HalfBlindOracle

To answer: 250 lbs HE is plenty to absolutely ruin an MBT on a direct hit, or even a very near miss. For comparison, the total charge of a 155 HE shell (also enough to break the crap out of a tank, and mission-kill/actually kill a tank on a direct hit, is only 14.6 lbs of HE filler. an SDB has 50 lbs of filler. That's equivalent HE to about three 155mms... or about the same explosive payload of a 12" (304mm) US WWI era battleship HE shell give or take a few lbs. For an idea of how very dead an MBT or any AFV will be being hit by about 50 lbs of HE filler... see below: Notice the largest crater is for a mere 152 Russian field gun with an HE charge of about 8 kg or 18 lbs of HE filler... less than half of the payload of the SDB. Meaning you can expect the tank to be quite shattered by a direct, or even near miss of an SDB. For indirect comparison on the -smaller- side... attached you will find an M1 Abrams MBT after a direct hit on the front right side of the tank by a slightly more modern 152mm HE artillery shell round. You will notice the tank is... not in working order. This is again, LESS THAN HALF THE HE PAYLOAD of an SDB. There is a 0% chance of a tank surviving an SDB hit anywhere on the tank itself, nor is it likely to survive a near miss. The CEP of an SDB 1 is between 3 and 8 meters. The length/width of an MBT is about 8x3m. Conveniently, assuming a static tank target... the SDB is effectively guaranteed to land close enough to either directly hit, or land within a few feet of a given part of the tank. The result will be catastrophic for the tank and crew regardless of if it is on the front, side, or rear. You will have the turret likely removed, turret ring shattered, tracks and suspension broken, power pack busted, fuel tanks and lines ruptured, and possibly ammunition cooked off. The crew, if buttoned up, have a very small chance of survival if the tank is struck by a frontal near miss. The SDB also has a hardened penetrator tip... enough to get through 5-8 feet of reinforced concrete. This is perhaps unlikely to penetrate the Tank itself on major armored faces, however, a top strike certainly will... and even if it detonated on contact, would buckle the tank top, hatches, and spall the crew inside to death easily. The reason 250 lbs bombs were unpopular in the past was that it required essentially a direct hit, or near miss to kill a tank, and 250 lbs bombs were a bit wimpy in area of effect for armored targets if you miss by a few dozen meters. Hence 500 lbs bombs (Mk82) series is the most popular dumb bomb type in NATO inventory. Good balance of payload numbers and effect against most anything you want to bomb. As a 500 lbs bomb can shatter an MBT from even a 20-30m distance, where a 250 lbs bomb cannot. But as was found in gulf War 1 and later, 500 lbs bombs with laser guidance and a CEP under 10m was massive overkill for a tank target. Hence the reduction in bomb size with the SDB series: Less weight and drag was beneficial when 50 lbs of HE filler puts your weapon on the order of power of small Battleship cannons. No tank is surviving any kind of hit from a naval-grade shell. Nor will it survive an SDB hit or near miss. No penetration necessary. Keep in mind DCS ground units that aren't infantry/trucks are EXTREMELY resistant to HE blast effects, much more so than real life vehicles/crews are. While many vehicles in DCS can survive near/moderate misses in real life, the "survive" means the crew isn't instantly killed/dead. The tracks come off, sensors/optics shatter, and mounted equipment is broken/ruined by such near misses... while in DCS, HP bars either move a bit or they don't, and more often than not, they don't move when they should and the damage model of Combined Arms ground forces is so simplistic that they suffer none of the major impacts near misses put on vehicles. I'd LOVE to see ED take a pass at improving blast-damage modeling for all ground vehicles in DCS, but especially armored vehicles of the IFV/Tank variety. I get asking for realistic fragmentation simulation would melt a big scale sim like DCS in multiplayer, but the blast radius could be improved/made realistic enough to apply things like mobility/firepower kills.

Unable to attach track. Unfortunately the 5mb limit of upload means even a compressed track comes out to 11.5 mb, and is too large for upload. Verified fuzing set as required on all modules. The fuze-failures seemed to occur in bombs dropped after a few. (First few drops were successful and worked as desired). Resetting fuze switches, arm on and off, did not resolve issue. Bombs were dropped from different platforms at various altitudes (High, medium, and low).

While playing the F16 in a multiplayer server this morning, I locked a target with TWS (An enemy F16, AI) at around 20,000 feet. I switched to an STT after that. I was at a similar altitude. The F16 passed me as I could not engage him with an AMRAAM because no box appeared on the hud-... I tried as the launch zone information scrolled down, but could not fire. He passed me, but for about 30 seconds my radar held the lock until I turned 180 to chase him down as he had committed to a wingman behind me. I never lost lock with him even after passing him, which was very strange. I manually tried re acquiring the lock after breaking it, but never could get the box to appear even though launch symbology on the hud all worked. He eventually turned around and shot me as I could not fire on him. (I verified Master Arm was enabled, AMRAAM selected, etc.) Here is the track file. The fight in question was the last engagement sequence of the track. https://www.dropbox.com/s/319hjo3cqw7jhxa/Caucasus_Pendulum_v1.8.1_Exp%20Alpha-20191201-061240.trk?dl=0