NeedzWD40

Normally I add additional search radars and track radars as HARM redundancy, though often I try to work in HARM reaction scripting instead. I'll also add additional track radars to add multi-target capability for certain systems like SA-5. Have you tried the mission as originally designed?

I cannot duplicate this issue. They fire with both the editor set command and through CA. Did you double check the min and max ranges for the target?

So this scenario took longer to get into a working state because the B-1 had a tendency to blow itself up with JDAM somehow (maybe it tries to put the pin back in?) but I believe it's in a working state now. It should be possible to complete with either HELLFIRE missile massacre or the standard 8xHELLFIRE, 38xM151 configuration. I do believe it should be easier with HELLFIRE, but careful planning will be a must in that configuration. I'd also recommend running the front seat because George doesn't exactly have the best logic when engaging certain types of targets nor proper use of TADS with the gun. It shouldn't take much longer than 2 hours to complete the mission and it's coop capable if you or anyone else would like to multiship/multicrew. I also added slots for SA342L/M, Ka-50, and Mi-24P, but the starting hour may need to be modified to get the best results with those modules. The scenario is built under the auspices of my more common use cases with the AH-64 in supporting fixed wing operations vice interdiction or attack in support of ground forces. It's a bit unrealistic of course, but we all knew that going in, hey? Naturally, the first trial run I forgot to turn on Tacview, so I'll have to do another run with it switched on later. Not a big loss because the B-1 still blew himself up in that run anyways. Too bad the B-1 doesn't have an available callsign of "Bonehead"... Party in Ten.miz

A lot to unroll here. I'll address this first: I had not intended as such with my remark, but clearly offense was taken. I apologize for my choice of words and will endeavor to adjust my decorum going forward. Evidently, the discussion of rockets lights some fiery tempers all around. That out of the way, I had not intended to start a massive argument over the nature regarding the quality of DCS rockets, positively or negatively. Are rockets modeled inaccurately? Yes, this is true. Are there problems that prevent them from reaching their potential? Unquestionably yes. Will they never be corrected or fixed? No. Like the rest of DCS, they are in a state of flux, and I expect that eventually their performance will match real-world parameters in due time. This is the reason for my current dialogue: the AH-64 module is presently in an early access state, with the associated roughness and issues to match. Along with that is an opportunity to learn how to leverage the aircraft and its systems as they steadily come online. Rockets make up part of the limited weapons triad available to the aircraft and to neglect them is, dare I say, leaving money on the table. Should you use rockets? That is entirely contextual. Part of learning the module is knowing when and where to apply its capabilities. If you're always up against heavy armor, then no, rockets are of limited utility. But what about for other situations? Defilade fire, for example. Rockets can fill certain roles where necessary and yes, those roles can be commonplace if the scenario calls for it. I cannot speak for everyone, but I try to be as diverse as possible in the scenarios I play. That gives me the opportunity to do things that I wouldn't otherwise be doing if I was always working the anti-tank mission, a mission that I consider better served by platforms like the A-10. A scenario that limits me, puzzles me, and forces me to think is ideal. How many different ways can I solve this puzzle? is the question I always ask myself. Within DCS, I've strapped a 230 gallon bag, max internal fuel, and spent 80 minutes flying over the Caucasus to destroy a SAM site, then provide terminal laser designation to destroy a bunker obscured by clouds. I've taken full internal fuel, smoke rockets, and flew 60 miles over Syria to search for targets and mark for friendly aircraft. I've taken illumination rockets and utilized them to provide positive ID of troops in contact at night. I've taken 16 HELLFIREs, 30% gas, and helped kill tanks Fulda Gap-style. There should be no limit to what you can try and do. That's not for everyone. Some people like to dogfight. Some people want to simulate being in a real squadron, patterned after real operations. Some people want to destroy as much as possible, racking up a massive kill tally as they mow down hordes of tanks. These are all possible with DCS. Because of that, sometimes it's easy to get lost and forget why something is simulated. Why have ground radar when targeting pods exist? Why use AIM-7 when AIM-120 exists? Why use iron bombs when JDAM is available? And of course, why use rockets when HELLFIRE is so much better? The answers (that's plural for a reason) can be as varied as you want them to be. No, the AH-64's rockets aren't where they should be. But they do have utility and it's not simply against infantry. If I should complete my planned article, I hope at a minimum to show the ways they can work. The question as to whether or not they should be used is entirely up to you. The basics are pretty simple: set a target point, run up to ~90 knots to the target, then at ~10.5km pull nose up to 30 degrees with full upward pylon elevation. As you pass through 30 degrees, fire your rockets. Use the cruise mode symbology for accurate pitch cuing. I should hope at a minimum you will at least stick around to play the requested scenario when I get it done. It's nothing too fancy and it would be interesting to see someone with a different approach to problem solving than I do.

Yeah, it's clear we're playing completely different scenarios and styles. I'm all for a scenario though, it will go in line with the rocket article I'm working on. Give me a couple days and I'll have something. Have to temper expectations and usage parameters. I expect that I'll be saturating an area when using rockets with those platforms and use them appropriately. Sometimes I'll loft from defilade, but the S-8s are really short-legged. A pod of M151 rockets are lighter than 4xHELLFIRE. M229s are heavier. Ah, if only those pesky munition dumps and bunkers would be so kind as to smoke and burn from a HELLFIRE hit... From what I'm gathering from the peanut gallery, it seems that there's a lot of unrealistic expectations from rockets in general, without understanding when, how, where, and why to employ them. That's to be expected with a majority adjusted to fixed wing flight. Search for the M255 flechette and you'll find a lot of info. It's essentially an air bursting shotgun round. It's not anti-armor, but will tear into unarmored vehicles. You could also in theory use it against aircraft. There was a thread on it here: Not exactly. Damage affects speed and at the highest level results in the vehicle moving slowly and no longer utilizing weapons. However, this threshold is pretty low.

Incorrect. My kills ~= mission success. Properly designed scenarios do not tie such to mission success. I've been the bait for a SAMbush, the eyes and ears of a recon force, the designator for laser ordnance, all of which resulted in no kills on my own part. Enabling my team to succeed is task number one. Once again, not every aircraft will have a targeting pod nor the capability to employ GPS guided weapons. The F-14 for example lacks a LST, even though it has self designation, and the INS is rough. Providing a laser for terminal designation is part of the equation and goes beyond just the F-14. A cloud base where self designation puts the aircraft inside a hard deck is a common usage I've found. I've done it a lot, as have many of my friends. This is especially true in situations where the TGP is of limited utility at typical fast jet altitudes. Not every scenario is bright, clear sky weather. Further M2000, F-5, and F.1CE all have the ability to employ laser guided ordnance, yet have no self designation capability. I take it you don't have much experience with directing friendly assets onto targets? It's not as simple as "Coordinates are XYZ, fetch 'em fido!" Smoke rockets are incredibly useful for attracting attention right where it belongs in a number of scenarios, often far better than a convoluted talk on. This is especially true if you have multiple assets in the stack. Why not destroy the most threatening SHORAD pieces with HELLFIRE, then follow up with gun and rockets on the weaker parts? This leaves more HELLFIRE in reserve for other targets, potentially multiple sites, and being able to get in close means you can make 1 rocket = 1 kill. Yes, I've done it many times, from modern SA-10 sites guarded by SA-15 and SA-19, to early generation SA-2 guarded by AAA and MANPADS.. If I pick a pure HELLFIRE loadout, I lack the flexibility to engage nearly as many targets due to lack of ordnance. Those SHORAD pieces can be dangerous in their own right. Leaving them behind can be disastrous for a variety of reasons. You can out range 23mm gun systems with rockets, same with MANPADS. So as long as you're not at pylon elevation limits, you can manually aim above the target to get rockets right on. Just tonight I scored on two MANPADS with one rocket each at 4.5km. You use 1 rocket per target. Get within 500m and offset your I beam a hair, you can get direct hits easy. Even shots are left hand, odd shots are right hand. But you don't have any HELLFIRE left, remember? You shot them all up on the SA-2 site. You now have no engagement capability whatsoever against an armored column. Plus, you're now having to evade ADA that you cannot neutralize. On the other hand, if you had 2xHELLFIRE, 14xM151, and 150 gun left over... You could at a minimum destroy two targets in that column. That's part of what you'd use illumination flares for. Light up an area where you suspect targets may be present, scan with NVG. FM 1-112: "An attack helicopter battalion never fights alone. Attacks are coordinated with other maneuver, combat support, CSS, and joint forces to form a combined arms team." I've found myself in situations where I have requested illumination as well as requests to provide it. Much tighter depending on parameters. The use case would be for area targets such as vehicle depots, assembly areas, ADA, etc. This is possible if one is not well practiced with rockets. From running fire, using M229 rockets against a level ground target, pitch up 22deg with max pylon elevation from 8km out. This will get you very close, depending on rocket dispersion. Pitch will vary for targets significantly lower/higher from the firing point. Fire in pairs for best, most accurate results. It's important to remember that my point isn't that rockets are perfect anti-armor weapons. My point is they are an important tool in the toolbox and neglecting them leaves you with insufficient tools for the job. If you're only concerned with blowing up tanks, then by all means go nuts with HELLFIRE.

What ordnance does the AH-64 carry that can destroy an ammunition bunker? How about a warehouse? How many trips will it take to ferry enough HELLFIRE to knock out a vehicle depot? Why would you not request other assets with the proper tools to more efficiently deal with the targets? Why should my personal kills matter? If I've enabled my team to win, regardless of kills, have I not completed my objective? Example: You have an SA-2 site. This site needs to be destroyed in order to allow friendly aircraft freedom of motion. This site is protected by equivalent SHORAD: ZSU-23-4, ZU-23, SA-9, SA-13, and MANPADS. If you use exclusively HELLFIRE, will you have enough to destroy all of the SHORAD pieces plus the actual site itself? Why would you not destroy key threats with HELLFIRE and then finish up with rockets at close range? Further, what if you come across more targets of opportunity that are easily serviced with gun and rockets, but have one or two pieces of ADA that prohibit leveraging those weapons? Properly leveraged, you can potentially knock out the critical components of the SA-2 site with rockets alone. You can do so without even having a line of sight to the target. Not all aircraft have laser spot capability. How do you vector a C-101 onto a target? An F/A-18 without a TGP? Ignoring that coordinates take time to read back and enter, how do you direct specifics? Is it not easier to place a smoke rocket right on the target versus a complicated talk on? How do you see cold vehicles on FLIR? How do you assist friendly forces that may only have NVG capability? This can be corrected by adjusting your sight (assuming manual range or target point rather than coop). You can throw rockets out to ~10km under the right conditions. Have you tried defilade fire with rockets?

I see this sentiment a lot and I always get the impression that it comes down to misunderstanding how to use rockets, particularly from helicopters. The AH-64 has incredible flexibility when it comes to rockets and they are one of the best weapons you can employ when used correctly. Don't get me wrong: there are a number of issues with the current mechanics as implemented, especially in regards to fragmentation damage and ballistic calculations, but that doesn't make them useless. Rockets can act as your own personal MLRS battery or your lightweight quick fix for lightly defended targets. They give you extra room to operate between the gun and the HELLFIRE. They can provide illumination at night and mark targets for friendly assets. When we get the more advanced warheads like M255 and M261, they'll become even more flexible in these capacities. There's so many different ways to use them within the context of DCS that I'm surprised there isn't more out there on just a few of the key ways to employ them.

MPD main menu > UTIL > COLL channel to off.

M151s if I have to go for extended ranges/endurance and can get close for direct hits, M229s if I need more of an arc for defilade fire and an anti-infantry focus.

The only solution I've found is to reset your manual range setting. For some reason the system remembers the last laser range and when you sight select the HMD it doesn't go back to the manual range setting.

Not exactly, since the Vikhr is basically just following the sights, not the designation point. Per the issue at hand, the problem I notice is that it seems the bounding box for the laser is pretty tiny, so you can have a pretty good track on a target but the actual area that the laser must hit is pretty narrow. Mostly noticeable with aerial targets.

Won't do it in-game either, thus the LGB comment. For those guys in ODS, they didn't really destroy it as much as they degraded it.

Good writeup! A few other notes: - The AI will rarely miss with their ATGMs. If you get a missile launched at you, get to solid cover pronto. They have no limitations or constraints outside of LOS and it doesn't matter how much you jink or move, they will hit. Sometimes it's possible to break LOS with trees. You only have seconds to react to a launch as it only takes ~15 seconds for most OPFOR missiles to cross 5km. - The AI will instantly know your position as soon as you get LOS and are in range. They instantly know how far you are and know exactly where to aim to hit you. This is part of why a BMP-2 is more threatening than a ZSU: the BMP-2 has an ATGM that won't miss and a gun that is incredibly accurate and longer ranged than 23mm, aimed as if it were already cued and guided by radar. It only takes a few seconds for the AI to generate a "lock" to shoot from acquisition. By contrast, it takes an SA-8 about 20 seconds to generate a firing solution. - All typical modern red DCS MBTs pack ATGMs capable of reaching out to 5km. If you're operating in the presence of T-72s and their upgraded variations, knock them out from beyond 5km. BMP-2s can reach out to 4.5km with their ATGM. Don't press closer than this 5km boundary unless you've got a lot of support and/or cover. - Learn to love defilade fire. Mark your targets, find a good spot, lob weapons from behind cover. Rockets and cannon are cheap, life is expensive. Use this with buddy lasing as well: get one ship to hang back and lase outside of threat range, then have another ship fire from closer and behind cover. This is an incredibly powerful capability that I rarely see utilized.

No, unless the bridge is really flimsy, an AGM-114 won't do much to it. Better have a fast mover with LGBs on call if you want to knock out a bridge.

These are normally detailed in charts because it varies depending on conditions. Fuel load, weapons, gross weight, air temp, altitude, etc. The PERF page will eventually give real-time data for these figures. Nominally, max endurance will be 60-90 KTAS, max range 120-130 KTAS. Can't help for other figures like max climb and best climb angle.

Sort of. It's not as aggressive as it used to be, but it's still there. The collective SAS channel is still not quite where it needs to be, so I'm still killing it on startup. This results in the message and tone fairly regularly.

If you haven't, duplicate the back seat controls and axis bindings in the front, except for the WAS. You want the TEDAC WAS bound rather than the stick WAS so you can use rockets in cooperative mode. For TEDAC/TADS mode, LMC/Linear Motion Compensator is a must-have bind, along with SLAVE. MAN TRK/Manual Track will be the primary way to control the TADS, so you'll want that on a ministick if possible as a 4 way is kind of hard to use. RHG LRFD Trigger second detent for full laser capability; if you have the buttons, you can add the first detent, but I only use the second. Lastly, LHG TADS FOV switch bound to a four way, at least until we can get a toggle. A binding to cover the DTV/FLIR toggle is useful if you have the space, but it isn't a requirement. That covers the essentials for operating the TADS. As I use a modifier, what I do is sight select TADS, then set GHS as my sight source. I then shift over to my TADS/TEDAC mode and my sight selector becomes FOV selector, my cursor axis becomes my TADS manual track, and everything else remains the same. In an emergency, I can quickly switch my mode back to standard flight and sight select HMD without taking my hands off the stick and throttle.

Quickest way is to load up in single player, jump in the front seat, and take control over from George. Use a modifier on your controls for swapping between generic flight and TADS. Start off by using attitude hold to steady a hover while you run the TADS, then graduate to Ka-50 style operation. It's not that different from running a jet with a TGP once you get the hang of it.

Edit this file: DCS World OpenBeta\Mods\aircraft\AH-64D\Cockpit\Scripts\Computers\CIU\device\CIU_Messages.lua Under the tones table, find the first instance of "Tones/flt-ctrl" and set it to "" which will remove the SAS saturation warning sound. Relevant thread:

So thought I'd bring this up to show an oddity: It seems that the L/L decimal is pretty accurate, but the MGRS coords are offset quite a bit in the longitudinal axis, to the tune of ~250m compared to the world coordinates. Latitude is off by about 20m, which is a bit large but not quite as bad. On the instant action Caucasus runway start mission I cross referenced this with starting position and waypoint entry. Because of this, I can't help but wonder if part of the issue could be some kind of coordinate conversion error and why manually entering coordinates seemingly gives huge offsets.

Single crew with the crash test dummy balancing the front.

This is an inherent problem with the warehousing system. Aircraft and munitions are not updated in the mission properly after an update; the only way to fix it is to set unlimited resources for munitions and aircraft for the warehouse, save the mission, then go back and rebuild the list(s).

For me, it was a multiplayer mission with a cold start aircraft. Started up, waited until INU aligned, rearmed and refueled, then performed a deep strike on an enemy FARP. Returned back to my own FARP, set down, zoomed in the TSD and turned on the cursor info bar. Hovering the cursor over my ownship icon, I compared the readout with the external view data. This was all in approximately one hour real time.

The INU drift is still present from what I gather, as I just put in an hour and my position coordinates were off by hundred of meters despite INU reporting accurate and aligned (along with GPS correction). Longitudinal drift was in the realm of 300m while Latitude was 30m.