doedkoett

The F-4 is weeks away (insert 2-week-joke here, while I´d guess 4-8 weeks, so say 6), while the Mig-29 is months away (my guess is at least a year). I bet a copy of the Mig-29 module that the F-4 will come well ahead of the 29.

Usually you can trim the waterline symbol up and down on the SAI, so it isn't necessarily in the middle.

Anti-ship mission and dedicated anti-ship weapons are two different things. Even the Viggen, that could use two different anti ship missiles, was prepared to engage shipping with the use of dumb bombs and rockets. Remember that the Argentines attacked the Royal Navy in 1982 not only with Exocet-missiles, but also using Skyhawks loaded with dumb bombs. It took skill and bravery on the part of the pilots, but they did inflict heavy damage on several RN ships. If the job needs to be done, sometime you will have to use the tools that you have, not the tools that you´d want.

I don´t get it - is it against the law to fly SEAD/DEAD missions in an F-4E in DCS, or is it the use of the "Weasel" callsign in the video that is the great heresy? Maybe SEAD is only Wild Weasel if it´s from the Wild Weasel region of Vietnam, else it´s just sparkling SEAD...

Why not have a button "create new mission set", when clicked, it creates a mission/target automatically each time you click on the map. The mission data fields are automatically populated with default data, but editable if you want something specific. The sets could be displayed as units are displayed in a group, using < and > to swap between them, and the missions/targets could be displayed in a list, like waypoint actions, with arrows to move them up or down in order.

Yes, I presume so. IDK if the JDAMs have an INS in game. I mean, GPS jamming is not a thing in DCS, so there is little need for a backup. Haven't tried, but I guess dropping JDAM before 1994 (ie before GPS exists in-game) would just have them go ballistic. But it would be interesting to learn if anybody has tried and seen other results.

Since the bombs are ED, and ED seems to have their GPS-cutoff in 1994 I believe the bombs did use GPS (mission was in 1995). The precision with which they missed makes me believe they were GPS-guided. They weren't entirely ballistic, because that would not have resulted in the nice, albeit offset hit pattern.

No, the bomb will go to the map coordinates you give it, either by entering them manually, or from the mission planning tool or by designating it with the onboard sensors. The onboard sensors know where they are looking because they know where the aircraft is. However, if the nav system is off, for example 100 m west and 200 south of where it think it is, the coordinates will be correspondingly wrong - instead of the correct coordinates, the coordinates you will get are the ones corresponding to a position 100 m west and 200 m south of the target. So in a sense, yes, the designated point is a point relative to the aircraft, but it is translated to a point referenced to the earth, and that is where the trouble starts. If the bomb was laser guided, there would be no problem, since that "system" is totally internal to the aircraft. An unguided bomb would work too. But the GPS guided bombs uses an internal source (INS => Radar/TPOD) for getting the destination, and an external source (GPS) to get there.

Well, I think I can confirm that my problem was GPS-related. I made a quick mockup of the mission I played, ran it twice - once with the year set to 1995, and the second time I set the year to 2020. The first time the bombs landed in a neat rectangle, just a little bit offset from the actual targets. The second time they were spot on. So I guess that mystery is solved. I guess since I can´t blame the module, I will have to be mature enough to blame my friend who made the mission that set me up to failure.

That could have been the culprit - the bombs went where we told them, but but we simply gave them bad data due to drift. I´ll have to check that out.

Actually, there is video: (designation starts about 47 minutes in)

I have been playing around with the new JDAMs and I have noticed that bombs given their designation from the radar sometimes miss. Me and a friend tried to bomb four targets with four GBU-31's yesterday, and we designated the targets using the AG-radar. Out of four bombs only three were dropped as my wingman had the bug where the bomb disappears from the smart weapons page. All three bombs missed with quite a wide margin. The mission date is set sometime in 1995, so GPS should be active, and thus also EGI which should take care of any INS drift, right? Are we doing anything wrong perhaps, or does the radar lack enough precision for this kind of work, or do the JDAM´s need a bit more polish from Razbam?

I think it pulls down the visor on the pilot figure, but the actual view does not change. The F-15E visor works fine though, I used it last time I flew the Mudhen. The Nevada sun was mighty strong..

That´s probably reflection from the dishes, and it occurs in real life according to "Starbaby" Pietrushka in an interview with Steve Davies in his podcast "10 percent true". According to "Starbaby" the reflection makes it pretty easy to find radar antennas with the ground mapping radar.

The Dragons Eye is not the onboard radar, it´s an AESA-radar carried as a pod, and given the imagery from other fighter size AESA-radars I have seen, the image will be more like a black and white photo rather than the grainy imagery we´ve used to in DCS. Vehicles will most certainly be visible. Ground radar has the advantage of not being hindered by clouds, something that can be a problem when relying on optronic sensors.