vanir

Mainly Kuznetsov, just to whet my appetite I'm guessing it will have some differences not just the external model to the one currently in free version? More aircraft parks? What other differences? I get the supercarrier will be amazing, just wondering about the other two ships and what features those have :D

High speed tests during production were done with the radiators closed, at full throttle, special boost if fitted or military power if without, opened when starting to overheat to give the best possible speed result, after 1 minute for the 601A/N, ten minutes for the 601E/F, 2 minutes for the 605A/B/AS and ten minutes for the 605D series. Afterwards, due to cylinder heating the engine required a 30 minute cooldown with radiators opened full and reduced power settings. Once you heat the motor it needs the long cooldown, continuing to over boost or full military power with radiators shut and the engine overheating will, of course destroy the motor quite quickly and it won't cool before the 30 minutes with radiators open, so you can't open it up again until later or you destroy the motor. The Heinkel fighter that competed with the 109 for the military contract back in 38 had a novel idea of the entire radiator being extendable and it was a bit faster than the 109 at full throttle only because when both radiators are closed for high speed the Heinkel one completely retracts into the fuselage and makes no drag at all, the 109 just closes the doors on its rather boxy ones. The 109 still won because it was felt that under combat conditions the retractable Heinkel radiator might experience failure in the mechanism and the old fashioned boxy radiator was more reliable, but cost something like a 3% hit in speed loss. In case you're wondering, it'll overheat just the same at full military or special boost with the radiators open full so you might as well close them, cylinders are heating faster than the capacity of probably twice as many radiators to cool them, the 605 series motor does this at anything beyond 1.35ata but the 605D is a lot more resistant than the 605A so takes a lot longer to overheat: 10 minutes instead of 2. It's at climb setting, the 30 minute power setting that you open radiators full. I should add special attention is required by pilots for all Daimler motors at lower altitudes due to heating of the oil system by slippage in the blower hydraulic coupling during its altitude step before locking up, there's Daimler graphs for what I just said at ww2 aircraft performance dot net among other places but the cliff notes are all Daimlers love to run especially hot at low altitude and very especially hot in warm climates and low altitude, they spray oil and flame and kill the pilot. Marsielle's fatal bail out was caused by exactly this in his new G2. At low alt and/or hot climates the 605 not just overheats but opens its seals and sprays oil when it does. The rest of the time it just overheats and doesn't want to cool down for ages.

copyright protected and doesn't like being linked but one comes up on the first page of a google image search, underbelly shot in flight, not dummy missiles, has 2 R77 and 2 R27R, recent photo. I was just using google image search and watch a lot of combat approved Russian documentary and its youtube channel. YouTube and google man, what's this "source" crap? Are we doing a university course and you need references to publish? I'm not making it up mate, so what's wrong with talking about it?

I found the R77 photo while looking for pictures of the Su33 actually in service with the extra two wing pylons over the Su27 we have in game. It's a video still off the deck and isn't carrying orange or striped dummies like the airshows and arms conventions, these are live missiles. I wasn't there and can't say that it wasn't a propaganda shot but there's no reason for those lengths when it's perfectly clear any export Su33 need only a software cassette to fire R77, whilst adding the capability to the Russian ones needs only the same. So you can figure out what you think the photo implies. Sukhoi themselves also state it had Kh31 capability since serial production but I don't know if they mean it just needs a software tape like the R77 or if it's already good to go and you just stock the Kuznetsov magazine with them when you want to bolt them on. Magazine stocks are actually a big expense in Russia, in Chechnya they decided to use up a backlogged stock of WW2 artillery shells and there is no question the variety of modern munitions in Russia far outweighs their actual availability in stocks or limited production lines. For all I know it could very well be an interservice rivalry between VVS and Naval Aviation for the latest, modern weapons stocks, especially since the PVO got folded into the VVS and the blue water navy plans of the soviet era took an immediately lower priority since. There maybe no plans to stock Kuznetsov magazines with either R77 or Kh31, as the roles of the Su33 before final retirement might find R27 and rocket packs perfectly adequate and the navy might be on a waiting list for some weapons. I do know the Su27SM upgrade was completed quite some time ago now, pending conversion to Su35ovt, for which the budget is a little tight so will take some years hence the midlife update. We have Su30SM in the game, it's just the same weapons fit for the flyable Su27S to make it the SM. With the flight models I was really talking about the missiles. NATO ones now implemented have much more detailed ones and it would be awesome if we got that kind of immersive behaviour from Russian missiles. I don't want to restart the versus controversy but let's assume you have two similarly performing missiles and one is a simplified flight model from WXP days and the other an advanced one written on a multithreaded processor it's a bit like VR meets PacMan in performance terms. Forget east vs west arguments, it'd still be cool if they were inferior missiles but just had that same level of coding detail in performance and then maybe there would be times when something that shouldn't have spoofed it but did because of a simple flight model, well at least those things won't happen if they do now. With the four wing pylons search I mentioned, I found two photo-stills during operations with them added: one had four rocket pods and a pair of R73 and the other had the R77, plus R27R and R73, oddly never saw a single photo of weapons on the wingtips, always either ecm pods or left bare. Most photos just have three wing stations each like the Su27, they still don't put archers on the tips at all but just carry a pair of short burn R27 and a pair of R73, that's the most common load configuration. There's one other, 4x R27ER long burn and a pair of R73, that and the one with the R77 was the most AAMs I saw on an Su33 coming off the deck, four MRM and two SRM basically is the heavy AAM loadout compared to like ten AAMs in a land based Su27 sortie.

I know it's not the DCS focus but FC3 is still big among some of us simply for the sheer joy of flying Flankers and Fulcrums in the best form available, even if jumping from an Su33 to the DCS Hornet module gives a slight brain meltdown from key bindings to how do I fly this for reals? But FC3 is still pretty big for some of us too. At least while we wish for Flankers and Fulcrum clickables and were allowed to join the rest of DCS humanity. Are there current ED plans to do anything to help update FC3 for DCSW mission building purposes, at least? I mean in terms of say, more detailed modelling of Russian weaponry like the R27 to balance the attention NATO and obsolete munitions have undergone for their modules equipment in DCS. Would there be any chance Su27S version could be updated to Su27SM? Mainly delivering R77 capability as far as FC3 is concerned and afaik completed in VVS by early 2000s. I've even seen recent footage of Su33 carrying live R77, not dummies off Kuznetsov. Speaking about Su33 and Kuznetsov, especially in light of the new modelling with the SC module and DCS focus on carrier aircraft, how about filling out the Su33 a little with working support vehicles like the Ka27 buddy refueller and don't ask me how that works except the helo guns flat out and the Flankers sit upon stalling and everybody sweats a lot during the refuelling. Sukhoi themselves have been saying the Flanker D has Kh31 option since the 90s, although never seen them on a Flanker before the Su34. They are recently photographed and videoed with R77 however, logically this would follow the Su27 midlife update across the board but I haven't exactly seen newspaper headlines saying Flanker D has R77 or anything like that. Su25UTG or UBK or whatever the hell it's called, the carrier one. And more functional Ka27 with some combat capability, I mean there's no reason to have torp dropping in the game but you could have recon mission in ME and AFAC and certainly stick a HMG out the door and pretty sure they can carry rockets if you want to bolt them on. The versions aboard Kuznetsov are the 2 elint and fire director ones for the SS-N missiles on Russian cruisers and electronic recon of an enemy force, about 30 of the familiar ASW version with transport secondary role, can have an MG out the window and carries a torp or depth charges, and (six?) of the SAR version with the ASW equipment stripped out and has a dual role as an assault helo or air ambulance, carries rockets, HMG, armed marines or some stretchers and a winch. Kuznetsov uses them more than the Flankers. MiG29K, there was an FC2 mod (?). Is it adaptable? Could give India an in game fleet with a Kuznetsov class and their MiG29K with the phased array. Plus they still keep one or two on the Russian Kuznetsov doing trials and development work, word was a while back if the Russians planned keeping a blue water fleet in the future they would replace the Su33 with the phased radar MiG29K they sold to India. This is wishful thinking, involving some real module level attention put back into FC3 but it'd sure be nice. Anyway I remember lots of discussions about possible plans for FC3, and abandoned ideas, I was wondering what the current deal is for FC3 and its future from ED? I still just love flying the Su33 off Kuznetsov and the MiG off coastal bases, even if they are very confusing and a little annoying key binding and dated flight modelling and not the current standard of DCS modules. I don't suppose whoever made the Chinese destroyers in DCSW wouldn't mind doing a Russian one? Bit more versatile than the frigates and there are at least a couple left after the big post soviet everything must go sale.

It's really good news though, we're going to be very satisfied with the module in all its details and rectifications it certainly sounds like to me. Bravo ED, personally still happy to wait and just looking forward to it.

The threat of nuclear self-immolation aside it's arguments like these that make the aliens want to kill us.

As far as I know resupply is generally an unlimited resource so long as one has access to a "warehouse" or in this case an ammunition store to restock individual gun magazines aboard a bomber as opposed to inaccessible fighter armament and therefore a finite, single magazine per gun. It would seem logical crewed gunnery stations have unlimited ammo given army trucks and warehouses offer unlimited restocking/resupply within the access radius. Funny story, related about the western front late war, you know what the Luftwaffe used to supply bombs to the very few medium bomber squadron fields still braving a sky literally buzzing with enemy fighters? FW190G. They modified them with extra long tailwheel and stripped them out to shorten a heavy laden takeoff run, and mounted SC1000 and SC1500 bombs under them. They couldn't drop them as a munition, they had to be removed by armourers at the destination airfield. It was just the only way to get heavy bombs to the bombers in the face of overwhelming Allied numerical superiority in every area en route. It sort of punctuates the only survivable form of bombing the enemy for the Luftwaffe in the late war was by using fighter-bombers and hence Hitler's thinking behind making jets fighter-bombers instead of interceptors, the latter which they were better suited to. But also means most fighter sorties in the late war on the whole were fighter-bomber sorties, relatively few were pure fighter squadrons.

Quite correct about remarkable rate of fire for the 7.92mm MG81, although the barrels had to be changed out every 3 ammo cans of continuous fire IIRC (?). Much less often in bursts and that would be standard practise for German gunners in aerial gunnery school anyway, it's really only American pilots that habitually walked fire onto a target and that's because aerial gunnery school there specified laying maximum projectile volume onto targets as opposed to continental schools which taught conservative use of ammunition stores per target, this was mainly because continental birds generally had centreline armament with explosive filler or high rate of fire except the Brits, whilst American and British birds generally had wing armament with multiple MG, so they were schooled for gunnery differently. Germans didn't waste ammo. Marsielle routinely downed e/a with 1-2 rounds of 2cm and 30-40 of 7.92mm, a remarkable fact documented by his armourers, he almost always returned with kills and almost full magazines. He published lectures for Luftwaffe pilots which were circulated for training, even a waist gunner got his schooling from the experience of Moelders and Marsielle, so they're all taught this way and it gets refined and added to over time. (paraphrasing) Armourer's report, 5th June 1942, following a sortie in which Marsielle is credited with 6 confirmed kills, SAAF No.5 Sqn Kittyhawks, magazines upon landing, 10 2cm used, 180 7.92mm used. To give an idea of what all Luftwaffe aerial gunners aspired to.

Just out of curiosity...and a "no" is a perfectly acceptable answer here, I'm thrilled and excited about the module I've pre-ordered and happy to wait as long as you guys need to feel comfortable about release...but I was wondering, since most likely the new Kuznetsov and Arleigh Burke models are completed and the delays are for coding details in the American supercarrier, if it might be possible for paid pre-orders to get an advance delivery of those two or if the trio needs to be packaged together for coding reasons or whathaveyou? Just a timid question and please don't think I'm being impatient, it's just a sort of can I open one of my Christmas presents the night before if it's already under the tree kind of angle :D

Sorry to bring up an older thread but been doing Su33 ME a fair bit lately and looked up a huge pile of operational footage and just found some interesting notes on loadouts during operational exercises; just posting it for interest sake. On live missions always seem to be carrying sorbytsa and during all other exercises always have the tip racks bare, presumably because on live missions they will always be carrying sorbytsa. Here's a short list of some loadouts I've seen actually carried off the deck: Exercise: tips bare, 2x R73, 2x R27R under wings Live mission: sorbytsa, 2x R73, 2x R27R under wings Exercise: tips bare, 2x R73, 2x R27R, 2x R77 under wings (fourth stations attached) - these were live missiles, not dummies but I don't know if actual R77 capability is installed or if propaganda photo staged during naval exercises Exercise: tips bare, 2x R73, 4x B20 under wings (fourth stations attached) Exercise: tips bare, 2x R73, 2x R27ER under wings, 2x R27ER under intakes I haven't seen a photo or footage yet of actual carrier operations using all the weapon stations, most commonly it's just 2x R73 and 2x R27R, with sorbytsa if a live mission, without if exercise. Never seen one loaded up on the carrier the way an Su27 is from a land base. I would like to see any links to more footage or photos of loadouts during operations, but these are the loads I've seen so far in a big hunt. The impression I get is the large number of stations is more about weapon placement of light loads for the Su33 rather than carrying big loads like the Su27. Might also be worth noting the main flight operation from Kuznetsov is ASW and SSM fire director rotaries, the fleet air defence role is primarily interception of missiles by the Kashtan/Kinzhal system. Technically the purpose of Su33 operations was intended as preparation for purpose built, catapult equipped carriers in future planning which were subsequently cancelled. Kuznetsov is a modified Kiev, never originally designed as a fixed wing carrier and just a way to get one quickly using Kiev hulls whilst purpose built carriers were being mooted, then cancelled. Hence abandonment of the future blue water naval plans are why the other Kievs were sold to China and India and similarly modified with through-decks and a ramp, although they don't have the shipwrecks and some other fit. Kuznetsov itself became more seaworthy with its modifications since they changed its seakeeping qualities but the Kiev are classes as green water cruisers that aren't particularly safe in the open ocean except in calm seas, intended for policing western approaches in the Soviet era, in fact mainly for a strategic proposal to secure the eastern-Mediterranean from NATO subs. Kuznetsov is mainly a fixed wing training ship retaining all other Kiev capabilities with technological improvements, but its better seakeeping qualities made it usable in blue water operations so whilst it was slated for Baltic and Black Sea Fleet operations it wound up becoming assigned to the Northern Fleet. It doesn't in any way even remotely function like a NATO aircraft carrier, mainly it's an escort cruiser in SSM and ASW roles (4 tactical warheads carried for shipwrecks/torps in wartime IIRC), it doesn't perform any CC/flagship functions like NATO carriers as this is all done from the heavy cruiser flagships like Kirov and Slava classes, reflected by electronics fit carriers have a purely support/escort role in the Russian Navy. Mainly a ramp was fitted because of the international treaties in place at the time banning any catapult equipped carrier from entering the Black Sea, and the fact the 4th gen soviet jets are STOL types and capable of operating from a ramp in headwind, so basically it made the RFN the big boy on the block in the Black Sea since everybody else can only operate comparatively low performance V/STOLs and VTOLs from non-catapult carriers. But I don't think those treaties are in place anymore and it's a moot point anyway since Kuznetsov turned out to be blue water capable and thus sent to the northern approach. It doesn't do night fixed wing operations at all and Su33 complement doesn't have any formal antishipping role (although Sukhoi OKB, through Jane's Information Group claims it had Kh31 capability at serial production and only the Su27K prototyping lacked this). The listed Kuznetsov air defence role is fleet air defence primarily against incoming missiles, primarily using the Kashtan/Kynzhal system. It really doesn't use its air complement the way NATO carriers do by any intention, although coincidences like the way Flankers were used in Syria will inevitably happen. Even at full war load, which I don't think it's ever been at, the complement is more than twice the number of Ka27 than Su33, most of the time it carries something like 10 Flankers and 35 rotaries plus a couple of development tests like the navalised Su25UTG and MiG29UB/K/M hybrids that India ordered. From the RF Admiralty point of view it certainly appears the fixed wing side of Kuznetsov is really like a side project with limited combat capabilities, whilst the fleet role of the ship and its complement is all about missile interception, ASW and SSM support as an escort cruiser with a large number of rotaries. The idea of Flanker Ds loading up with full A-G stores off the Kuznetsov and heading out on strikes isn't really an operational one but far more a training proposal with light loads in preparation for catapult carriers to be built but now cancelled. The entire deterrence strategy of Kuznetsov and the entire blue water Russian navy is formally stated as completely revolving around the potential use of tactical warheads and not conventional force projection like NATO fleets. My point, aside from redirecting any popular assumptions that Kuznetsov is just a poor attempt at a supercarrier by inferior Russians towards its actual intended fleet role as an AD/ASW/SSM escort cruiser and training carrier and not a flagship supercarrier by even a remote description; is that the Su33 isn't either, ie. intended for heavy munitions carrier operations from Kuznetsov, but is intended to do precisely that role from catapult equipped carriers which have been since cancelled. Context really changes the way you might be loading and using Flanker Ds if you're doing the Tom Clancy plausible thing in missions. They just don't do Hornet missions off Kuznetsov, aren't meant to.

Didn't know about the Ho229, would've been nice to have that. The stealth angle is a bit oversold in commercial publications, it was entirely accidental as the design was purely an adaptation of a high performance glider built prewar when the Versailles air force ban was still in effect, which was an attempt to provide fighter pilot training using a sleek, high speed glider that adhered to treaty conditions: it wasn't a fighter pilot training school, it was a sports glider school with 300km/h gliders. As such it was built from plywood with a fighter cockpit in it and styled to create as little wind resistance as possible, whilst still providing a good amount of lift: so ultra lightweight flying wing with next to no frontal mass. It was a midwar inspired side project to dig up the prewar glider design and stick some jet engines in it, being so compact for their comparative operational performance even in early development, it was a surprise that airframe performance with little redesign was so well suited to a very high speed, powered aircraft, although the airframe was still mostly plywood and you probably wouldn't want to try loading up any high speed Gees in it. The whole thing was an educated guess at a good jet design by simply sticking them in a great independent airframe design and hoping for the best. The stealth angle came entirely from NASA engineers at the Smithsonian in the 90s (I recall because Windows 98 was current when I read about this online at the time), in answer to a journalist's question about its resemblance to the recently declassified B2 Spirit. The journalist asked if stealth was an integral part of the Horton design and the spokesperson speculated that it is stealthy because it was made of mostly plywood, which is non reflective and the shape has a low radar signature but this was coincidence and there is no documentation to suggest any design intention of electronic stealth features. Nevertheless he stated at the time the radar technologies were such that by accident, the aircraft would be virtually invisible. Probably not on a later period computerized doppler. One of the issues is radar signals were human interpreted, not electronically rendered into images but translated directly to a screen and an operator who required genuine talent to read linear impacts on a signal wave in CRT and try to tell you if it's a storm cloud, a squadron of e/a or a mountain range and it wasn't easy to identify specific things, a hill turns out to be a balloon, etc. In that environment it was accidentally invisible to things like Chain HD, sure. It would probably look like someone just switched on a UHF radio nearby for a minute, bit of minor signal interference, nothing like a squadron of Heinkel He111 or something like that, which basically looks like an advancing mountain range signal wise, hence it took talented operators to read these things. Mainly the impressive thing about the Gotha led, powered version of the Horton design was a Mach 0.8 operational speed combined with incredible low speed handling qualities, it was a self contradiction in basic airframe design at the time. In combat sure pilots would discover wow, no interceptor reception overflying the UK. But mainly that it's even more slippery than a 262, lighter, carries more, has excellent takeoff performance and handling is as good near stall speed as it at high speeds. Its flying qualities were remarkable due to the glider heritage, what nobody expected was that the design is inherently perfect for the speeds jets kick around at too. I did read about the initial flight test somewhere, in a book about the history of Test Pilots I think. They honestly thought it was just going to break up, but what it actually did was some high speed passes and agile banks that made current fighters look like slugs, pats on the back all round. The real work was all about trying to balance the airframe with all the combat equipment weight and things like that. Speculatively, in combat trim this aircraft may have had some structural weakness under demanding flight conditions compared to all metal aircraft specifically designed to carry combat equipment and routinely operate at performance extremes. Perhaps the plywood would delaminate like Mosquitos like to in the long run, except with the bigger envelope of jet engines that long run might be a short run and it delaminates in months instead of a couple of years, perhaps doing so mid-flight. All its deployment performance is purely speculative and modern assumptions about it almost entirely result of postwar examination of static airframes and pure speculation by NASA engineers. There is exactly one flight test record of its actual flight performance which amounts to an airfield anecdote a project leader wrote down that survived the war. The main reason I love the Go229 is the basic armament of multiple MK103 high velocity guns and ostensibly, later the MK212 revolver cannon (almost ready for production at VE day). These weapons could not be synchronised due to uneven firing of the sizable propellant charge, but the 3cm shell using tungsten penetrators has roughly similar ballistics to the GAU-8 conventional AP and both DEFA and Aden cannon are direct copies of the MK212 captured postwar for mixed ammo comparison, in fact like early Soviet jet engines they were purely German blueprints placed into production in those countries. Israeli combat records with the DEFA in the Mirage is considered a perfect guideline of MK212 performance using wartime quality German munitions: everything from tank top armour to SAM sites to enemy aircraft of any type are accurately blown to bits from good range, the Israelis love, I mean love the DEFA. Some said the arrival of the F15 and F16 was the end of an era of true fighters that use great guns and great pilots to achieve kills on any target type, by comparison they referred to the F15 as a flying SAM site and a different skillset. This gun superiority was where German aerial munitions development was entirely headed with the MK103 and MK212/MG212 (MG is the 2cm version), a tradition began in Rechlin with the MG151 back in 38: seeking the perfect aerial gun for the time and standardizing it. You couldn't do that with the MK103 because it won't synchronise and requires an extremely stable gun platform because it kicks a lot, it knocks a heavy Me410 around when fired and that's just one. It was supposed to go into the BF109K as standard equipment motorkanone (MK designation means motorkanone because 3cm and up can't synchronise, aerial guns that can synchronise are called machine guns or MG regardless of calibre or HE filler). When Rechlin tested MK103 on a mockup BF109K it shook the engine off its mounts with airframe vibration due to recoil and its high rate of fire. The Messerschmitt is just too light to even touch this gun. It can go into a much heavier Ta152 as motorkanone or the Do335 because they're either built like tanks or weigh as much as one and can handle the recoil without budging. The Me262 had low velocity 3cm MK108 in a pack of four (2 deleted if fitted with bombs), but the nosecone was built with a modular weapons compartment with options for armaments packages ranging from 2cm revolver cannon (when available) to 5cm BK converted tank guns designed to take out bombers with single shots from more than 2km range. The Horton was to have a pair of MK103 at the wing roots, so centrally mounted for high accuracy but no issues with synchronisation. During the flight test period it was already mooted for stores capacity with its high load bearing capability and inherently good weight distribution, a pair of SC250 or racks of rocket tubes being of little concern. Basically, as a glider you apparently had to forcibly try to stall it so loads with a pair of jet engines are just no trouble at all. And that's why I regard it as one of the most unique late war proposals actually set up for series production and realistic in serviceable conception, like the 262, Do335 and Ta152C, the Horton is a niche craft of sheer air superiority in its performance envelope and combat strengths, if the 262 was a generation ahead of the 190 then the Horton was half a generation ahead of the 262. Yet it was entirely accidental, just an amazing glider that turned out to be a rocket ship. Yes that's right, like you I'm a rambler :smartass: What was the question? :megalol:

They're not just sitting around clipping their nails and laughing at our posts without answering. The only logical reason any of the developers and staff aren't constantly talking about every detail of Supercarrier like I'm sure they'd love to is because they're furiously working on it and somehow trying to fit a regular life in with it too. The amount of hours and dedication they spend on these things is incredible (hence I'm always thinking they're bargain priced at almost any price), hours they can't spend rubbing the tummies of everyone on the web about release and features every second day. Prepay purchase and go make a leggo death star or something, it'll probably be released by the time you're done, think about something else. The guys are doing awesome things for us as it is. Have I thanked ED/DCS teams for this module in development enough yet? Man, thank you guys. I'm looking forward to this as much as I did the Hornet, Tomcat and MiG21, I was really happy with that one. This is just so awesome. Arleigh Burke and new Kuznetsov included, I'm in it for that just as much as more Top Gun stuff, loving it!

Wow. Actually in Australia you'd have enough trouble just trying to privately own/operate a 70 year old warbird restoration with strict modifications like weapons capability irreversibly removed before taking it out of a locked vault and damn sure nothing jet powered, let alone 4th Gen. Not saying there might not be a way but a private warbird operator can't get a Sabrejet here with all the rules, a P40 gets you an ASIO deep character investigation and a lot of questions like, before we let you fly that here are you sure there's no way a .50 cal can be fitted into this thing ever again? And in the US you can buy Hornets. Head. Desk.

Sure, look up the equipment specifications of a WW2 fighter fitted with IFF, you'll note the piece of equipment is called a radio transponder or may simply be referred to as a radio set "xxx series", which if looked up with the manufacturer will clarify it as a radio transponder. Second, look up radio navigation beacons in the 1940s. Should be easily able to find a good explanation of the basic early war beacons and later war developments involving increased radio navigation equipment installed into military aircraft. You'll note the network, whilst the responsibility of individual nations did indeed stretch right across Europe and the United States from the very beginning, a sort of international air safety agreement. Thirdly, look up technical descriptions of modern commercial airport "passive radar" or just watch a few episodes of Air Crash Investigations (Mayday: Air Disaster in the US), they describe its technical functions quite frequently throughout the series as it is an important factor when aircraft are lost, since it is not first hand information. As I described the aircraft transponder sends instrument data and identification to the ground, which can only read the position of the transponder signal because "passive radar" is just the more modern radio navigation beacons and aircraft transponder interacting and isn't actually any kind of radar, but is a colloquial term for a radar simulation using data that should, but isn't necessarily accurate. When an airport loses a contact on "passive radar" they contact the nearest actual radar station, usually a military base and they locate the lost aircraft for them if it is still in the air.

I'm by no means a technician but I have some corrections based upon what I've managed to figure out over the years from an armchair. 40s vintage IFF is a radio transponder set installation, nothing to do with radar but was an extension of the essential radio navigation network, which started off as simple beacons in the 20s and was becoming more complex through the 30s and during the war. In the early war for example, when tallied 50% of all combat losses for the RAF were due to navigational error and mechanical failures and no other reason. In one case an entire bomber stream was lost when it accidentally headed towards Norway instead of returning to base. This may seem shocking or unreal to modern thought but was completely commonplace during the period and punctuates how important the (international) radionavigation network was for aeronautics worldwide. So radio beacons and increasingly a more complex radio navigation network existed throughout Europe in the 30s-40s, even in the Soviet Union although they lagged behind updating equipment and had simple beacons until about 44, meaning lend lease aircraft had more radio equipment installed than Russians could actually use and it was one of the things they loved about them in preference to their own aircraft, so many radios installed they didn't even know how to use some of them. Anyway vintage IFF is a simple radio transceiver which automatically responds to a signal challenge typically transmitted by a ground station in the radio navigation network, ie. it is a radio transponder. More modern transponder/ground station systems are commercially referred to as "passive radar" but are exactly as before, just a radio signals network primarily for navigation, but they add more information and are no longer just a simple "squawk" but actually transmit some instrument data (IAS, Altitude and Heading), as well as ID (type or flight number and operator), whilst the radionav network intrinsically provides its current position. Thus it gives all the necessary information an active radar would give, but it is not observational, it is a radio call making some claims and a ground station operator believing them, all his instruments actively tell him is current position of a squawker, the aircraft's transponder is telling him everything else. Passive radar is more like virtual radar, it was conceived essentially as the poor man's radar for smaller airfields that couldn't afford active radar to still perform tracking and traffic management independently of local radar stations which often have other tasking. Another idea that came as an extension of the radio transponder is the collision avoidance system, as computerization of flight management developed the manners in which a radio transponder can be used for the benefit of the aircraft increased. Modern military IFF is not used the same way being integrated into the computerization of modern warfare, using a variety of tools at its disposal for something a little more involved, including radar and mission Intelligence systems such as datalinked local air traffic information on painted targets, piped though the base operator and/or AWACS to the pilots. In WW2 some late war fighters had a radio set update capable of transmitting an IFF transponder challenge directly but again, nothing to do with radar, just a radio signals exchange, a squawk amounting to a radio fingerprint identifying the operator with some basic electronics: 15ohms lights orange bulb, 25ohms lights blue bulb, different squawks impede circuit differently to determine result, something like that.

Thanks Zhukov; and you reminded me about mention during the presentations about the roles of private military and special forces in the new doctrine, which was also fascinating as it just related things I never knew and loved learning. The Russian special forces being so very different from the entire western conception, which is in fact only really mirrored by standing guards divisions of the regular military, say compared to Navy Seals and Army Rangers. Spetsnaz is essentially a kind of SWAT version of contract military police, transferred from GRU, except for blue beret airborne troops, which are traditional special forces of the SAS variety and comprise the entire airborne. This represents the completely different way Russian military conceives of special forces. It's the Guards divisions that get the special training and royal treatment in equipment selection and it's they whom get transferred to missions NATO would be using special forces to accomplish. Spetsnaz used to work for GRU pulling the fingernails out of spies in Afghanistan but now they're attached to the military killing insurgents hiding in South Ossetia...in a Hind-D. And it's weird because they carried over the whole honorary officer rank without actually having any rank thing Ian Fleming liked, so they're pretty damn intimidating. When they rolled over to Chechnya I'm guessing a lot of rebel leaders changed addresses and hid their loved ones smartly. But if you've got a tactical objective like disable the field command outposts during a land invasion they don't use Spetsnaz, they compose a team of Guards formations for an independent op, just like NATO would use special forces teams with command authority on support. Ostensibly Spetsnaz are designed to function in occupied territories so are really a kind of paramilitary contractor. So militarily I really think of Spetsnaz more like Algemeine SS totenkompf in 1940 and say Waffen SS in 1944 are the Guards divisions of the standing military, or Green berets or whatever. SAS is mirrored by the airborne, which used to be part of Spetsnaz but were under the strategic forces command on loan from GRU as best as I can reconcile them, now they're just under the district command of the combined forces armies. And they're not much different from regular US air cavalry. So whilst Spetsnaz also has a naval contingent their role is more grey and political and the traditional naval/marine special forces operations are performed by Guards formations. Fascinating from this Russian point of view that they have a type of special forces that doesn't exist in western thinking: Guards air forces formations, special forces Flankers haha :lol: Seriously though, it's part of the fundamental precept as stated. A Guards fighter pilot gets special training, personal choice equipment/materiel selection and comparative Rockstar status from an otherwise fairly depersonalized military culture. I already knew that, since the Great Patriotic War the Guards formations received this elevation in terms of Russian military culture but what I didn't know was why being they are functionally the special forces divisions of Russian military and get those mission taskings. And what they refer to as special forces they use basically like assault military police functioning in occupied territory, like the SS-verfügungstruppe in the early war, who could tend to get a little excited in the field so maybe they're a bit like that too. I'm making some speculations here, amusing myself so please take me light-heartedly but it's all interesting to contemplate. Documentaries are very US heavy in our market and I'm just so fascinated by Russian militaria, I'd love an English documentary on Flankers and Fulcrums and the Kirov, etc. Maybe one day.

Cheers, thanks for the comments fellers. I have been noticing the general trend since the late 90s but whenever I looked it up everything said, oh no no Russian Federation is still structured exactly like the Soviet except the air forces structure was revised in the 90s. Hearing these presentations at the think tank kind of vindicated what I'd been thinking was happening all along, since for a start every time I started building a 90s mission, this was back when FC2 was nearing release I kept looking up news stories in Crimea, Moscow, Kuban (translated obviously, but local indie journos talking period politics at personal risk), and just using logic and what I knew of the late/post soviet strife militarily since the early 80s, and I was thinking there's just no way they can field like that, it's logistical cum tactical suicide and they'll just lose even small skirmishes. Soviet frontal strategy was based upon war by attrition, the Russian military in the 90s simply couldn't support it. But interviews of military personnel at bases suggested despite lack of wages for months or years at a time some were still going about their job as usual, virtually as a volunteer force would act under local command authority and engage tactical operations if required. It's like a militia mentality. Some also sold black market weapons out of the supply dumps but not everybody tries to be good. Now remember the Admiral who fired missiles from the Moscow into Georgia in the mid-90s, Russians stated he acted without orders and it represented a great concern in the west at the time of rogue military district commanders in the former Soviet states. This was when ex-soviet base personnel still in Ukraine after the breakup were illegally shipping nuclear-capable missiles to Iran and there was a lot of talk about policing black market weapons trade on the Black Sea. Now let's say Iran went completely insane and decided to go over the Caucasus and take the Kuban soviet training facilities and their war materiel stockpiles in a national burglary, it's not really a strategic threat but at the time the tactical organization to repel it in a laughable border skirmish near Georgia ostensibly doesn't exist in this period of turmoil. What it appeared would happen is local field commanders like that rogue Admiral would simply turn around with whatever they had stockpiled locally and throw a genuine force at it without so much as a call to the Kremlin, then probably ask for a seat on the Duma as a reward later. I'm thinking the new strategic plan was bottom up observation of logic and subsequently implementing an official and intelligent plan of it, not a top down decision that was thought up and will begin to be implemented over the coming decades. The whole type of functionality involved here is also about force coordination being it's just not a massive standing military with thousands of infantry brigades to throw around, but most likely a luck as falls force composition with whoever is still hanging around to shoot with it, you kind have bits of everything to be thrown at you on any scale because it's the best they can do with what's left and a trickle of maintenance, industry or support. So I believe thinking was already in place, out of sheer desperation rather than conception. After all it's basically the great fundamental difference between small nation Wehrmacht lethality and classical strategic doctrine, which itself is merely representative of strategic thought shifting with the impact of dramatic war technologies and the willingness to adopt them, ie. tanks and CAS lending to field authority with logistical support as opposed to trenches and artillery and a table with toy soldiers on it in the command tent with a runner delivering tactical decisions. More than this an entire shift in the thinking in command tents both at base and in the field about best tactical expression of new war technologies being employed, which is all related. In a sense Russia has really come late to the party...or so it would seem. In reality it wasn't until the Gulf War that the US formally adopted the combined force strategic doctrine on paper, right up to then still existed the presumption of wars being fought by attrition in one form or another, so primarily fought by the army with independent interservice support, an environment with interservice rivalry and tactical miscommunications so poor coordination of force in the field despite stellar strategic plans on paper in priori, it's such a competitive environment that nobody wants to give up any power, whether holding logistical priority or giving instructions in Washington, so fluidic field requirements are not only missed but tend to outdate the strategy before it's employed. In a sense, until the 90s the world (NATO) military leadership of the US had updated old thinking (post-mediaeval) to new (Wehrmacht) thinking mainly in a purely tactical sense and primarily through consistent, intensive study of Wehrmacht doctrines and prodigious publications since 1942. Not that field commanders and even some general staff haven't been very aware since the 50s and vocally frustrated during conflict in strategic capability and tactical achievement by red tape. In a sense you could say the combined force doctrine crept into the general staff from the bottom up and wasn't so much a top down decision as an observation and lending official support to it at the highest military level. It wasn't like the old guard were twiddling their thumbs and giving stubborn refute, they were occupied with a high survivability doctrine as the new military focus for previous decades and the main shift in thinking, it just so happens the two work beautifully together. In mission building terms for a 90s fictional conflict, the way I was being told despite my gut saying otherwise is that essentially local forces would comprise of a handful of militia using stockpiled, mostly obsolete equipment and a handful of newer gear still essentially being field tested when the soviet world collapsed, under command of a local warlord and marching to their own tune, probably the warlord's personal ambitions and insanities, whilst the general staff and whatever forces are centrally organized still structured its thinking around tossing thousands of infantry battalions in the soviet style of warfare so expect battle readiness of any formal military response from point of mobilization you know, in a month or two but good luck with the border skirmish. And if I build a mission where you go from attacking some defunct outer bases, barely operational in the 90s to a formal response and military presence, it's about two days worth of populating the map with a large enough force to have all the things you really need to see on the battlefield in modern warfare. Logically this military response simply didn't exist in reality. What it appears now is we have a formalization of the combined force doctrine and regional authorities but I believe it is the only manner in which conflict with any actual tactical threat (standing militaries as opposed to rebel insurgencies), could have been fought and what sounds logical is that local "rogue" commanders would act under their own authority with support under the table from Moscow scaled to the seriousness of the threat. Basically the new doctrine in a nascent form: the son and the father making day plans in the kitchen whilst grandpa is asleep in the loungeroom. I think the new military organization was already functionally in place as the only direction sheer desperation would force the formal Russian military to respond against a national military. It's just now they're going to do it on purpose.

I recently saw a series of presentations by a think tank of strategic studies, with audience members including diplomats and retired officials, discussing recent streamlining of Russian military organization in a major shift to adapt from Soviet doctrines to a modern Russia capable of fighting a modern war with the economy, industry and logistics they actually have available. Obviously it was fascinating, especially from a DCS mission builder perspective. Being facetious, it does slightly resemble Grand Moff Tarkin's relation of the Emperor's new organizational command structure in Star Wars; district commanders now have full authority of combined forces, including missile regiments within their district and coordinate for national defence. I guess it's like the district commanders effectively replace Stavka and a lot of red tape, it also means each district is now designed to support any kind of military operations independently, with a virtual encyclopedia of brigade attachments for each "combined forces army". Again being facetious it's almost like Putin's answer to the rogue commander threat is to simply give them their fiefdoms, it's a logistical and political benefit. Organizationally it's been streamlined. Russia has completely done away with the Soviet era structure of Army Groups, Divisions, Brigade attachments and Battalion tactical units since they no longer deal in terms of hundreds of Divisions. They also performed a brutally honest self examination of doctrine and realized the "old Guard" had designed a strategic plan which, under its own weight simply could not be logistically supported in warfare. The new structure uses just a handful of strategic expressions: the Combined Forces Army, Regiments and independent Army Corps. Each district now forms the Army Group. So, for example in the Caucasus region and Black Sea theatre, the RF territory is the Southern District, Army Group HQ Krasnodar, with three Combined Forces Army HQ at locations approximating Krymsk, Maykop and Mineralnye Vody, these forming the Army Group commanded from Krasnodar by the district commander. Generally the tactical unit deployed is the self contained Regiment as opposed to a Battalion as it can support and sustain its own operations. If necessary the district commander can utilize tactical nuclear response within his region without further authority, as part of Russia's stated current strategic doctrine. Border skirmishes or other small scale tactical response would be countered by the self contained Regiment, including all support elements and interservice attachments required for operations. It also means the field commander is now only twice removed from the theatre commander so would enjoy far greater tactical freedom than similar commanders traditionally would've. The units are all understrength, with mobilization to reflect the national state of readiness for war. In formation size a Regiment tactically deployed without notice to a sudden border skirmish for example might resemble a traditional Battalion in strength and mobility but is actually an understrength Regiment, with its own understrength air attachments, naval attache, Intelligence operations, arty command, transport and logistics, a partridge in a pear tree. This examples the new doctrine versus the old, where a Battalion would be the tactical quick response and the things it needs to do its job independently would take time to get there, but when it does it'll probably be 18 Divisions to avenge Battalion which was undoubtedly destroyed holding the line with limited functionality. In the new system the "Battalion" that gives immediate tactical deployment has roughly 20% of each and every thing a self sustaining Regiment has at its disposal so everything from helicopter gunships to strike aircraft deploys together at the drop of a hat, just scaled to reflect the state of national readiness, nominally 20%. It's still very Russian in that it seeks to overwhelm the enemy but where Soviet doctrine amounted to numerical superiority and cumbersome organization the new Russia is about force coordination at every scale of conflict and very streamlined organization. Russia's strategic plan, like its new organization was described very simply, it's neat and streamlined and quite Russian. It almost completely dispenses with the concept of small scale warfare, disregards border conflicts and policing actions as local tactical concerns and structures its strategic plan upon the premise that any war involving major powers in any way invariably has a front which stretches from Norway to Turkey and all field decisions, including the role of the navy are made upon this basis. It means essentially Russia has no hesitation about using tactical nukes as a deterrence for escalation at the very onset of any conventional skirmish with major powers. Unlike American doctrine which is that tactical nukes invariably leads to escalation into strategic nuclear exchange, Russia's view is the opposite, that in order to present viable strategic deterrence the threat must be believable and so where conventional threat may suffice, field units such as naval units may be required to provide strategic deterrence in which tactical nukes would be employed. As written, Russian strategic doctrine is that limited nuclear exchange is not only possible, without escalation into strategic nuclear exchange but in fact is necessary for believable deterrence. That is not to say each Russian ship is going to have nukes primed and armed, but simply that ubiquitous warhead delivery systems capable of launching both conventional and tactical nuclear armaments are part of the Russian strategic plan as much as Boomers are the backbone of the US deterrence. Anyway that's how I've understood things. It's all very interesting, regardless of whether I might be glossing a bit and missing a bit, it was a lot to take in, the main thing I came away with was much easier mission building on the Caucasus map and how to populate it believably within hours instead of days of head scratching and then winding up with way too much to render trying to make it believable. I was putting in old soviet formations but under the entirely accurate new system I can scale everything way down and still have every kind of support in a small scale tactical operation. It's actually how they work now. Mission building just got fun again. Edit to note what I mean by saying above that Russia is doing away with this formation type and that is purely as strategic expressions, presumably the common (Prussian) order of battle remains the international standard of military organization, ie. traditional formations and composition on paper, but no longer as strategic expressions.

I may have said it before, I'm loving this forthcoming module and am so very appreciative of all the work that goes into these modules for what amounts to bargain prices for the consumer. I'm especially wrapped about the Kuznetsov and Arleigh Burke additions and really looking forward to that. The recent sale has been fantastic and I've filled out most of the modules. Fingers crossed for a clickable Flanker B/D module one day in the future; in the Black Sea theatre, realistically any US supercarrier threat would face land based air and fast missile boats en masse but in a Persian Gulf scenario Kuznetsov would be a useful escort/screen for any Russian venture. Land based air would have to come all the way from the Kuban so only specific, long range strikes and escort. Local fighter sweeps would have to employ Kuznetsov's Flanker-Ds and give them an opportunity to perform their limited ground strike role. In the Gulf a new Kuznetsov model is going to be really fun, I'm not whingeing but the current one is really looking dated now. Obviously you can probably tell I have a wishlist for all the Russian ships getting high poly treatment, but I'm thankful the crucial ones Moscow and Molnyia are new since they're the main striking teeth of the Black Sea Fleet IRL. Thanks ED, awesome work by everyone involved!

I just read the non-aircraft projects up coming and have to say I'm real excited about it. Especially the Kuznetsov and Su33 models update. Real excited for the Marianas obviously. And the Syria map sounds awesome. Loving the 1000kmx1000km span for the Marianas. It was always something at the back of my mind being an Aussie, the RAAF choices for new front line fighter/interceptor birds have to contend with tremendous territorial distances between available refuelling, projections have pointed out glaring weaknesses with our RAAF relying on USAF tactical strategies, we just don't have the support coordination the US does with its mega-budget. Hornets are good because they can be very economical and carry a bucket load of external tanks, but the reality was back when we had short range Mirages and even after we put up Hornets we'd actually send an F-111 for a long range fighter sweep. Once you toss in a supersonic dash it just trumped the range on anything else capable of doing the job and once you break the coastline there is a very big expanse of endless ocean everywhere around Australia. Any kind of navigational error and you might just be ditching, running out of fuel is probably a bigger concern in a combat scenario than the enemy. And of course the vulnerability of our limited fleet of tankers. Combat models show the red force making easy wins with old Russian equipment so long as they throw everything directly at the tankers. Then they can all but avoid aerial combat and the entire RAAF force has to ditch before making it back to the lonely continent. Our force projection capability and even "protecting territorial interests" is far more logistically limited than any US doctrine, we're like Seal Team Six trying to fight the entire Iraqi war by ourselves around here. So it may seem weird to some but I love simming long missions at the limit of combat radius, with hours of overwater expanse and like eight minutes of combat. Then trying to make it back to base or carrier. It was what I loved about IL2:Sturmovik, a huge Pacific map and navigating by dials and knee maps, for hours across endless ocean, have a crazy, hopeless combat sortie where I usually got my Wildcat shot up and emptied my magazines way too far away to hit anything, then attempting to make it back to a carrier the size of a needle in a haystack, with smoke pouring out my bird. It was awesome!!!! I mean the immersion by the time you get into combat is incredible, you actually get such an anxious shock that you mess up all over the place and imagine, wow, this times 1000 for what those guys actually went through, but it gave you that abstract guess from very real butterflies in your own gut on a computer. Love it.

Whilst it remained listed in wartime handbooks as optional armament throughout the war the MK103 gondola project was cancelled and only four planes ever fitted with them, all subsequently removed before service entry. The trouble we have is they were placed into production before any testing or service trials so were only placed on a prototype and three serial aircraft and then was finally tested, during which time it was found that during repeated strafing passes their outboard weight, recoil and lack of any shock absorption system induced dangerous instability during low speed turns and was so inaccurate due to uneven firing and yaw that few rounds could be placed onto any target before inducing a stall situation and forcing the pilot to break off the attack. They can only be fired in such a glideslope and speed which makes accurate strafing impossible, or otherwise induce a stall if fired low and slow enough to actually hit anything. So they were cancelled and never operationally used, although some photos of the four fitted with them, effectively mockups do exist. Just not operationally, eg. you won't find a photo of one in the air with them, or in an operational squadron field. Just the mock ups. They did remain listed however in pilot handbooks as an armament option, it was just one which didn't exist if a flight commander actually asked for them. Twin MG151/20 gondolas however were used operationally and replaced the outer integral guns. Baer used them on his A6, giving him 6x MG151/20 to attack bombers with. However a single pair of MK108 were more effective for bringing down bombers. More than a hundred MG151/20 rounds were required to eventually bring down a B17, it took four MK108 rounds to do the same. Luftwaffe pilots referred to it as a grenade launcher, due to the size of its HE filler and extremely curved trajectory, which had to be "lobbed" onto enemy aircraft rather than fired into them. Rounds passed upwards through the sight at 150m and downwards again through the sight at 450m and was way off target at any other range, way too high at 300m and way too low at 600m to hit anything, you had to use MG if you were being an aerial sniper and use the MK108 like a grenade launcher. Part of its effectiveness was due to its low muzzle velocity, it stuck in duralumin and exploded where more high powered ballistics tended to pass right through without exploding, so the MK108 was particularly deadly to bombers. Even the Me110 which did operationally use MK103 didn't use it against bombers, only ground targets. They went directly to the BK3.7 FlaK modification for bombers. Downing them is all about a big charge and either fusing to explode inside a target like a field artillery shell, or such a low muzzle velocity that it explodes inside a target like the MK108. The MK103 is an awesome weapon though. Try Tony Williams' aerial armaments website and compare the ballistics and penetration of a tungsten round to the GAU8 for a shock. It's capable of taking out a T55. You know but by the time MK103 and MK108 were in production they were well on the way with the MG/MK213 revolver cannon so armaments thinking at RLM was headed along those lines, they were about to surprise us all with Aden/DEFA cannon (directly copied from MK213) in Luftwaffe birds by the end of 45. Check out what Israelis say about the DEFA, devastating against both ground and aerial targets of any kind, just talk to any ex Israeli Mirage pilot and say DEFA and watch him grin. Ask an RAF pilot about Aden and watch him raise his brows. USMC use Aden in the Harrier, I'll bet they've got glowing reviews too. Me262 was going to wind up with a couple of those in the nose. The reality is they always found a problem with high velocity aerial guns in single engine fighters. Soviets used the Nudelman with some success in the Yak9T but only experienced pilots could handle it and reported the recoil almost stopped the plane mid dive, it was only used in very limited numbers. Attempts by Germany to mount the MK103 in both the 190 and 109 were abandoned, it shook the engine off its mounts in the 109 and yawed the 190 into a stall.

The engine and flight characteristics of the F8 are identical to the A8, they were only different in the early series because the F and G got a C3 boost injector before MW50 kits were available (which wasn't until Feb44), which could only be used under 1000 metres as per the flight manual. It was actually for the G to help channel raids but found its way into the F just ahead of MW50 availability, which can be used at higher altitudes. When MW50 became available this was fitted to both the A8 and F8 although the F8 pilot handbook still has the old fuel injector guideline; nevertheless the captured American F8 (at the Smithsonian?) was examined in detail and found to have MW50 system at the supercharger exhaust and not the C3 injector at the supercharger intake like the G and some earlier F series and in fact was identical in all mechanical respects to the A8, thus can be flown under special boost at higher altitudes just like an A8. The only technical difference between the F8 and the A8 then is removal of the outer guns for reinforced twin hardpoints specifically for a set of four SC70 or SC50 antipersonnel bomblets under the wings. It could not carry SC250 under the wings, the G series had to delete the cowling armament and play with ballast to carry SC250 or 300l droptanks under the wings due to CoG issues. The same problem was found in other FW190 based development prototypes when trying to load the wings with things like internal tankage. A mechanic on the White 8 FW190F8 restoration project explained to me in a conversation about CoG issues that in fact according to his research and documentation the freijaeger pilots flying clean on the channel coast never completely removed the outer wing guns and weren't allowed to unlike modern claims, due to fear of adverse handling effects of CoG changes. He cited wartime documents stating magazines for outer guns were simply left empty in freijaeger, the guns were never removed in an A for fighter combat, only for carrying bombs like in the F/G or prototyping the F/G. He was very vibrant about his discovery and I've found other well accepted misconceptions during my own research projects. Even armouring became common between the A8 and F8 except IIRC one single plate on the cockpit floor, the engine armouring and everywhere else was identical. All F8 got the blown canopy for better pilot view but not all A8 got it, some did but others didn't so sometimes an A8 had the older canopy but all F8 had the new one. Many F8 were also fitted with a larger Dora style tail fin but few A8 were. The A9 got all these features. Edit as I also recalled the paddle props, F8 often had one although two types were used on both F8 and A8. So essentially the F8 is an A8 that looks like an A9 but can carry four small, light antipersonnel bombs under the wings, a modification for which the outer guns have to be completely removed for CoG issues. That's it. G takes out more guns to carry heavier wing stores and the Ta152 removed a fuselage tank to put tanks in the wings for a mere 50 litre net gain, again CoG issues documented during tests. Despite the load bearing capacity of the huge tractor in the nose an FW190 is an airframe which is extremely sensitive to CoG changes. It has a fatal stall tendency for inexperienced pilots in high speed turns as it is and it doesn't take a lot of mucking around with loads to make it unstable in regular manoeuvres. In early jabo development a lot of the work was centred around this fact, the ETC had to be moved around, different armaments configurations tried, reinforcement, internal weighting, a partridge in a pear tree... But if carefully balanced with other modifications it had no problem carrying loads in excess of 1500kg aloft, as shown by example, if rarely. Operationally A and F never carried anything bigger than SC250, the G could carry SC500 but this is all about layout, the G is more modified. During 44 some were actually stripped of combat equipment completely and used to transport SC1000 and SC1500 bombs between airfields ahead of enemy offensives. Then there was a handful of specially modified G which could operationally use 750kg and 1250kg aerial torpedos. But regular A or F, SC250 and definitely not under the wings.

The RAF, like many European air forces experienced a wartime production phenomenon which simply wasn't present in the US industrial complex and would not have been entirely understood in the US, where mass production of large numbers of aircraft and engines managed a relatively tremendous quality control, where so many are being produced, in such an orderly fashion that sub-standard component batches within the production series can be identified and substituted prior to assembly and the final examples maintain a far greater level of performance consistency than any aircraft production in Europe. By comparison every Merlin produced by Rolls Royce had to be put into the air because the backlog on demand at the front lines and the capacity of limited production facilities were so strained, the same story throughout the European powers. Quality control suffered. Following a tour of the Allison plant by Rolls Royce officials midwar the British Ministry conducted a study of quality control within production batches of brand new, assembled Spitfires and found that performance varied by as much as 50mph speed capability and quite a lot of horsepower difference among Spitfires of identical type and series, produced at the same factory, in the same production batch and the same assembly crews. By comparison about the most variation you'd see between two brand new Mustangs was about 5mph and that's on a very bad day. This phenomenon was so old hat among European aircraft operators that field maintenance and operating procedures was always far more loose among the RAF and others than would ever be tolerated in the USAAC/F. Aircraft were considered individual personalities with entirely individual requirements, where US procedure mandated that manufacturer procedure must be adhered to without question or challenge at all times, a Mustang was a Mustang, but a Spitfire was a Betty or a Louise or a Joan and they all wore different dresses even if they came from the same mother. One could handle more boost, the next liked low alt better than high alt unlike the other two, the third liked the wings tipped before you fired the guns, yet they were made alongside each other and for all intents and purposes, identical aircraft and equipment fit. This is punctuated by correspondence by Allison AC to foreign operators of their engines under lend lease, strictly instructing them to please stop ignoring Allison operational guidelines and substituting them with their own field operational procedures, such as boost regulator adjustments well beyond manufacturer guidelines. You could literally have two Spits built right next to each other and one pilot complains that it won't climb past 19,000ft and the crew chief jump in the other and take it up to 22,000 and then the rest of the squadron would start quoting all their own different alt top outs. Welcome to the wartime RAF, where the MkIX wasn't even airworthy under British regulation for its first year of production and in fact wasn't until it started using MkVIII parts in late war production, everything but the fuel tankage. Then we fast forward to modern warbird restoration operators and it's an entirely different kettle of fish, where we're not desperate to save the nation from inevitable doom with the very last strands of operational capacity every day of the week and we actually want to preserve the aircraft flown in some reasonable manner, for one thing care is taken that modern operating procedures do not overly strain the rather expensive museum piece. And what you have is a far more standardized operational guideline not unlike something US industry is more used to, since Mexico was never really a military threat. You can dredge up wartime RAF pilot/crew guidelines which, whilst historical aren't exactly mandate, they're far more circumstantial. Just a thought for another take on the matter.

I think the only way you could see a wide series of variants for each module is with an open code sim like combatace (?) where basically half the gamers themselves mod the bejezus out of it and add every variant for existing models themselves with some home coding, roughly 0.05% of it amounting to one or two contributors doing anything remotely accurate but so many people modding you do wind up with liveries and pop-science renditions of every variant of every plane in the universe available for download. I mean that's what we did with IL2 Sturmovik, I did the RAF/RAAF Kittyhawks and Ta152C0R11/C3 mods myself, which took about a year research apiece and was a rewarding experience since I would up having personal conversations with mechanics on an FW190A warbird restoration project and the respected FW warbird technical author Dietmar Herman, so learned a tremendous amount of little known information that actually challenges pop science renditions of WW2 birds, such as the Ta152H altitude restriction of 10,500 metres and not the published 14,500 metres. Anyway point being with all the other contributors that eventually coalesced to the SAS IL mod website (still around btw), every FW190 variant, every BF109 variant, every P51 variant, every Yak variant, every early MiG, every Spit variant, every Typhoon/Tempest, every Beaufort/Beaufighter, every P40, every everything wound up downloadable. And that's not even open code, it's cracked. Took many years for that many modders to pop up. Open code like some of the jet sims (combatace?) right off the bat they have a huge mod community. But that's not DCS, not by a long shot. What I'm saying is if you want that, you have to go to an open code sim or a cracked sim mod site. Problem there is realism, because half the modders are brought up on pop culture not science, because whole populations of human beings don't really practise scientific method as a personal philosophy and you kind of need to if you want to get past all the propaganda, limited assumptions and straight up disinformation about militaria. Half the facts out there have people's personalities mixed into the renditions, I do it myself being facetious when I'm telling something that is true at the core, but has some flavour about how I'm conversating so I don't bore myself to death and want to set people on fire for not being a hot swimwear model who wants to bang me. But other times some people are straight up wrong with their facts, published fact books about the BF109 says things like the carburettor DB600 was in the BF109D when it was just a Jumo engine C modified for frontline service in reality, or historians look at the Focke Wulf company documentation predicting Ta152H performance as level flight at 14,500 metres when historically the only pilot who ever got it past 11,000 metres without passing out was Kurt Tank himself and during the service trials it cruised at 7,000-8,000 metres in practise, so wasn't exactly the space shuttle it kind of looked like at the time. The C with the Daimler motor was better and according to Dietmar Herman documentation suggests forthcoming production (H2?) was going to switch to the Daimler motor. Now get a modder who loves the Ta152H from the library books and you'll have a plane in the sim that runs around at 14,000 metres no problem but it never actually existed irl like that, so begin the flame wars at the sim forum for that mod. So I totally get the DCS way of doing things. And like it.