ChickenSim

No, it is supposed to be all or nothing. Razbam "fixed" it incorrectly.

Gianky is correct, the Harrier doesn't carry Mk84/BLU-117 based ordnance.

Nobody is trying to poopoo on your guys' fun, they are trying to help manage your expectations. Laymen like yourself have come here with ignorant claims that the radar is going to be noticeably better than the real world examples provided or that the only reason they don't use the radar in real life is because they've been doing CAS in permissive environments. The experts are coming in to refute these inaccurate claims and clarify that if it's modeled accurately, you shouldn't expect it to be very useful in any environment unless it's the only tool you've got left, and even then it may not cut the mustard. So use the AG radar all you want when you get it, but understand that they're just trying to circumvent some buyer's remorse from hyping up this particular feature over other more useful ones. If ED does their job well, they'll have poured all that time, money, and effort into something that few players may end up using. 1) Consider that there are other (tactical) solutions to the problems you're referring to. 2) You can also read between the lines a bit and consider that if the conditions are such that the Hornet's AG radar is the only option you've got, it may be better not to fly the sortie at all (and risk your jets and pilots) than rely on an otherwise unreliable (or tactically unsound) option for getting the job done.

KlarSnow isn't talking about individual learning theory, he's talking about military training and readiness. Generally speaking, a community's proficiency can be measured in flight hours and sorties spent training and practicing and honing those skills. Yes, there are outliers. Individuals that "get it" faster than others, and individuals who struggle. The presence of outliers is so not the point that, as a community, there are only so many hours in the day for pilots to train and instructors to train them, and consequently how good that community is going to be at accomplishing a mission. Just because one dude in the squadron is a natural at everything (which I highly doubt occurs in reality) doesn't mean you can task that squadron to meet all those missions and expect them to excel at them.

LPODs have largely the same functionality of ARBS nowadays, and with the laser it is the most accurate method of employing weapons from the AV-8B (LCIP). If available, ARBS is the second best option (CCIP/AUTO) alongside a radar designation for II+'s, and before the radar altimeter (RCIP), GPS (GCIP), or barometric altimeter (BCIP).

Yeah, understood. I just meant from a gameplay perspective, the in-game JTAC ought to be a separate entity from the A-10 and work with other CAS-capable aircraft. There's no reason ED shouldn't make it so, or if the API hooks are available, that third-party devs shouldn't be able to make their modules compatible with it.

There really isn't a good reason the in-game JTAC shouldn't also work with the Harrier, or Hornet for that matter. The procedures are the same (by design, it's a NATO standard). The JTAC should be able to provide a grid coordinate in whichever format the aircraft takes (and the Harrier ought to be able to enter MGRS/GRID anyway). The technical differences between the datalinks (SADL vs. ATHS) are mostly transparent to the player, since both should be able to transmit and receive a digital attack brief.

Everything in the Situation Update and subsequent 9-line is intended to make the pilot understand what is happening on the ground without necessarily having to see it with their own eyes. Yes, the situation can change between the attack brief being passed and the aircraft rolling in, and for those situations exceptions may be passed. Yes, the pilots aren't always working with qualified JTACs, and for those situatuons there is more onus on the pilots to pull the necessary information from the ground unit to mitigate risk to friendlies. But both of those situations are considered fairly varsity and the pilots need to begin with brilliance in the basics before they may consider themselves prepared to deal with highly situational problems like that. CAS is a lot broader in scope than you seem to think it is. If you want to actually learn what it entails, cracking open an old JP 3-09.3 is a good place to start. Especially some of the vignettes at the tail end of the pub that specifically go over situations where the pilots can't see the targets with their own eyes. The stuff you seem to be describing is more akin to only a narrow subset of CAS (Type 1 Bomb on Target), which is a much more common method for helicopters and may also use a friendly-centric rotary-wing 5-line or Close Combat Attack (CCA) brief. This isn't representative of all CAS. This is merely 1 of 6 options that may be used dependent on which option is best suited for the job.

QuiGon CAS can be both pre-planned and dynamic/on-call. In a preplanned situation you may have preplanned 9-lines (attack briefs) that the JTAC can use to expedite an attack near a known static target such as a machine gun nest, or from a known target reference point or geographical reference point. Fri13 Basically nothing you've posted here is accurate with regard to close air support. 9-line attack briefs are the standard from which to deviate, and there are different types of control and methods of attack for the situations you're describing. Granted, the briefs you hear on YouTube videos don't always sound like rigid line by line briefs, but even informal attack briefs that are given out of order in extremis are following the general flow of a 9-line or the pilots are mentally checking off the minimum required items from that list in order to safely execute an attack without causing fratricide. There are even plenty of instances of close air support where you are bombing things you don't see with your own eyes. Types 2 and 3 CAS under "Bomb on Coordinate" method of attack don't require the pilot to see the target at all - they could hypothetically employ through a cloud layer, at night with no goggles, or lofting an LGB much further than you could see with your own eyes to be hosted by another aircraft or ground unit who does have eyes on lasing. You never even have to see friendlies. In all cases, even those where the pilot would be head up looking out the cockpit, certain contracts need to be followed to ensure bombs aren't erroneously impacting friendlies you may not necessarily be able to pick out from a fixed-wing perspective. LastRifleRound The CAS page is multipurpose. 1) It will show you briefed items passed to your aircraft over the ATHS datalink. 2) It can store preplanned attack briefs to recall during a mission. 3) It lets you manually enter attack brief information that you receive over radio. Think of it in this sense as a notepad that lets you record the information passed over voice and read it back accurately. Lines 4, 6, and restrictions are mandatory readback items to a JTAC after being briefed, so it's important to have that information readily accessible. 4) When it's fully integrated, items on the selected CAS brief such as the Ingress Point (IP), target, and briefed final attack headings, etc. will appear on your EHSD to help the pilot visually maneuver the aircraft to support the attack.

Dmitri, neither the AGM-84 or AGM-88 are cleared for the Harrier. It lacks even a physical way to mount the weapons onto the aircraft, as they use differently spaced lugs than the Harrier pylons have.

The missing piece of the puzzle is that there are supposed to be numbered whiskers drawn on the EHSD between your selected target contributors and your ownship that show you the min/max LARs for the various targets you have selected, which is intended to be a visual depiction of where you should maneuver the aircraft if you're engaging multiple targets simultaneously. Whiskers for targets that you will be in LAR for on your current flight path look different than whiskers for targets that you won't be in LAR for on your current flight path. In the Harrier, there is no selection of active stations or assigning bombs to coordinates - you merely select your J82/83s and the aircraft assigns bombs to target contributors automatically based on the number of target contributors selected and the number of bombs on the aircraft. QTY isn't user selectable and will always display how many bombs are on the aircraft divided by the number of targets selected. It will absolutely let you pick more targets than you have bombs for. The aircraft is supposed to drop on all targets that are in LAR with each press of the pickle button, so the pilot is supposed to delay their engagement of multiple targets until they are all in LAR (big numbers next to the N) to avoid accidentally re-engaging target contributors already serviced. In your example, you've got it right with the red path there as far as the steering dot is concerned. But like I said, there are supposed to be whiskers drawn on the EHSD that would allow the pilot to choose to fly the blue path if that's their intent (one pickle press where your red and blue paths intersect, and one entering the third target's LAR).

What I'm saying is that hypothetically you will have targets selected whose LARs do not overlap. Release should not be prohibited, because a sequential drop should still be possible, and this is how the target contributor system in the Harrier is supposed to work, by prioritizing targets from closest to furthest in the queue beneath the circle. It steers you to the closest target / centroid of the closest target's LAR, and once engaged the steering dot should point to the next closest target's LAR centroid, and so on. I can't speak for whether it's the same in the F/A-18, but I think it's a mistake to assume they work the same since the interfaces are already very different.

I've come to a similar conclusion. But I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to steer to the centroid but rather the current priority (closest) target, as it'd be possible that the steering dot sends you to a point in the sky that you couldn't release a weapon at all if it was centroid-based and the selected targets were too far apart... Not much of a "steering cue" then, is it? Once the current priority target is engaged, it should switch to the next closest target in the queue. If multiple targets happen to be in LAR, that would be signified by those target numbers enlarging in the queue beneath the circle. Engaged targets go to the left of the letter, targets whose LARs are passed through without a drop get thrown back in the queue on the right as small numbers.

In fairness, there's plenty about this Harrier that isn't appropriate to the year and software version modeled. It's always been a Frankenharrier cobbled together with whatever anachronistic documentation they've been able to procure, so having APKWS or GBU-54s alongside their contemporary ten-racked GBU-38s is only really limited by their willingness to create their own weapons and their associated flight and damage models.

I guess what I'm getting at is removing it from the product page might be jumping the gun a bit then, if it's still a planned feature and just isn't here yet.

Yeah, I'm kind of confused as to why other module developers are able to create their own weapons but you guys aren't. Are you just waiting for the F/A-18 to get it? If so, that makes enough sense for me right now.

You didn't misremember. Raz guide is wrong.

GBU-32s are used by Harriers. I'm not sure where they're getting the info that only 38s and 54s are used. I assume it's a misunderstanding about common configurations in current operations versus what the aircraft can carry. GBU-32s may be loaded singles-only on STA 2, 3, 5, and 6, just like GBU-16s.

Yeah, comms have changed quite a bit over the years as radios, marking devices, and prevention of fratricide has become more important. It'd be really nice to get some differences based on the era you're in.

Yep! Video downlink (VDL) is a highly desired feature of mine for Combined Arms, since basically the entire line of US fighter and attack aircraft could make use of it. VDL talk-ons by player JTACs in CAS would be amazing.

Similar, but not exactly like it. It uses the Automated Target Handoff System (ATHS) to transmit and receive digital messages and CAS briefs between a JTAC using a TLDHS and the flight lead/wingmen, but to my knowledge it doesn't provide the same kind of constantly updated position and sensor/stare point info that the A-10's SADL does. So properly modeled, it'll allow for digital CAS with a JTAC and sharing target/attack information and free text between the flight lead and wingmen, but that's about the extent of what it could do.

You're supposed to be able to type coordinates into the CAS page. You're supposed to be able to fill out the entire 9 line on the CAS page. There are instructions for how to do this in the TACMAN Vol 1, but we'll see if they actually implement them or leave them out because it's "too cumbersome" to include. Personally I think this is a misunderstanding on their part. I suspect that it isn't clear to Razbam how the jet is actually used operationally, what a typical sortie looks like, or what a ground attack pilot needs to do to manage their systems or say over a radio. This means their interpretation of what is cumbersome or worth inclusion is flawed, I just hope that they lean toward accurately representing the capabilities of the aircraft and not on how they suspect it will get used in DCS multiplayer.

2° ND trim is only to ensure the nose RCS puffers stay closed to prevent inadvertent FOD ingestion, which isn't modeled in DCS so set whatever you're comfortable with. Once airborne you still need to fly the airplane.

Link 16 wasn't added until very, very recently on the real Harriers, and even today I don't think it's fully fielded. What the Harrier does have is the Automatic Target Handoff System (ATHS), which uses the normal aircraft radios to send and receive digital messages to a ground FAC/JTAC that is using a Target Location, Designation and Handoff System (TLDHS). This is the only way the Harrier can receive digital CAS attack briefs. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything Harriers can do to digitally pass targets or information between aircraft. This has historically required pilots to come up with creative methods of either loading pre-planned waypoint/markpoint/targetpoint libraries for the flight in its entirety (and subsequently calling up other aircraft info if needed) or coming up with manual solutions for passing targets (laser spot handoffs, grids passed via voice, talk-ons, smoke, etc.).

It's also not a hard and fast number. It just means at those ranges (and usual associated slant angles) you could see up to a 100m difference between what you are shown and where the stare point actually is. The grid will be most accurate pulled as close horizontally to the target as you can get (as steep a depression angle as possible), at altitude, in level unaccelerated flight, fully INS aligned, with laser rangefinder on. Anything else is only liable to get you varying shades of "close enough."