in the cold war don't count, like we weren't then actively avoiding the same thinking that lead into WW1 without any awareness of what it would mean. Your argument that cyber warfare is overrated is kind of silly too. The notion that we can have world spanning networks that facilitate our expansive way of life but that none of them are vulnerable... is absurd. Hacking hasn't stopped being effective, they just basically made it impossible for you to get away with it anonymously for the most part, unless you're hiding in a country like China. Secondly, you assume that having a power grid go down for a few hours isn't damaging. If you could attack a critical system only for a few hours you could open a window for exploitation. In war opportunities are fleeting. Those you create especially. Also, you underestimate the potential of a cyber attack being effective in a non military sense, but instead in a strategic economic sense. Attack the nation without risking anything militarily, you bypass the nuclear deterrent because you're not engaging in outright conflict. If anything its one of the safest ways to fight a war these days. Lastly, you ignore the whole "Iran hacked our drone" thing. Oh yea, the future still has much hope for an enormous nation encompassing total war, but we won't be using networked systems that are vulnerable to an attack. Of course not. I mean, its not like every aircraft doesn't have datalinking or anything. No, hacking our networks isn't a problem in the future war. Lets of course not forget the thing of how Israel destroyed Iranian nuclear technology by planting a virus in some firmware. It doesn't need to be networked to still be vulnerable. Meanwhile you assert that the same people who have our critical infrastructure locked down are incompetents who you have no faith in when it comes to guarding classified material or handling malware infections, but apparently those same people are going to keep us safe when it comes to other critical systems. I don't understand. Are they incompetent or not? And lastly, if the F-22 and F-35 are compromized, so what? What do you propose you base your defenses on then? Its not like that knowledge is going to be different if you re-engineer a different aircraft. 5th Gen tech will still rely on the F-35 and F-22 as a basis, as does any and all technological development in any sphere rely on whats been already discovered. Also, NATO's traditional adversaries have always stolen their tech. Its not a new idea. Every military has stolen better tech, going back to the Romans and before that. Its awfully facile to just make some broad comparisons to WW1 and act like its the same. Economically the world is so different you need a stronger thesis than that to predict global total war that will somehow avoid the MAD concepts that held us back from the brink for so many years after 1945.

There's a difference though between people miscalculating in the past and that making it a rule for the future. I'm sure many veterans of the civil war thought that typical rank and file musket lines were a thing of the past once the smarter soldiers who'd been around started doing things like running from cover to cover then going prone, or once breastworks defeated the notion of the stand off fight in the final part of Grant's Overland campaign, but alas the lessons weren't learned fully until WW1, though the writing was on the wall a half century earlier. Also take note of the fact that total war hasn't happened since WW2 but not for lack of effort on the part of the great powers to get themselves face to face with the prospect of one. No matter the amount of technological superiority of modern fighter aircraft or aircraft carriers or the superior numbers of Soviet tank battalions standing ready to swarm the Fulda gap, war could not happen, despite numerous face offs that easily could have lead to it. It wouldn't even take a full total war to begin. The world would be over in a few minutes, so where's the total war? The closest thing was the Soviets trying to keep up with American arms but even then that doesn't count because the Soviet Union couldn't impose on its own people the same harsh wartime restrictions that most nations dealt with during WW2. The Cold War is proof enough for me that total war likely won't happen, and if it did it would be clear fairly quickly who would win or lose and the loser would just resort as early as possible to a nuke strike because thats his only hope, short of an unlikely ignoble surrender to preserve the world. The most notable engagements since WW2 have been with non-parity power, wars between proxies, asymmetrical wars against opponents with no sophisticated thermonuclear deterrent, and fast burning wars where the middle tier militaries of poor Generals in the Middle East were quashed in a week or less. The startling and emphatic result of the 6 day war should prove that quality over quantity goes to the Israelis and their "make do with what you got" mentality, and by making do we mean honing their inferior numbers into a superior war machine capable of striking fast and early against an opponent before their mass numbers can inflict attrition upon them. Even in the potential future conflicts of 21st century industrialized nations, the idea of a traditional full scale engagement seems unlikely. Like I said, cyber war is where the edge likely would come from. Even if we consider drones as something of a game changer, the fact that Iranians could hack a state of the art Stealth drone and steal it ought to be proof enough that if Iran could do it, imagine what China could do, the same China that's known to have stolen an enormous bulk of data on the JSF program and possibly used it to jump start their own. Who needs total war? Who's economy are you going to go against? Our economies are inter-linked. We share economic interests like never before, and if most war is about that, what is actually to be gained by bombing each other into oblivion?

I don't know how you're gonna miss by a mile when you should be firing from 0.7 miles slant range. :P

The question of efficiency is not a fixed concept. Efficiency exists in many different ways depending on your mindset or priorities. As much as the USAF keeps trying to kick the A-10 to make budgetary room for other things, if they had unlimited money and no constraints on what they'd like to have I'm sure they'd be content to keep it onboard, and up to date. So whats efficient? Maintaining multiple training bases to support multiple airframes which individually are incapable of supporting the full spectrum of envisioned 5th generation doctrine in whichever hot war could happen with a near-parity opponent is not really efficient in the modern paradigm of American budgetary constraints. The problem of superiority through mass production is that its a wartime concept. The Soviets emerged as contenders in WW2 because it was a total war scenario. The full scale of every economy at the time was focused into production for the war effort. This is hardly the case in our world. Fact is I'd be very surprised if a total war were ever to occur again, at least between 1st world economies. The biggest threat for the future seems to be cyber attacks, the ability to target a nation's infrastructure, be it civilian or military, as the opening blow in whatever conflict is to follow. Total war doesn't occur in hours, it takes years. How many wars have lasted years that weren't asymmetrical since Korea? If you look at the way the Israelis have fought you can't exactly call their tactics ones of treating their men as expendable. If anything the Israelis have shown that the small elite army mindset is superior to the cold war Soviet centralized drone concept. The issues of the Nazi defeat at the hands of the Allies is one of economics. If Germany had a competitive economy combined with its technology, not to mention the manpower to sustain losses, it would have been a different war. Comparisons in this sense are meaningless. The US is not Nazi Germany. The conditions aren't the same nor will the next conflict mirror them. The world changed after WW2 and for more reasons than just Nukes. The world economy is so interconnected that nations willing to commit to full scale total war would be committing to a war for the scraps of our entire way of life. They'd be victors of a broken world economy that would take generations to fix, because destroying China or Russia or America or the EU would deplete the markets they sell to. Globalization isn't exactly an environment where one can immolate the enemy as was case the in WW2. Wars are now fast, flurries of blows between adversaries trained to the sharpness of a samurai sword. Its really like a samurai duel really. Two quick blows, barely any chance to parry, and death for one or the other. Its not going to last long enough for reinforcements to come in. The troops will probably be needed to keep the domestic population from rioting over the disaster that is their economy as much as they'll be needed for occupation. I think most weapons development now is a case of checking the enemy, just to ensure that if he gets any ideas about it, he can be assured that its a dead end going hot. Its like MAD with the Soviets. Only a madman would entertain the notion of playing the scenario out, but as long as you have something seriously superior?... maybe... maybe I can try it. Thats not even accounting for the corrupting effect of the arms industry's need to exist perverting the analysis of a nation's need for arms. Too often when selling us a new weapon we hear about all the jobs that would be created, or lost. This is all moot anyway. Who exactly is going to outproduce the US on advanced tech right now, even with shrinking of the forces?

That'd be funny wouldn't it. The future of fighter aircraft combat is a return to WW2 with close in knife fights. Those crazy Russians. For the sake of my own entertainment, I hope they're right.

I can believe the FC3 A-10 not having the HUD cues, but I'd imagine that in the DCS World engine you should be just as able to see the rounds impact during a gun run, as long as you're firing within the normal range.

KISS has always been a favourite concept of those concerned with designing robust systems capable of surviving and even functioning after being punctured with lots of high velocity chunks of metal. :thumbup:

I'm pretty sure the real A-10 never had any tracers outside of training or early in development. Also, the HUD is supposed to have predictive 'O' shaped markers to demonstrate where the rounds should be hitting according to the computers, at least on the C it does. Tracers serve no practical purpose and would only be a hazard to the aircraft which is already dangerously close to enemies as it attempts its safe escape maneuver. This thread seems to confirm this. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=74623

I say this in every thread, but zoom your FOV a bit when scanning. Default FOV is not realistic. Zooming more accurately represents what a human would be able to see unassisted in real life. Its not even cheating because it creates such tunnel vision that its less efficient and a bit disorienting compared to normal human panoramic vision, but still better than seeing nothing.

Jammers don't work, preventative chaff/flare doesn't work. No wonder people learn to fly the A-10 by CCRP bombing targets with JDAMs at 20 000 staring through the SA killing TGP.:cry:

Gathering news on ED is like being an investigative journalist. You're a fool if you stop digging at the White House press release.

I would think exactly that? There's no doubt lots of mechanical and hydraulic what not happening inside the plane, and it would be interesting to see the design of how the system resets to exactly zero, but otherwise I think that there isn't likely much more to it The A-10 isn't a complicated airplane when it comes down to it. For the maintainers, probably a lot more complicated than for the pilot, but still, relatively straight forward I think. However, if there is more to it, I'd love to know.

The bomblet release alt being the pipper point for me seems troublesome if its not wind corrected. With a height of function at 3000 a parachute has the potential to drift pretty far. It would be fascinating to see what the real system is supposed to function like and then compare it to what we have. In general CCIP still has a lot of quirks in it, which is unfortunate as I suspect many of them will go unfixed.

Anything to do with the locking of Anti Air systems is kind of murky and uncertain in this game, certainly a lot of real life logic seems to inapplicable. Of course it would be simple enough to make a mission where you fly through the edge of an Igla's range without and then with a preventative program and see what happens.

I just want to know how they would manage to hide this thing from budgetary oversight. Even before sequestration this would be one pricey hombre, and with no Cold War threat... I have a hard time believing such a project could even survive its own internal culture.

There. He's said it. Clear, unambiguous warning that its nowhere near completion. This is about as good as ED PR gets.

Cheers.

Default FOV in game does not represent real human visual acuity. It doesn't even represent complete peripheral vision, unless you have a band of monitors wrapping around your desk. If you were to set your in game FOV to allow you to see everything a human can peripherally you'd be completely incapable of reading the instruments. Even default FOV makes reading the HUD on most typical resolutions difficult. Achieving a believable clarity of HUD symbology as well as ground objects leads to a tight FOV thats almost impossible to fly with, but allows for effective spotting. This is before we get into zooming beyond this FOV to achieve binocular levels of magnifications. Whats more, to achieve the kind of zoom that binoculars would give a pilot involves editing game files to increase the max FOV you can achieve.