esb77

Random in DCS Su-25T trivia. Supersonic dives, while possible, are not recommended. It can pull over 7 g if you stay below 1000m, and if you plan on dogfighting you really should try to stay below 1500m. Vikhrs destroy tanks nicely but just scratch the paint on AH-1s and AH-64s, so try not to duel anyone carrying hellfires. One engine and half your hydraulic power are optional. Before continuing your mission with 50% hydraulic pressure (your choice of 100% on one half or 50% on both sides) make sure that the leaking has stopped. Ok gear configurations for landing: No gear. Nose only All gear. Not ok gear configurations for landing: Rear gear only. Nose and one rear gear. If an engine is on fire turn it off before the plane explodes. When returning to base from a mission where you took fire remember that the braking chutes are normally the first thing that get shot off of the plane. Plan your stopping distance accordingly. Please crash off of the runway and the endmost taxiways.

IR short range SAMs such as: Iglas, Strelas, Stingers, ect. are really the bane of low level strike aircraft like the Su-25 and A-10. The planes are built for low level attacks with visual targeting, and the MANPADS and similar systems make doing what they're meant to do very dangerous. Longer range radar SAMs and fighters are deadly of course, but if your side is adequately equipped and trained someone else should either have already cleared these out, or at the very least be keeping them busy enough so that they don't have much time to pay attention to the strike package. So if you exclude the suicide missions you have three general sort of situations that are reasonably likely. WWIII High threat, high casualty, but the opposition should be somewhat disorganized and if you're careful and lucky you should be able to get in, wreak havoc on ground targets and get out again. Don't expect your luck to last long though. Air dominance including long range SAM suppression/elimination. MANPAD and AAA rich. This is the common 3rd world fly high scenario. You need clear weather and you're not going to be very efficient with munitions, but you drop stuff from high altitudes until you hit what you want to hit. Lots of collateral damage is likely if you're not flying the variants with upgraded avionics that let you use the longer range standoff munitions. Total dominance, no real air defense. MANPADS are rare or mostly non-functional. Fly in and destroy targets until you run out of payload. There are intermediate scenarios too. Say an emergency strike in a MANPAD rich environment on a day with a low cloud deck. Good planning and excellent flying might work, but you shouldn't be a really happy pilot when this is the assignment. Losing planes and pilots is expensive and replacement is time consuming. If your mission isn't structured to make success probable, then there better be a really good reason for the desperation that drives you to do it. In a general sense the CAS strike aircraft is meant to be really good at destroying armored vehicles, utility vehicles, and tactical targets that don't require a very heavy bomb load to effectively engage. Things like bunkers, airfields, bridges, refineries, power plants, radio/cell towers provided they aren't so big or so fortified that you need a full bomber to take them out.

The grass seems to have some sort of "roughness" or drag coefficient, and even planes that should do well on grass such P-51s and Su-25s tend to get stuck. They'll even get stuck on some types of roads, railbeds, and other surfaces that should be hard enough for most planes to taxi on. While the value of stickiness is clearly a bit off, it is some sort of crude physics model I believe. Things like cycling the throttle and yawing the nose wheel steering can break you free in much the same way you would break a car free from snow, mud or sand. Unfortunately it can also break the landing gear. If you don't want the AI to get you free try rocking the plane, hope the gear doesn't snap, and once it's moving head for the nearest tarmac never letting your speed go below about 20 kts if possible. Don't go much faster either or you might snap it off. Often this will break the steering, but if you can get to a runway most of the time you can shut down and repair.

Lately I've been spending a lot of time in the Mi-8. Most looked forward to in no particular order would be F/A 18C, F/A 18E, Mi-24, and Su-27 family AFM/Clickable. That said, there's a special place in my heart for a Su-25T with a full load inbound underneath the wires at 10 m AGL and 950 km/h IAS.

Currently a lot of those questions wind up on the FC3 Su-25 thread, and the newcomers get confused by conflicting answers about guided missiles and avionics. Some people will get confused no matter how the forums are organized, but splitting up things so that the Su-25 and Su-25T have their own dedicated forums the way the A-10A and A-10C do does make a lot of sense.

The Russian military aircraft builders have a tradition of high speed, high thrust ratio, and short landing strip performance. Given that, it's not all that surprising that the PAK-FA might surpass competitors in those areas. The more interesting question would be, do the design decisions that give performance in those areas come at a cost in terms resources that could have been spent on BVR air combat or multirole capability. It's not a secret that the Russians are good at airframes and engines. It's the information collection and processing and human interface areas where you have to wonder if they're competitive with other countries' defense industries. In short the airframe performance claims might be credible, the avionics claims much less so.

Putting a radar unit on a MANPADS launcher doesn't make sense, because it's probably not going to be man portable after you do that. Putting a receiver for a datalink to other units (which is what that article seems to be about) on a MANPADS launcher is a great way to make it less likely that flying low, fast, and using terrain masking will do any good if trying to counter MANPADS. Basically, they're trying to remove a bunch reaction time during the launch process, and to improve situational awareness of the incoming target's location. Still requires the operator to be ready and have the launcher positioned etc., and I'm sure they put in some sort of manual override (if they didn't they will after the first time it fails disastrously in battle due to failure to link to command and control units). So a big improvement for well trained troops with appropriate support, not so impressive for people sitting under a tree playing cards and having a smoke.

There are mission requirements that you have to complete in order to progress to the next mission in some of the campaigns, and failing to do so can put you in sort of a loop of just a few mission options that are associated with that part of the campaign. As others said there is only one map. Rather like in a real war, you don't get a new map for every battle, you fight over the ground that's there until one side wins or both sides give up. If you're stuck on a loop of a few missions, we can't really help unless you give us the exact name of the mission file or files (correct spelling is important). If we know what missions they are we can fly them and tell you what the completion objective are, or open them up in the mission editor and take a look at the victory conditions. That doesn't work unless we know which missions you're talking about, and your descriptions weren't nearly good enough to be able to tell which missions they were. Get the names of the .miz files of the ones that are giving you trouble, and we should be able to give clearer guidance.

Another tip that will help a great deal for the Su-25T campaign is that you should always look at the briefing map before the mission starts (when you get the briefing and default weapons loadout) and make a careful note of all of the air defense units. Once the mission has started do the same again with the F10 map. There are air defenses that won't show up on either map, but knowing where some of the SAMs are is better than not knowing where any of them are.

From the main load screen go into the options pages and check that your control profile is set to a sim control set. It might be that the tutorial missions are set up so that the mission will automatically put you into sim style control configuration, but for most missions it will go with whatever you have in your controls profile set to in options. I believe that most of the modules are set to have sim mode by default, including the Su-25 and Su-25T.

Or use mission editor to insert a pair of Mi-24s to cover you, if you aren't satisfied with the AI's handling of them then just add a few more. For the most part though a Mi-8 is wasted in a gunship role, it could be more useful carrying cargo. Loading up on the weapons is a sign that your area of operations is in desperate need of being assigned more CAS such as Mi-24, Ka-50, Su-25, Su-25T. For silly fun nothing beats 6 S-8 pods or 4 S-8 pods and 2 12.7 mm gun pods. You really shouldn't be carrying troops in that case though.

As far as the A-10 launch warning system goes, it's looking for blackbody radiation characteristic of a certain range of heats that are typically found in rocket/missile motor exhausts. I think I read somewhere that it's some portion of the UV range of the spectrum (makes sense if a rocket exhaust is hotter than 'white hot' metals). Meaning that any object that is hot enough, large enough, and close enough will generate a signal. Also anything that emits EM of the right frequency, such as perhaps electrical arcs. Makes me wonder, anyone know if it registers lightning as missile launches in real life?

After AFM for SU-27 or SU-33 hits, you might try: About 3000m alt. 407 km/h IAS, throttle set to 85% rpm. Rapid stick back to max pitch, achieving anywhere from 90 to 130 degrees positive pitch. Then nose down and exit, exit speed probably at something like 154 km/h. That's for a two seat SU-27. Values would change a bit for other variants. My understanding is that for overriding the software AoA limits in the real thing you just pull harder on the stick. On the order of something like 300-400 Newtons of force on the stick. Assuming that I'm not confusing the Su-27 AoA override with the Mig-29 AoA override.

What's your airspeed when this happens? The Mi-8 can develop pitch up problems if you try pushing past Vmax.

It's quite possible that the difference is that other than the Su-25s the FC3 planes don't have advanced flight models. Apart from the aerodynamics, a big chunk of the AFMs is modelling engine and control systems. It'll be interesting to see if the F-15C gets fire extinguishing with its upcoming AFM.

It depends on where you hit it. A rear hit on the hull or a top hit on the turret will destroy a MBT in DCS with one hit, though it may burn for a while before it becomes completely non-functional. Hit the front turret armor and it'll take 3-4 hits to finish it off.

The autopilot makes liberal use of trim when flying the plane, and will trim as much as needed to maintain the programmed auto-pilot mode. It continues to do this until it has been shut off. If you want to exit autopilot in a neutral trim, then you need to switch to a wings level auto-pilot mode and let it stabilize before shutting it off. Note that when I say neutral, I'm talking about a trim position that doesn't cause deviation from straight and level flight. To zero out trim after using auto-pilot you must adjust it manually, at least with the Su-25T. I forget if any of the other FC3 planes have a working Trim Center command or not. Just as a matter of clarity I thought I should point out that when they talk about the AP acting due to stick inputs when you turn it off, the AP will be trying to counteract your stick input to maintain the programmed flight mode, not setting trim to current the stick position as it would in the helicopter modules.

I don't really do air to air in DCS, so I can't speak to special considerations for it. However, there are some things I'm reasonably sure of in terms of general application to missiles in DCS. 1. The AI's are not smart enough to be bluffed or intimidated. So technically there is no such thing a SEAD, and you can only hope to get a delay on missile launch if playing against a human pilot in multiplayer. 2. Engine output and target aspect impact the effectiveness of missiles with IR seekers. Head on at idle they are much easier to spoof with flares than in tail chase at full throttle. 3. Preemptive flare use works fairly well against IR SAMs, possibly because the AI governing the missile is not that good at telling the difference between engines and flares while trying to establish a lock. It doesn't change the range at which AI fires the missile, but with a combination of luck and evasive maneuvers the missile may target a flare instead of one of your engines. Breaking a lock with flares after the missile has been launched doesn't work nearly as well. 4. When launching IR missiles it's best to be in the target's rear quadrant, and at 50% or less of the listed max range. Otherwise it's far to easy for the missile to loose guidance or energy. Suggesting, that possibly the best countermeasure is to work very hard to make sure you don't get shot at from close ranges. At close range, the seeker will tend to be getting a strong signal from whatever sensor type it uses, and the missile will drastically outperform a plane when it comes to competitive high stakes aerobatics. Also this all depends on platform. My understanding is that due to performance differences the Eagle drivers like to be high, fast, and hit targets with AIM-120s from range without shifting to a radar mode that makes Russian RWRs give a launch warning tone (I think it's TWS mode, but I'm not positive). Flanker pilots, fly lower to be near ground clutter, are sneaky, crafty, stealthy, and try to shove a couple of medium range IR missiles up your ass before you even realize they're there. Basically, the Flanker requires some really good piloting to compete with the Eagle in BVR range, and really good piloting is really only countered with better piloting. If the Flanker manages to close to visual range though, the Eagle is often the one in trouble. Frostie from the 51st virtual squadron has a bunch of good posts on air combat on these forums. I'd suggest doing a search by author of the forums and looking at the threads that are related to air combat that he's posted in.

At one point I made a post with advice for beginners, and it had a section on how to taxi with a blown out nosewheel. Usually, runway damage, offroad travel, hard landings, sudden braking at high speed, or sudden turns at high speed are the reasons for nosewheel loss. Losing it during a gentle taxi would be unusual unless the mission is set to have some random aircraft system failures. Though with the sound you describe, it might have been a hydraulics issue rather than a tire failure.

Easier to get in the general area of the target, hard to score a direct hit on the target. CCIP bombing does take a lot of practice, because you need to be in a stable steep dive with the pipper over the target when you hit release. CCRP is better at getting bombs close to a target than a new pilot is, but if the target isn't both large and 'soft' you'll usually need to use ripple release and multiple munitions, because it's not nearly as accurate as a well done CCIP run.

Well, the basic assumption should be that all weapons in DCS are represented inaccurately. For some reason military forces are not especially keen on wide dissemination of detailed and accurate technical specifications of their high end weapons systems. What they did was implement a system where the flight performance of the missiles is based on aerodynamic considerations. You enter parameters like mass, thrust, drag, lift, shape, airspeed, etc. and then the sim calculates how the missile should behave. Not sure what the algorithms were before they put in the aerodynamic model. However, what the parameters are, and how close the steering is to what a real guidance module would do is probably guesswork at best. My guess it that it's closer to reality now than it was before. Barely being able to make a shot at 6 km with a missile that's said to have a 20 km range may seem pretty bad at first, but if you consider that a Su-25T might launch at 450 km IAS and 750 m alt, whereas a Flanker derivative might launch the same missile from 15,000 m alt and Mach 1.5, then a lot of the apparent discrepancy gets accounted for. I do know that in the old system launch platform speed and altitude had much less effect than the should have. Good for high and fast planes, not so good for low and slow planes like the Su-25T. As far as your time to completion, that's mostly unrealistic mission design and execution. You should be flying with at least 3 other planes and all planes piloted by people with years of full time training in combat aviation. Not to mention that you don't have to clear the field, you have to reduce enemy combat effectiveness below a certain threshold quickly, safely, and as efficiently as possible. In some cases that only means destroying or damaging a small fraction of total enemy units. On occasion I've hopped into the mission editor to alter enemy strength, friendly strength, or mission goals to be less wildly irrational for an untrained solo pilot (after all, a lot of times the wingman isn't much use).

So I did some testing with the missiles available to the Su-25T to see how things are after 1.2.7. Summary, the ideal way for an Su-25T pilot to kill short range air defenses now is to sneak onto a Georgian airbase, steal an U.S. A-10C loaded with Mavericks, and use the A-10 to kill the air defenses. The kh-25ML lost close to 50% of it's effective range in the patch, it went from reliable at 12+ km with launch override, to 6-8 km with launch override and extensive prayer. It's about as good (or bad) as the S25-L now. The kh-29s lost about 2 km of range, they're now good to about 9 km. The Vikhrs are still about at 8 km, and feel faster and smoother to me, though that could just be a matter of not having flown the Grach for about 3 months. At this point I'd call the Vikhrs by far the best option for destroying short range air defenses, as they'll minimize the time you spend in their engagement zone prior to the kill. The semi-active laser/eos kh family no longer offer enough standoff range to launch and kill without entering the engagement range of the short range SAMs. They are probably still the best bet for a heavily armored AAA unit such as a Gepard. The bigger warheads will take it out in one shot, instead of requiring multiple launches from a Vikhr. I'd say the changes make the stock campaign for the Su-25T maybe 40% more difficult. There are a ton of short range air defenses in it, and unless you meddle with things in the mission editor, a lot of the missions are daytime ones with heavy cloud layers starting at 1700 - 2000m. The stock loadouts are way to heavy for the amount of time people are going to be spending inside SAM range now. I'm going to have to start telling newcomers to dump most of their ordnance, half their fuel, and fly multiple sorties. Of course, the way to deal with decreased missile performance (and honestly, the kh-25 was almost certainly far more agile than it should have been), is to upgrade pilot performance. A nice thing, as increased pilot performance is compatible with all aircraft systems and all air warfare scenarios.

Well you can already finish off a burning vehicle by hitting it with more damage. Not sure if the cookoff time (in the absence of additional weapons hits that take hp to zero) is really set to a fixed timer or not. I've never done controlled experimentation to measure.

Task the A-10 or the Ka-50 to kill the SHORADs. All three aircraft are well suited to that task, but the Su-25T is significantly better at SEAD of the long range stuff. Use a high and fast or low and fast profile for the SEAD, and if you choose a route with care you've got a decent chance of getting in and out without being hit by the short range stuff. I'd probably try using a kh-25ml rather than a cluster munition. More likely to hit the target and more standoff. Another note, is that Vikhrs are only good for DEAD if you know where all the air defenses are ahead of time. Trust me, you do not want to try to do missile evasion with a rack or two of Vikhrs on the plane. Of course, there's also the consideration of workload. If you're trying to do more than one plane's worth of work, then it should be divided up into multiple sorties if you're flying solo. For instance: Sortie 1 High alt SEAD/DEAD to knock out long range and medium range radar SAMs. Sortie 2 High speed low level flight for short range SAM recon (maybe a clean load of 1800 kg fuel, 2 kh-25MLs and NOTHING else, not even cannon ammo). Sortie 3 Med speed and alt SHORAD destruction. You did find ALL of them on sortie 2, right? Sortie 4 Tank/convoy busting. Sortie 5 Command center, bunker, runway, or other strategic target bombing. Really, aside from recon, electronic warfare, and stealth bombing there's no mission that's suitable for a single plane in a combat area. Trying to do 4 or more planes worth of mission in a single plane sortie is one of the most common beginner's mistakes you see in DCS.

Almost all of the short range air defense systems in DCS (meaning 12 km or less range), are either passive guidance systems, or have an option for passive guidance. The ones that often do use radar are the AAA, Shilka, Vulcan, Gepard, and Tunguska and also the Osa SAM. If you're in a high threat long range SAM environment, carry Anti-Radiation Missiles, the phantasmagoria pod, countermeasures, and just enough fuel to complete the mission. Let someone else worry about the short ranged stuff. In a moderate to low threat long range environment you can put on a rack or two of Vikhrs, or maybe one or two kh-25MLs, or kh-29s (depends on how many pylons you want with ARMs and how many you want filled with stuff for short ranged air defenses) and carry some extra fuel for the extra load and flight time that going after both kinds of air defense is going to require. In that case: Yes the eyeballs and wingmen are very good, but in addition you want to use a brain for some thinking and preparation. In particular, briefing maps, and bullseye calls from allied pilots. For the short range stuff about 98% of winning the battle is figuring out where they are. In general you should expect that any visible cluster of enemy ground units will have some sort of air defense capability, so unless you've positively identified every single unit as not an air defense unit, exercise extreme caution. The real trouble comes from the air defense units hidden within 1-2km of a group of ground units, or alone along a good flight path. Against devious mission designers setting graphics so that your tree display radius is very small is quite helpful, but also quite cheesy. Basically with clever short range air defense placement, you either have to keep out of range, or you'll likely find the stuff after an engine is already on fire. **Except at night. At night with a thermo-optic sight the buggers are pretty easy to spot. Also the 25T's LLTV pod actually functions much more like a thermo-optic camera in performance than an LLTV, units shouldn't stand out against background as much as they do. Of course you can only choose one pod for the Su-25T, so you have to choose long range radar or short range air defenses if you're trying to do suppression at night. Or better, fly in a 4 man element with 2 ARM planes and two LLTV planes.