Speed_2

Well, since I would assume you would be measuring the rotors from below them, the nearly supersonic velocity of the rotors is perpendicular to the incoming ultrasound wave, so it shouldn't make a difference if you're just ranging. Though you might get some interesting effects, you'd still see the pulse bounce back. But, even ultrasound still travels at only 343m/s, and less at altitude, so you'd likely just want to go with a lidar/ladar/radar.

Ethereal, You've objected to my use of the words "shouldn't be too hard" or it's an "easy problem for computers to handle". You are right to object there, as I am being somewhat vague. When I say, "it shouldn't be that hard" what I mean is that I feel this kind of problem should certainly be one that can be solved and implemented by engineers. It would still be hard in that it might be intellectually challenging to the individual people working on it, it might require a bit of computer programming, and would take millions of dollars to solve it and implement it on all the choppers you wanted to put it on, but the chances of failure to solve the problem should be very low. What has also not even been considered is a sensing system that, rather than calculating, simply senses the position of the rotors. Such a system, if you used, like, ultrasonic ranging, could simply tell the computer where the rotors are, vastly narrowing down the complexities of calculating where the rotors will go next if the maneuver the pilot is commanding takes place. In fact, all that might have to be done is if the rotors come within a couple centimeters of some part of the aircraft, opposite collective is applied to keep them from striking. Ultrasonics might be superior to like a little radar or laser range finder as it would not emit in the EM spectrum, ultrasound attenuates very fast in air anyway, and no real sensors to detect that kind of thing are used on the battlefield, so you're not going to making yourself more detectable with such a system. I donno if ultrasound would be fast enough though. You might HAVE to go to lasers. If you used a laser, you could probably make it very hard to detect by using a wavelength that is heavily attenuated by CO2 or H2O, and using one that has a wide beam divergence. So, many solutions exist to the problem of keeping the blades from striking something or, in the Ka-50s case, each other. Again, I think that maybe the reason something like this hasn't been implemented on modern choppers is that such a system might cost more than it would save, especially 15, 20 or more years ago when "modern" choppers were being designed, and technology to implement something like this would have been more expensive. Yet, sometimes even expert pilots make mistakes, or, as someone pointed out, you accidentally kick the cyclic and it chops off the TADS/PNVS. Those choppers and IR cameras are expensive, and yet technology like computers, laser range finding, or ultrasonic imaging keeps getting cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of self-rotor strike avoidance might be included in future generations of choppers.

You can, but it costs almost as much as a real F-16. First, send Eagle Dynamics something like a $10 or $20 million dollar check, then wait a couple years, and BAM! You got an F-16 in DCS! BTW, if I were a billionaire with money to blow, I would SO totally do this (but maybe ask for DCS F-15E instead).

I believe you are getting fatigue and bending confused. Fatigue changes the AMOUNT that materials bend, it is not a description of material bending itself, though bending of material causes it. Fatigue is the material slowly changing its stiffness and structural integrity over time due to repeatedly being bent, forming micro-cracks or just breaking molecular bonds. The amount that a material will bend is very easy to calculate. Simplyfying the problem (not because it is hard, but because I don't want to waste the time on it), rotor bending is SIMILAR to a spring, which is governed by Hooke's Law F= -kx (force = -k times displacement). So, your point about difficulty in calculating rotor disk position is only valid if you're talking about actual FATIGUE, which would slowly change the "k" in Hooke's Law. I wouldn't think it would be a factor, but it's a GREAT POINT- how much DOES fatigue figure into rotor disk position. I would assume not much, but you should challenge your assumptions just to make sure. I don't THINK I would want to ride in a helicopter that fatigue had caused the spring constant k to change so much that the rotors were bending like 10 centimeters from where they would have bent if brand new, but hey, what do I know. k is easy to determine, and so long as k hasn't changed significantly because the rotors are about to literally crack and fall off, you know EVERYTHING you need to calculate the position of the rotor disc. Again, I am not a materials engineer, I am an electrical engineer, so I have no claim to knowing with absolute certainty that materials fatigue would not have an significant impact. No doubt it would have an impact, but I would think, again, that you would want to replace your rotors long before the amount of bending significantly deviated from the amount of bending in a brand new set of rotors. From my knowledge of electrical engineering, I can tell you that you are VASTLY underestimating modern computing capabilities. Yes, I know your computer runs Vista slowly, but that's because Vista is !@## EVEN IF the calculation took so long that you couldn't do it real time, you could always use a handy little thing called a "lookup table" where the position of the rotor disk for like, 50 million different flight conditions is already calculated and stored in memory. "Show me a computer that can do this and fit inside a chopper"- it's called an iPhone, and not only can I fit it inside a chopper, I can fit it inside my pocket. So basically, I see no reason why this can't done. And no, I wouldn't be a "millionaire" if I did this, this is a pretty common kind of problem. The first kind of problem like this was probably the F-16, unstable in one axis. The F-16 uses a computer to constantly calculate how to keep the aircraft pointed straight, and if those computers fail, then the aircraft goes out of control. In 1979 Lockheed Skunkworks made the F-117, UNSTABLE IN THREE AXES, fly. The computer in the F-117 had to constantly manipulate the control surfaces just to keep the aircraft from tumbling out of control, let alone translate the pilot's movement of the stick to make the aircraft maneuver. Your pitot tubes ice over in that thing, and you'd better get out in a hurry! So, I'd say that our computing power has come a long way in 30 years. Calculating the positions of the rotor disc, and overriding any pilot actions that would cause it to collide with something, like the PNVS/TADS, refueling boom, or even ANOTHER rotor disc, should be an easy problem for modern computers to handle. I think you are right about at least one thing though though- they just depend on the pilots not being stupid rather than waste the time and effort putting such a system on the chopper. Even though it seems to me a very solvable problem, it would still take millions of dollars of development, testing, and integration that can be saved by just depending on the pilots to do their jobs correctly.

1) What are the blades made of? 2) I HIGHLY doubt that fatigue is going to be an issue, but I am not a materials engineer, so I can't say for sure. I'd think that any material that would change by more than several inches would a) badly in need of replacing and b) not something you'd want to make a rotor out of anyway. But again, I can't say for sure, because that would be something outside my area. As far as the system for calculating rotor disk position, it shouldn't be THAT bad. Hell, we made the F-117 fly and that was in the late 70s.

I don't buy that arguement. The way I figure, the chopper knows its three dimensional airspeed, it's attitude, its rotor RPM, g-loading, mechanical frequency response of the rotors, current weight (dynamically updated as weapons are fired/fuel burned, and air density. It also knows what those values were in the past (did I leave anything out? :)). SO with that information, it should know where the rotor disk is. From knowing that, it should be able to determine EXACTLY what kind of manuver would cause the rotor to collide with some part of the aircraft, and ONLY limit those manuvers. NOW, say your pitot tubes iced up... you could have a control system, that if not programmed right, that could cause the problem it was designed to prevent. Combine that with the expensiveness and complexity of such a flight control system, and maybe it IS just better to train the pilots well rather than design a control system to prevent a problem that only occurs VERY rarely in well-flown aircraft.

A jet really doesn't need a laser warning receiver. It would be incredibly hard to hit a warthog with a Vikhr, and very few SAMs are laser guided- I only know of one, in fact. Besides, if I were a Warthog pilot, I'd forego using my cannon in high threat areas and just bomb from an altitude where only radar guided SAMs could get me. I don't care how much armor you have, A-10 is still probably going to take only one SAM hit shoot down, and that sucker moves slow.

I don't know how they made it either, but I think I know where to start. There's a button in the ME that allows you to "prepare aircraft" or something like that. That gives you the chance to define areas on ABRIS ahead of time. I think what happens is that when you hit this button, you load into the pit of the chopper and you can mess with ABRIS like making "little red boxes and lines" and such. To make those little red boxes and the such, you will need to consult the massive portion of the manual about the ABRIS. So, anywhere, that's where to look I think. Tell us how you do!

Jesus! That pilot looked lucky that all that all that happened was he chopped off his refueling boom. Those rotors almost hit the top of the canopy! I don't see why there aren't limiters built into the Ka-50 flight control system that keep the pilot from performing manuvers that would cause rotor strike. Is it because the Ka-50 is an older aircraft before the advent of modern fly-by-wire systems?

Undoubtably, just as the chances that any pilot will be shot down increcases when more enemy targets are flying around. But at least, if the chopper is carrying AAMs, it might have more of a chance if attacked. IRL, most aircraft shot down never even see their attacker, so that little fact does somewhat decrease the chance that a helo will be able to use its AAMs in self defense. Still, the possibility of a chopper being able to defend itself exists, and the fact is, if a AAM-armed helo spots an enemy air target first, AAMs would give it a good chance at taking a potshot at it. Again, this can be compared to the first airplanes in WWI. At first, they may have just waved at each other, but when you're fighting a war (intelligently), you're going to take EVERY CHANCE YOU CAN GET to deal your enemy a blow. Thus, airplanes began to carry up guns, and fighters were designed. I see it as very unlikely that choppers would not be armed with LIGHTWEIGHT AAMs (Stingers, SA-18s, etc) if they kept seeing enemy aircraft that they could take a cheap shot at if they only were carrying an air to air missile. Those who deny this must ponder why the air to air Stinger, for example, exists, and why trials have been carried out with fitting Stingers to choppers. Obviously, many people in armies across the world believe that AAMs on helicopters have enough utility to make developing the capability worthwhile. Thanks GGTharos for the information that we don't even know for sure whether the Ka-50 has even been tested with AAMs. That would definately decrease any possibility there might be that under some theoretical circumstance, the Ka-50 actually would receive an AAM loadout. Yes, I agree, the decision to not include AAMs in DCS BS was the right one. In fact, I never believed otherwise except under the circumstances of a long campaign where enemy helos were frequently encountered, which seems to be a norm in many of the DCS missions I have flown. But- if the Ka-50 really HASN'T had an AAM capability even tested for it, any conflict it finds itself in is more than likely going to be either too short for a retrofit to be made, or see all the Ka-50s shot down. Something else I didn't consider- say that a war really did develop between Russia and another side that also deployed attack helicopters- the Ka-50 is so few in number, I would suppose that the first priority on helo-carried AAMs (should they decide they need them) would be arming the much more numerious Mi-24s and 28s.

http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-30-2000/0001230747&EDATE= Key quote: ""Italy's selection of the improved ATAL and Stinger block I makes the A129 combat helicopter formidable in self-protection and air-to-air combat," said Louise Francesconi, vice president and general manager of Raytheon Electronic Systems' Missile Systems business unit in Tucson, Ariz. "Armed helicopters encountering hostile rotary and fixed-wing aircraft is a certainty. In addition, combat helicopters must be prepared to engage UAVs and other aerial reconnaissance aircraft to foil critical battlefield intelligence efforts. The A129 equipped with Stinger will excel in these missions." More from Raytheon about air to air Stinger: http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/rms/documents/content/rtn_rms_ps_atastinger_datashee.pdf So obviously, armies see attack helicopters armed with AAMs necessary enough to develop the ability, even if no conflicts where AAMs could possibly be useful on helos has occured recently. Speaking of AAMs, four Stingers only weigh 60kg TOTAL, so even if you also have to carry like another 40kg of support hardware, that's only 100kg to give yourself a potent AAM threat. The point about UAVs is a VERY good one. The US has armed Predators with Stingers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWUR3sgKUV8).

Meh, if my commander wasn't allowing me to carry AAMs, I'd just put a gunrack in the back of my Black Shark, put a SA-18 in it, and when that ugly Apache showed his face, pop the canopy open and let him have it, or shoot through the front wind shield Rambo-style :) On a serious note though, how heavy would a couple Stingers or SA-16s/18s really be? Weight of the weapons plus a little extra hardware? Would that REALLY noticably affect the chopper?

Thanks for the tip, that's a good idea. I WAS trying to do it by pointing the Shvkal ahead of the target and then at the last second, slewing it to the chopper I'm trying to engage, to sort of manually fly the lead pursuit course for my missile, or at least, the last leg of a lead pursuit course. I never got the timing quite right, and never have I scored a hit with this method. Sounds like my problem may be practice then.

Well, first of all, you're assuming that an enterprising Apache pilot, seeing his buddies blasted to smithereens by Vikhrs, won't try to spring a trap on the unsuspecting Black Shark or Havoc with guns (or hellfires). Or, if you make yourself a target, he's likely to take a potshot at you and then run away. He won't be hunting for you, but you will likely run into contact, since you're both at the FEBA trying to give your guys support. You really think that Apache is just going to stand by while he watches you blow away the ground troops he's supposed to be supporting? He'll try to shoot you down or run you off, calling in fighters on you at the same time if available. Maybe, if the two choppers make contact with each other, they'll just turn around and fly away. Yes, the normal SOP may be to turn away and try to avoid contact, but sometimes that won't happen. Next, let me change the arguement for you a bit then- Imagine that enemy chopper is now armed with a Stinger- because the US has now started fitting their choppers with Stingers seeing as how their Apaches keep running into Ka-50s and Mi-24s and not doing anything else but running away or ambushing them. You don't think that Apache will now take a potshot at you with a Stinger? Now these scenarios are all SERIOUSLY getting to the what-if territory. I've come around to your way of thinking, at least in that DCS didn't have any buisness of putting AAMs into the game- SO LONG AS we don't have some Russia vs NATO campaign coming out. But to say that AAMs would never be fitted to attack helos under any imaginable circumstances, especially when some very lightweight options that have already been tested are available (Stingers and SA-16s/18s) is seriously naive. Whether you guys really believe in THAT extreme or not, I don't know. Someone who would believe something like that, living in 1914, would probably be arguing with me about whether machine guns would ever be fitted to airplanes or not.

Your example with infantry carrying Stingers is not valid on both a combat effectiveness and cost standpoint. It would cost alot of money, but more importantly, it would be putting the infantry in more danger than they were in before, with them having to lug around this giant, heavy, shoulder-launched missile. Yet you have to draw the line somewhere. It would be a cost-benefit anaylsis. How much will these AAMs weigh down our choppers, making them less safe and effective, vs. how much they will improve survivability by allowing better defense against enemy choppers? Their mission is to kill stuff on the ground- so that their own troops can live. Now, if they thought their own fighters could get to you, then they wouldn't engage you, and you soon have worse problems. But YOU are assuming you're operating under some fighter cover, so the issue would be doubtful. They very well might decide to engage you. Really? I've never, NEVER been able to hit anything other than rear and frontal Vikhr shots, and I've taken quite a few. How is it possible?

You'd be changing your tune pretty quickly if you found yourself staring down the wrong end of a 30mm chain gun. At that moment, you wouldn't care why you lost your fighter cover, or where the hell they went to- you'd be too busy trying to call them on the radio. But it wouldn't work, because they got shot down or chased off by enemy fighters, or maybe, you're just on the wrong frequency or they got grounded due to some unknown reason. The flaw in your thinking is that you're making an assumption that friendly fighter cover is ALWAYS available, and it's not. ESPECIALLY if you're fighting a war against another military which is powerful enough to also deploy sophisticated attack helicopters. By your thinking, there was absolutely no reason for F-16s to EVER carry AIM-9s during Operation Desert Storm. Yet they did, because you simply cannot ALWAYS depend on the dedicated air to air platforms to do their jobs correctly. This real life example proves that real militaries do not operate on your mode of thinking. They prepare for the fact that for WHATEVER reason, things don't always go as planned. You can casually disregard such possibilities with a wave of your hand while chatting on some forum, but in real life, it's very serious. You MIGHT run into enemy choppers, so you better carry AAMs. Besides, AAMs, especially if you simply carried some SA-16s or Stingers or some such, are really light! But these are some major what-ifs. But, if those what-ifs came true- it would be stupidity in the extreme NOT to give yourself the best chances to come out alive. Now, to this point, I do know for a fact that DCS is not really meant to model these kinds of conflicts- right? So perhaps that's the real problem- as already mentioned.

I disagree. Just as you can't depend on the police to always protect you, I wouldn't depend on friendly air cover to always protect me! I'd take the best of both worlds- air to air missiles AND friendly fighters. When you make contact with enemy choppers, RUN! and call in the fighters, but if you're cornered, you gotta do what you gotta do- shoot that AAM. Additionally, having AAMs on board would make enemy choppers, and even FIGHTERS (to a lesser extent) wary of engaging you in the first place! They would have a definate deterance effect. I see the Vikhr occasionally mentioned as a possible substitute for a real AAM, but the fact is the Vikhr is a pure pursuit missile with ONLY ONE control fin. I like how they are modelled in the game in regards to the difficulty of hitting anything airborne with one- impossible unless your air target is coming more or less towards (or away from) you.

I understand. DCS does not seek to model a huge, drawn out conflict between similar militaries. For the most part, it's a dissimliar war vs insurgents. So I guess it make sense to not have AAMs. I'm just fine with that, so long as I don't have to defend myself from enemy choppers- but I DO, all the dang time. If we were REAL Black Shark pilots, and these were REAL missions, wouldn't YOU DEMAND air to air missiles!?!?! Heck, you'd probably want them if you heard there was even a POSSIBILITY of encountering enemy air. And that's where I see something unrealistic. I haven't flown through the campaign much, been doing mostly scripted multiplayer. How often in the campaign do you have to engage air targets?

The missions aren't necessarily unrealistic. They are just like nothing that has ever been seen in real life- war between NATO and Russia with Ka-50s and Mi-28s vs Apaches? Or, even, a war between two sides that are both deploying attack helicopters that are coming tinto contact with each other? Never been seen (except maybe Iraq vs Iran). But possible. When you are trying to model conflicts unlike any that have ever occured, it is EXTREMELY narrow-minded to assume that the tactics used for the last war or in peacetime will end up being what is done in a war UNLIKE the kind of conflict that those tactics were designed for!!! Seriously, do you really think that Apaches, Ka-50s, etc. would truely, really, NOT carry air to air missiles if they started running into each other in battle? To think that would be as dumb as thinking in 1914 that airplanes won't carry machine guns because they don't in 1914. Note that the change WOULD require a long enough conflict for the choppers to actually be retrofitted, just as it took a little while for planes to start carrying machine guns. However, in the case of these attack choppers, as far as I know, they have already been tested with air to air missiles, so how long would it really take? I have no idea.

All I am saying is to cover the full spectrum of possible conflicts, the Ka-50 in DCS should carry AAMs occasionally. If you were in a PROTRACTED conflict where your attack helicopters were in danger from air threats, and were actually being engaged and engaging (in self defense) air threats, you would have to be stupid not to outfit them with AAMs, especially, if you had already developed and tested AAM capability on those choppers! Though, I will concede, for the majority of scenarios, they would be either too quick, or moreover, the need for AAMs on attack choppers would not be present.

Well... It may be true that the Ka-50 and Apache do not carry AAMs operationally. BUT- people often get too bogged down by what is done in real life to think about the fact that in a war, you do what you have to to win! I'm POSITIVE that if it came to situations where the Ka-50 or Apache were actually being engaged in air to air combat or seriously endangered by air threats, those stingers and AA-11s would be fitted on the choppers ASAP! So while it might be true to say that AAMs have never been operationally used, it could definately be envisioned a case where they would be fitted onto choppers. In DCS Black Shark, we do a huge amount of ATA combat- compared to the fact that absolutely no air to air combat is done by choppers in real life, and hence, no need to carry AAMs IRL. However, if real life Ka-50 pilots had to face as much air to air combat as we do, they and their commanders would DEMAND that their choppers would be retrofitted with the ability to carry and use AAMs. Heck, they already may have the capability or partial capability (don't some cockpit switches pertain to AAM deployment?) to use and carry AAMs, it may just be a matter of them simply never being loaded onto the chopper! So, IMO, no AAMs in DCS BS = not realistic. If DCS BS contained nothing but ground pounding, like in REAL LIFE, then no AAMs would be realistic.

Looks great so far, I can't wait to see the final version! So what, that means that the theaters for DCS after A-10 will be Nevada and Georgia, right? Or have the theaters for DCS A-10 not been officially announced? I fed the GPS coordinates visible in the DCS A-10 screenshots into google earth, hoping to find Korea or something, but yea, it was just Georgia. :( What I'd DIE for would be a DCS Afghanistan theater! If ED ever released a Mi-24 DCS module, it would be a great theater to launch it with for a historical campaign, though I don't particularly want the Mi-24. Afghanistan would be awesome with the A-10!

-when you haven't flown Falcon 4 in over a month!

Just a little note about air to air targets: When I'm engaging them with GUNS, I use Ground Moving Target mode. When engaging with Vickhrs, I use air to air mode. This is because as far as I know, only Ground Moving Target mode leads your target automatically for you, meaning your cannon rounds will be on target regardless of whether you have a mover locked up in the air or on the ground. According to the manual, all air to air mode does is set your Vickhrs for a proximity fuse. For some reason, you cannot have both GMT and ATA modes active at the same time, even though, by description of the manual, they do entirely different, non-conflicting things. Furthermore, while you are engaging air to air targets with your cannon in GMT mode, press laser designate before you fire your rounds to make sure you have the very latest range information for your weapons computer to calculate lead with.

Which is completely a bad idea if you need to engage a target near the one you just destroyed...