Bunny Clark

Yup, the Navy and Air Force use different racks based on the BRU-33, all are pretty much identical from the outside. BRU-33 is a US Navy double rack with no smart weapon capabilities, and is used by the Hornet for carrying doubles of Paveways, CBU-99s, slick bombs, and rocket pods. BRU-55 is a US Navy double weapon smart rack, based on the BRU-33 with 1760 data lines added. BRU-57 is a US Air Force double weapon smart rack, also based on the BRU-33. The US Air force uses the TER-9 for carrying multiples of weapons that don't require a data connection. There are also data-enabled smart versions of the TER-9 that can carry three GBU-38/54s.

ED is currently building an entirely new complex and dynamic damage model from the ground up. It is currently implemented for WWII aircraft where they are working out the kinks in the structural and systems modeling. Once that is complete, it'll start being implemented for the modern aircraft. As a result, all the modern jets have a pretty simple and barebones damage model right now as a placeholder.

Possibly. I don't think the USAF has bothered to spend the money testing and certifying that loadout since Vipers always fly combat missions with drop tanks.

You should have a hard stop requiring the finger lifts at the back end of the travel for the idle/shutdown stop, then a push-through detent for the afterburner stop.

My understanding is that there are clearance concerns where a GBU-12 dropped from the inboard station on a TER-9 may impact the drop tank. Carrying a bomb there is not a certified load for the USAF, and I don't think any other users fly with that configuration either.

HOJ is an overemphasized threat. A missile in HOJ mode does not have any range to target information and must fly a degraded intercept path which will make it more easy to defeat with simple maneuvering. If you're flying a proper BVR pattern to defeat an ARH missile shot, a HOJ missile shot will also be defeated. Inside burn-through range giving away your position isn't much of a concern. They can see you on radar and lock you up at that range, so if they can see the jamming on the their radar scope, they'd can see your aircraft on the radar scope jamming or not. This is mostly irrelevant to the Viper anyway, since in SEMI the jammer functions in a mode designed to attack specific threat radars and break their lock, not in a barrage noise jamming mode. You are therefore granting consent to the jammer to protect you from an active threat that is tracking your aircraft, not to broadcast radio noise at everyone within 50nm. A gate-pulloff attack like the jamming pod uses in SEMI and AUTO will not show up as jamming on an enemies radar, nor is it targetable by a HOJ missile.

This is not currently correct in DCS, it should work, but it has limitations. IRL, missiles on LAU-88 launchers can be used in Ripple mode, but only one missile per launcher/station can be locked and rippled at a time, up to a max of two (one on each station that can carry Mavs). Basically, the aircraft's system treats the LAU-88 as a single missile, it doesn't know how to talk to multiple missiles on the same rail at the same time. This is why, as Frederf said above, MSL STEP on the stick should step between stations, not between missiles on a LAU-88 - that's what the STEP command on the MFD does. The main difference between VIS and BORE is that BORE will not change or interact with your designated target at all. If you already have a designated target you don't want to loose, but you want to rapidly engage a pop-up target with a Mav, BORE is fairly useful. The catch is, because the designated target does not get moved no sensors are brought to bear for the missile shot, and you will not have any range information - range information will continue to be provided to your Designated Target, wherever that is. In VIS mode, once you designate a target with the HUD (TMS Up to stabilize the TD Box), the radar will begin ranging to the designated target and give you a launch zone indication for the Mav (though, point of note, ranging in VIS mode is provided to the TD Box in the HUD, not where the Mav seeker head is actually looking, though they tend to be close enough to make no difference).

There isn't really the same advantages to doing it with the Viper as there is in the Hornet. With the Hornet, eliminating the left wing fuel tank gives the FLIR pod much better visibility, that's not as much of a problem with the Viper because it mounts the TGP farther forward and lower. The Hornet also carries the exact same fuel tanks on center as it does on the wings, which means one bag on the wing and one on centerline is the same amount of fuel as two on the wings; that's not the case with the Viper where running one wing and one centerline means less fuel. Running a double ugly loadout in the Hornet is all about better visibility for the FLIR. Yes, it can carry more weapons in that configuration, but in the real world it very rarely does. At least for GWOT deployed Legacy Hornets, double ugly loadouts still tended to keep to three or four weapons (based on photos at least, I don't really know what I'm talking about here).

It is not yet implemented.

Thanks for the compliments! That's an interesting idea, I hadn't considered filtering for artillery. I'll test that out and see if it's more reliable. Yah, the DCS AI does really dumb things with standoff weapons right now, getting them to do something predictable is extremely hit-and-miss. I found the most reliable way to pass the mission is the have the wingman fire both his missiles first, then attack whatever he doesn't hit yourself. Killing the ships isn't necessary, it's not really possible in DCS with a single missile hit, and that's fairly realistic anyway. Within the context of the story the objective is to damage them to prevent them from leaving port, sinking them isn't necessary. For the mission doing any amount of damage to them will count as a hit for mission success (you can even strafe them if you're feeling brave enough and that would count too ...).

Sorry, but you are correct. You would need to go through the AI flights and triggers manually to see what may be screwed up if you take an extra 10 minutes to get off the ground. Some missions will be totally fine, some may get completely borked, it really depends how the mission creator built the mission. I've found it to be best practice to build in a trigger for when the player leaves the ground or enters a zone to start the actual mission, that way if different players take more or less time to takeoff (or AI flights cause a traffic jam) it won't screw up the mission before the player even gets started. A bonus to building missions this way is that changing between hot and cold start will then make no difference to the mission.

Open the mission up in the Mission Editor, select the player flight, change the first waypoint TYPE to "Takeoff from ramp." Keep in mind this may mess up mission timings depending on how the mission is built.

They "fixed" this on the Super Hornet, but apparently even the USN didn't think at first that there was any reason to carry a single AMRAAM on a wing station. The Swiss Legacy Hornets can mount single AMRAAMs to a pylon, but they use different pylons with much more limited A/G stores options.

Double check that the antenna elevation axis isn't bound to something by mistake, or that there isn't another button on another device that is bound to the up and down commands. DCS will let you bind buttons on multiple controllers to the same function at the same time. That's usually the cause of unexpected movement like that.

I think every export version of the Hornet has ILS and VOR capability and only the US version is limited to ICLS. Which makes sense, seeing as we're the only ones that fly them off carriers.

Hmmm, I'll need to go back and check that. I thought I'd swapped them all to ATFLIR when it was released, but I may have missed one. The first version of the campaign was released before ATFLIR was available for the Hornet.

In addition to what others have said, from a realism standpoint: the US Navy only uses ATFLIR. LITENING is used by USMC Hornets operating from land bases. LITENING is not cleared for carrier operations, so USMC Hornets deployed on the boat also use ATFLIR.

You've got it switched around. Destroying the Search Radar will cripple the site and make it take longer to engage you, but it can still engage you. The Tracking Radar is the one responsible for missile guidance, and destroying that will make it impossible for the site to engage you.

It would be great if we could set a flag value in one mission and then query that value in a later mission in a campaign. Currently I can make the outcome of a mission effect the next mission in a campaign, but it would be cool to be able to make an event in Mission 2 effect the way Mission 6 plays out, for example.

While the aircraft does not move the manual trim wheels, the FCS will automatically keep the aircraft "trimmed" in pitch without any pilot input. You should only need to manually trim roll for asymmetric stores loading.

For another aircraft to see you on radar, the radio waves they are transmitting need to bounce off your aircraft and travel back to their radar antenna. That means that the waves need to travel twice as far for them to detect you as they do for your RWR to see their radar. It doesn't exactly mean that your RWR will see them at double the range they will see you on radar, but broadly speaking you can detect another radar long before that radar can detect you.

There is currently no Mission Editor support for Sequence 2 and 3 in the Hornet. Waypoint 15 and above will be saved in the jet, but not assigned to any sequence. You can edit sequences from the HSI though. Hopefully support for directly assigning waypoints to sequences from the mission editor will be added some day.

For any aircraft in DCS there are three levels of RWR alert: A Search Warning alerts the pilot that their aircraft is being illuminated periodically by a radar in a search or scan mode. This could be any air radar in RWS or TWS mode, or any ground based search, surveillance, or early warning radar, or an airborne search radar like an AWACS. In western aircraft this is generally noted by a symbol on the RWR that is not highlighted or called out in any way. A Track Warning (or Spike) alerts the pilot that their aircraft is being illuminated continuously by a tracking or fire control radar. This could be an air radar in STT, or the guidance radar of a SAM battery. It indicates that the aircraft is being targeted, and is generally the precursor to a weapon launch. The RWR will show this by highlighting the aircraft or surface system than is tracking you. A Launch Warning alerts the pilot that a radar is supporting missile guidance on their aircraft. This could be a semi-active missile like a Sparrow or R-27, in which case the warning will come from the launching aircraft. Most SAMs are also semi-active and will highlight the system that is launching. Or it could be an active radar missile like an AMRAAM or R-77, in which case the warning will come from the missile itself. Of note, both RWS and TWS themselves provide the exact same warning to the target. The "sneaky" aspect to a TWS launch when using an active missile like an AMRAAM is that the target will only see a Search Warning from the launching aircraft, then suddenly get a Launch Warning from the AMRAAM when it goes active. You essentially skip a step in the warning escalation, and the Launch Warning itself will never identify the launching aircraft. The actual tactical advantage of this I feel is pretty overrated, any decent pilot is going to recognize when an enemy aircraft is attacking them, and when they're within launch range for an active radar missile defend themselves appropriately.

In theory boresighting the Maverick should be a thing that every aircraft that wants to correlate the Maverick seeker to another sensor needs to do. So, maybe we'll see it in the Hog, Hornet, and Harrier as well. The process for the Viper is described in detail in an unclassified document, which is probably why we got it in DCS only in the Viper right now.

Not only is the LAU-88 not certified for use on the Hornet, the "lightweight" versions of the Maverick that can be loaded on it are not carried by the Hornet. In fact, I don't believe the LAU-88 is in use by the US Navy on any platform.