Eddie

Which misses the point of a system such as "smart scaling". The point of such a system as far as design goes, regardless of the specific details of how it is implemented, is that if you should see object X at 10 miles it will always be visible at 10 miles (even if it is rendered as just one pixel) regardless of the players screen resolution or other hardware. In essence someone with a 19 inch 1366x768 monitor is able to see (theoretically at least) the same as someone with a 30 inch 3840x2160 monitor. The player with the 19 inch screen won't see the same detail of course, but they can at least tell something is there. The distances each object should be visible from is another discussion and set of design considerations. What we have in the sim now, could well be spot on, but the point is it is not agnostic towards the players hardware. Artificially increasing LOD sizes and/or summarily increasing visibility distances is not what this is about.

No. The china hat is called the china hat, and the boat switch is called the boat switch. The Missile Reject/Uncage Switch and polarity switch are from the A-10A. Their functions are performed by the china hat and boat switch respectively in the A-10C, SOI selection depending of course.

Naa, I never use all these little tricks and techniques I've got in my head and mention on forums. ;)

:huh: Not sure if I'm missing what you're getting at, but what's wrong with just changing one of the pod types in the DSMS inventory? eg, if carrying 2x LAU-131, change one to a LAU-68 in the DSMS. The DSMS will then treat each as separate weapon types and you'll be able to select them individually and fire 7 rockets from a single pod. The same technique can be used with Maverick to allow station stepping between IIR/CCD Mavericks with China aft short.

Stuka and I will be there tomorrow. Currently in Swindon drinking too much.

Apart from the Stinger Comm unit no. The only search & acquisition systems in DCS for the western countries belong to Patriot, Hawk and Roland. Not really a lacking area either as NATO doctrine has always relied primarily on fighters to provide air defence, so there are nowhere near as many ground based air defence systems as the Russians had/have.

No. The R2 upgrade fitted FLIR, that is the physical FLIR system. PIRATE is currently not operational capability, and is not in use. As for HMD integration, well yes it can be, but that is for night vision/navigation purposes not targeting. PIRATE is (or will be) a double function system, both conventional FLIR and IRST. The hardware is there, the software etc. is not, and in many cases the hardware is ballast only and is neither used or necessarily serviceable.

Yes, it's all part of a process that has been going on for decades. You start with very simple, high choreographed actions, and slowly increase the complexity. It the aim is to test the performance of a specific system, they you design the flight specifically to test that system. No they haven't. And even if they did, PIRATE wouldn't be of any use in such a scenario. HEA/HMSS however, we do have, and it obviously would have been used were this not a specific test/training sortie. These flights and the whole of the Swedish visit was about 2 test and evaluation squadrons, and their test pilots getting working together to satisfy some very well defined test and development goals.

Well, not sure which sortie this was from, but I'd have said just 2 ASRAAM ATMs and 2 tanks as in the pic attached. It's all I've seen 41 carrying this week.

Yeah, I really don't know anything about the Gripen I wouldn't be surprised if it could do better. The Typhoons do mil power take off as well as reheat simply isn't necessary, and just casually watching they are upto 2-300 ft at the same point on the runway the Gripens get airborne. And they are climbing much quicker as well. But it could simply be that it's just down to how the pilots of each normally operate.

I tell you what, watching them this week, those Gripens certainly take a lit if runway to get in the air and climb pretty slowly when they do. Very unscientific purely passing comment with no research to back it up, but they seem pretty underpowered watching them on takeoff. Seen a few aborted take offs as well, which I wouldn't expect for such a new aircraft.

Just burning phosphorus.

The whole ATO is a truly massive thing, imagine the desert storm ATO for example, and remember that the overall ATO isn't just for one day but a living thing that has every target you want to hit (that you know about) and every other job that needs to be done. As well as other thing like assigned radio frequencies, data link addresses, TACAN channels, weapon loads, IFF stuff etc. Each Sqn only needs to know their part in it.

It comes from the Air Tasking Order Fragment which details that squadrons missions for the day. The Frag is their little piece of the overall ATO. As fragged is just a shorthand version of we are proceeding as per tasking with no deviations or amendments.

The T2 jets at MPA don't have any useful AG capability, yet. The vast majority of that has nothing at all to do with Typhoon or the cost of keeping 4 down at 1435. Without Typhoon we'd still be spending not far off that amount on MPA etc. 4 jets and a few ground crew are nothing compared to the cost of keeping the Army down there. Yes maintain a force presence down south cost a fortune, but that vast majority of it has nothing to do with the air defence aspect of 4 Typhoon's. I'm not flat out dismissing your points, but they are somewhat flawed and one sided. And you're making the cardinal sin that often happens around here (and is guaranteed to rile me up) of assuming you somehow are better placed to determine the best strategic/tactical decisions than those of us actually involved in making them for real. This thread was discussing Typhoon and its capabilities, not a series of ifs and buts. In this day and age we don't need to keep everything down there all the time, but even more importantly we just can't. As long as people want new roads, the NHS, Police and all the other stuff the country simply can't afford it. Hell the only reason we have Typhoon is because the cost is split 4 ways (although it some aspect would perhaps be cheaper if it weren't). Hell, we don't have a Anti-Radiation missile capability anymore but I don't see people moaning about that. And that was far more useful (on paper at least) than land based anti-shipping. Oh and for the record, cancelling MRA4 was one of the stupidest decisions ever made, but it's a political one, not a military one, unlike stationing Typhoon down south. And even if we did have Sea Eagle still, Typhoon still wouldn't be able to carry it anyway.

I guess we'd best bring them home then, clearly air defence fighters are pointless if they can't also take on ships. Never mind that we've never had fighters with such a capability based in the Falklands before Typhoon. Again, that's why the Navy have a sub and at least one surface ship down there all the time. Providing a far more effective anti-shipping capability than land based aircraft ever could.

Right, and? That's not what they are there to do, they are there to provide QRA Interceptor cover to the Falklands. They replaced Tornado F3s, which didn't have any kind of A/G capability, never mind anti-ship capability. And if you think we spend Billions on that then you're being daft. Naval defence is the job of the Navy with all their VERY expensive toys.

The times they are a changin'. The sea eagle was never replaced as there just wasn't the need. We did have a naval strike role indeed, but today it's simply not seen as necessary to maintain such a capability which is so range limited. It's not the Cold War anymore. The RAF is focused on expeditionary operations and UK air defence, not defending against an eastern block attack on the mainland. Maybe in the imaginary world of Cold War budgets we'd maintain such a capability, but when you're already having to save £3.5 billion over the life of one aircraft maintaining duplicate capabilities from a bygone era is just impractical.

Why would we need/want one? The Navy have no aircraft and won't for a while. I'm sure the fish heads will go hunting for something when they get some jets again , until than they've got plenty if boats with missiles that outrange their previous air launched ASMs.

Well you can't really afford to be punching off drop tanks too often either. And the big advantage of CFTs is that they carry more fuel with considerably less drag than conventional external tanks. Even the supersonic tanks used with Typhoon. CFTs + 3 tanks would add as much range as you'd expect either, there comes a point where the extra weight & drag starts to cancel out the extra fuel carried. 3 tank fits are already ferry flight only in practice. Mission range isn't the limitation as such. It's the range you need to fly without tanker support and/or in-between tanker visits that matters. And considering that Storm shadow has a 300NM+ range of it's own, in all but a very few cases you'd be able to release your weapons far enough away from the target that you wouldn't need to go more than a couple of hundred miles from the nearest tanker track at best.

Hence the interest in conformal tanks. ;)

How so?

In current operational variants the targeting pod is limited to station 13 only (centreline), it "might" be possible to lload it on other stations later on down the line (quite a way down the line). As for Storm Shadow (I had to Google what SCALP EG was as it's not known by that name in the Eurofighter world), no it's going to be Stn 5 & 6 only, so it either wing tanks or Storm Shadow.

Bearing pointer 2 on the HSI. Source selected via the NMSP.

It is functional in the real aircraft but on the VHF/FM and UHF radios. As suggested in the OP it's used for the CSAR mission rather than navigation. Some confusion may stem from the fact that the A-10 is not equipped for ADF navigation using permanent NDBs etc.