Rick50

Only if you speak with a heavy English accent!! Also only after the map is released! Which might nor might not happen before or after the Phantom launch. My guess is both will appear this year though, so the wait to get both shouldn't be all that long.

So very true.... the innovations done by crews on their helis there... lots of stuff that's been forgotten!!! Very common mods done in theatre, using bungie cords or ropes to hang a doorgun M-60, along with using a soup can mounted to the feed tray as an ammobelt feeding aid to help reliability. Considering how incredibly common this mod was, it MUST have been beneficial. The most recent I read about was that apparently at least one Cobra gunship actually had 20mm Vulcan gunpods normally used on Phantoms, mounted on the wing stations! That must have been one hell of a straffing run!!

Pave Low, Pave Hawk, as CSAR rescue yes. Some MH-60 variants, MH-47 also yes have fuel probes. So USAF rescue birds and Army SOF birds. IF you want to experience helo AAR right now, you CAN, and do it free, in DCS though! Go download the UH-60 mod, which has the fuel probe for AAR, many have fueled up from the Marine KC-130 and posted Youtubers of it! It doesn't use a glass cockpit, instead the older "steamgauge sixpack" style. Nor any weapons, not even doorguns (yet... maybe in future update?). But you get night vision goggles that work, several paint schemes, and an UH-60L that's plausible... for free download!

Any military operator is busy. Getting to grips with an entirely new aircraft, bringing it from early requirements, to figuring out what to include in the initial contracts from how many years of spares and how much crew and maintenance training they will need to purchase up front or figure out at say 5 or 10 years service. Then once the crews have basic proficiency and have flown about a bit, do they have enough training to be truly ready for warrior duty in a shooting war... with full logistics, confirmation that the training is effective... there's a LOT to deal with. Then, the official documentation would be SOOOO voluminous that smaller details might not be noticed for a long time. Things like these tiny tanks, often aren't purchased up front, but rather get considered once the real missions prove some operating issues, like fuel consumption for the missions they hadn't planned for, but are now 80% of their flights. Some phone calls are made to friends in other airforces, and they talk of "robbie tanks", so they look at the website, and rather than wait for the govt to give them to you maybe 10 years from now, they ask for a quote quick to help submit an effective purchase request. Maybe India's new Guardians prove great in service, but right away they notice that fuel capacity is truly vital for operations in the hot and very high mountains, and maybe they ask for a very fast purchase of 10 such tanks... speed is often extremely important for such situations, as a normal channel might result in delivery years after it was needed in the first place. A quick quote can go a long way to speeding things up.

I don't wanna p1ss on the idea... but I don't see the appeal. I work on two tiny areas of that region, on and just north of the CLAWR, Foster Creek and close to the hamlet of Conklin. And from what I've seen, it's pretty much just flat, trees, the odd river and a handful of gravel roads. A petroleum facility, and some ground targets. Edmonton would be 400km away, so it might not even be on the map. No mountains, no valleys, seemingly only the shortest tiniest hills. To my mind I'm not sure what the appeal would be, for scenarios in DCS. That said, I've not seen most of Cold Lake and the CLAWR (Cold Lake Air Weapons Range), so maybe there's something you know that I don't!! I think there's a more interesting airbase back east, not sure, Goose Bay or somethign, at least has hills and small mountains. It too is used for a lot of tactical training, and has many European airforce frequent visitors! I know that one of the nice things about Canadian airbase training areas is that you can fly as low as you dare for as long as you dare, and often can do supersonic on the deck if the mood strikes. Been many a time in the summer when a low flyer doing Mach 1.2 shocks us and rocks the camp building! The first time it happened, I thought it was a volcanic eruption or something! Another time I thought it was severe earthquake. I've seen Hornets mostly, but might have seen a Tornado (too far to be certain), and a year ago saw many Alphajets being used to train airborne FAC/JTAC candidates. Those were sometimes as low as 20ft above the treetops doing maybe 400knots.

I've no idea, but sounds plausible? I agree the links probably have a fair amount of stress on them.

Not expert... but while almost all pics of ROK Apaches show the old style, I could have sworn I saw a new ROK Guardian that had the upturned exhaust type, in a video about a female South Korean gunship pilot!! then again, the Guardian is an E not a D anyway soooo... yea...

Hmm... I do think that's what he meant. I dont' think he means it breaks all the time, but that sometimes if you stop mid-burst it might damage or break. I mean, things break. And get designed for a specific use, and when you deviate from the original test parameters, shiz happen I guess!

Can we get cruise missiles? And sharks w lazerbeemz ? Oddly enough I think there IS a concept for a "cruise missile" for attack helos of the next generation... not sure where I saw it, might have been Bell Invictus maybe? Not a big Tomohawk or anything, more like a Hellfire with an extra foot or two of length and a tiny turbine for thrust... think it was for loitering recon and then destroy.

His name might be George, but I shall call him "Chewy"!!

Just HITTING a flying aircraft using ground smallarms is difficult. Maybe closer to almost impossible, for some circumstances/scenarios. That's why when they DO hit, it's probably a shocking and fairly rare event for the helo crew. I was Army for 10 years, and in none of those exercises did I ever raise rifle or LMG to "engage" any fixed or rotor wing aircraft, and that's in exercises with blanks! In none of those instances I sawthem, were they close enough to even "possibly" get a hit if I'd already been lined up with them. Again, not impossible, it has happened, but it's rare and very low probability. We all know about ground fire and helis in the Vietnam war, probably the conflict with the highest threat to aircraft from infantry weapons (not counting MANPADS as that's a different kettle). Many were shot down, I think roughly 2000 American helos lost in action, some aircrew certainly died in the helo from ground fire... but that was a long war, and the enemies with AK's could be "invisible" to helo crews and take fire without seeing any enemies at all, unlike other wars. Most of those downings from just light smallarms probably happened not while the helos were at speed, but when hovering, landed, or approaching or departing, still slow. Much like "Black HAwk Down", the two that were downed were not cruising at 280km/h but were hovering for Fast Rope operations.

Hmm.... looking at the pic, I'm not sure how a Hellfire steers it's path... those front fin-lets, are they fixed position? Does the thrust vector or something? or thrust vanes like the V-2 rocket? Are there moving surfaces at the rear fins??!?

So in the mid-90's I was over in the chaos formerly known as Yugoslavia, part of a UN Peacekeeping mission. A few times, the combatants would piss off NATO or the UN, and an airstrike would come in and lase a few pieces of armor or artillery, it was usually due to some kind of a violation of ceasefire agreement or too close within range of a civilian refugee camp or area. So some aircraft would come, perhaps from Aviano airbase in Italy, and drop a few LGB's, make a lot of noise for miles around, and go away. There were also CAP flights too. On rare occasions an early UAV (unarmed in those days) might be there too, but I only saw one that belonged to the Croatian AF just before Op Storm. One day though, an F-16 was shot down. The pilot ejected and then was on the run, hiding in ditches and bushes, trying to evade capture. Days later the USMC launched an armada of helos to go get him, with Supercobras and SeaStallions, and support from Harriers and other assets. Read more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O'Grady Sure, Marines don't have Apaches of any kind, but consider all the details of the mission and how it went down, the threats faced. And we know that in real life, Apaches have operated from Assault ships and carriers before.

At Early Access ? You are surely correct! But down the road, by the final release? I don't see why any of that wouldn't be somewhat easy for the ED team to do. For a soldier on the side, for the off-center weight, I think it would be fairly easy to accomplish. It'd be more about whether they want to spend the development day to make it happen, so maybe not. Not that it's the same thing, but way back when I was bigtime into FS2004 I would edit various weight values, as often I found that a freeware aircraft wasn't set up with much thought to editing weight distribution. Meaning, they'd get all the right weights, but wouldnj't edit the weights' locations, so it would just be at the datum. Boring. I'd edit fuel tanks, at one point I added the values for Learjet tip-tanks, and that REALLY improved the banking handling, made a turn or roll feel much more immersive. Instead of one cargo location that defaulted to zero weight, I'd assign real weight and maybe put 5 points. I noticed one developer added a weight value... for EVERY SEAT in a 737, and doing so made it feel more real! And I'm no programmer, I just learned a little here and there by looking at aircraft.cfg's and doing my own edits. Trial and error, experiment and enjoy glory! I just remembered, one time I wanted to simulate the handling of a helicopter with a sling load, so I added the cargo weight, and located it 100 ft below the heli... and IT WORKED!! Strangely I can't remember if I shared any of that, but this wasn't a "holy grail discovery" at all, many did know how to do this, it's just that many didn't.

I remember hearing that they would turn on the Maveric AGM-65 and use them as a night image device, not just when about to missile something! Dunno how long those could be used in that way, as it would be WAY beyond the original design specs... thing was probably designed not to exceed 3 minutes of use! At one point they were taking fire from an appartment building... a ground sniper/marksman loaded some tracers, and with radio coordination, used the tracers to target mark for an Apache! I don't know what weapon the Apache used but might have been a Hellfire.

I don't know.... ... but my guess is, it's for hanging your flight helmet and it's complicated optical display system, it's handy, don't have to keep plugging unplugging the data cable (maybe the new ones are wireless, but the old ones used a cable), and doesn't get in the way of entering/exiting the aircraft. But that's ONLY a guess on my part! I see that there are mounts for M-4 carbines... I seem to think that the first Apaches in the 1980's might not have had such mounts, the expectation to just depend on a sidearm if downed, but I think during 1991 Desert Storm many pilots wanted more than a 9mm or .45 if it would fit in the aircraft! Maybe the Apaches always had such mounts, I might be thinking of a different aircraft.

I heard it was for the pilots to stay in shape, they'll get two or three crewpeeples doing pull-ups exercises while it hovers at 10ft. Gets real interesting if they hover at 20ft though!

Ignoring the DCS Tunguska for a second, I'm curious about the real item: when in SACLOS no radar mode, does the gunner have to manually track the aircraft? Or is there a computer optical tracking of the aircraft shape/image/movement? Just curious... and while I'd expect that to be more accurate than a human operator, it's not always true in the real world....

I think you miss the point of the C+ . It's not an upgrade to make it a frontline fighter.... it's a cheap upgrade of an old paid-for airframe, to allow cheap state-side TRAINING flights in a "future cockpit" airframe. I'll bet it will be used to introduce future F-35 pilots to that style "sensor fusion" and situational awareness workflow... not in a simulator but a real afterburning, G pulling Mach + fighter. A "flying simulator" if you will. It's cheaper than a Super, and can do most of the training for Super. Using parts that are gonna soon be out of the system, parts long ago paid for. Basically, by spending a little on the upgrade, they save the taxpayer a lot, and get some remaining value from millions already spent. And the minute it costs more than it's worth, they'll be dropped like it's hot! It was never about upgrading to deploy, it was likely about concern over airframe hours on the Superhornets, wanting to extend the life of those frames by offloading thousands of hours onto old airframes that otherwise would be scrapped anyway. Really this is about saving money for the budgets, it's smart financially. And operationally for saving the Supers' wear and tear, maintenance costs and airframe hours. They'll drain the last of the Legacy parts, and one by one as they are no longer flyable they will be retired.

LOL!! Yes, hypothetically, the future looks great!

" hmm, yea. But comparing a UH-60 to that of a BUFF or Bone... there's gonna be a WHOLE lot more "infering" going on, enough to possibly make difficult to get near completion of a project. UH-60 is a complex heli, but the base model is seats and a hook for sling load, while the two strategic bombers are, beyond the aircraft itself, complex weapons systems requiring several human operators just to do that part. Not saying it's impossible, just that my impression is that making a high fidellity DCS module would require HUGE time consuming effort to get there. Anyway, they are updating the Bone and BUFF models for the AI to use, on page 104 linked and also page 106 as well: Also some nice Beagle screens too...

Slartibartfast approves!! EDIT: Especially if we can figure out what the answer "42" means this time! (no Douglas Adams fans here?)

Ah... SOOOO... in the interests of actual history, does anyone know if during the 1980's Iraq-Iran War... did any Iranian Phantoms tangle Air to Air with Iraqi Mirages ???

This anti-tank sportscar looks like it'll be fun! zip betrween the trees at high speed, do a banking turn 10ft AGL, hide behind some shrubs and plink some T-72's! Then race away like a scalded cat! Has there been any decisions about types other than the ATGM versions? I'm guessing there will be unarmed versions for medical and evacuations and recon... but what about other armament types? Meaning, will pod rockets, cannons and MG's be options? Maybe Miniguns, Mg-3's or Browning .50's ? Or maybe a 20mm? I'm not really familiar with the '105 in armed use other than the ATGM TOW and HOT variants...

scuff marks and dust on the tires !! and grunting while under heavy G's !! And Mk.2 Mod.1 Moustache, type Epic.... ( yea I'm being silly! we all know the major items we want, like realistic flight behaviors, real world performance as a real operator/SME would expect from the real item, systems accurate, and such)