Lucas_From_Hell

This is one of those things that made it into western folklore but was never actually done. The conditions in Afghanistan often didn't even allow for a full weapons load to be flown on the hardpoints, let alone reloads in the back.

Some operators have converted the cockpit lighting to be NVG-compatible, those use them. Ours will not come with it, at least initially.

The developers have said the S-5, S-8, S-13 and S-24 will be available.

The second sight is an indication of where the gunner's scope is pointed at. Great for marking targets, and necessary for employing the Shturm.

Just saying, a Mi-24 doing hit-and-run attacks at 300km/h is a lot more survivable than a static glasshouse hovering near some trees waiting to eat a BMP-2 missile or Igla.

Can't help on the feature front, but for what it's worth the Mi-24 has a second trimmer on top of the traditional helicopter one. It works more or less like fixed-wing aircraft: you have a trim hat for pitch and roll that moves the cyclic on those axes, allowing for gradual, smooth corrections instead of the janky force trim dynamics of desktop set-ups.

Так что у нас будет выбор между Б-8 и Б-8В20А? Есть ли большая разница между них для экипаж, в практических условиях?

Будут ли парашюты для экипажа в 24-м?

Here's a scheme showing the coverage scheme for a tactical air assault. You have a pair of attack aircraft, on each flank you have a pair of attack helicopters plus a pair covering each LZ directly. The protection groups soften up the approaches and the landing area itself, taking out enemy troops and anti-aircraft assets, then the transport fleet lands, deploys troops and leaves under their cover. Once you start upscaling operations, you can have things like diversionary landings, smoke screens, fighter cover, dedicated air defence suppression, Il-76 doing paradrops and helidrops of artillery and armour, motor rifle units with BTRs deploying in Mi-26 and so on. It all depends on how big of a problem you want to solve.

The Mi-24D had a different weapons system, armament, gunsight, engines and Lipa IRCM, plus changes to the external model.

It's all situational. With the low rate of fire plus short burst length you can even one-tap the trigger and send single rounds downrange, perfect for picking out individual targets. At the high rate of fire, it's perfect for clusters of targets or for cases where you're not too confident on the firing solution so you line the helicopter up with the target and let out a nice long burst that'll draw a string of death between two points. For strafing convoys or airfields that's ideal.

They have more or less confirmed that there will still be an early access period, simply because, quoting, having 10.000 testers penning reports is much faster and efficient than 10.

Nice, didn't know! Do you know if those are their originals or new acquisitions to replace the mothballed ones? Either way, that's great for mission design.

Starting around 1982, the Mi-24P gradually became the main variant in use by the Soviet Air Force. As of 2021, it's the only variant of the second-generation Mi-24 family in use by the Russian Air Force. For all intents and purposes, the Mi-24P is the only variant that covers almost 40 years of uninterrupted active service with its original customer. This customer is also one of the two major factions in DCS, and it has used this specific variant primarily in many regions depicted in game in the last 30 years (Dagestan, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and across Syria). There are only two other Mi-24 operators with territory in current DCS maps - Georgia and Syria. Georgia is an Mi-24V operator, but Syria has also primarily been using the Mi-24P this century. Yes, the Mi-24V was the most numerous variant, but the bulk of these numbers are spread across export customers in central and eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. For Syria and the Black Sea region, the Mi-24P is objectively the better variant in both numbers and functionality.

Yes, rolling landings are possible and practised often. If you own the Mi-8, there is a manual entry on rolling landing procedures.

Manpower, quite simply. They only have one person looking after flight models. This person is currently assigned to creating the Kiowa flight model. They cannot, realistically, work on both at the same time. They have acknowledged that the Gazelle flight model is not up to their standards, but to a point where the framework it was done in isn't satisfactory enough, thus the decision to create a flight model base from zero with the Kiowa then use the lessons and techniques learned there to re-do the Gazelle. DCS has some of the best flight models available, both from ED and third parties. Yes, some of them have had to be revised multiple times, but it would be silly to fault third parties for improving their work when they have an opportunity to at no added cost for us. Plenty of ED modules have also had flight model revisions and reworks, it's a complex simulator with complex flight dynamics, tweaks are to be expected.

Ну, 9 месяцев назад разработчики МиГ-21 показали этот превью. http://leatherneck-sim.com/wp-content/uploads/Updates/2020/Spring/MiG-21bis_ASP_Effect.mp4?_=1

You are correct, but with the caveat that while the Mi-8 crabs at high speeds, the Mi-24 flies straight to improve forward-firing weapon accuracy.

Good question. You can test it with the Su-25 and Su-25T, they use a similar gun.

Before the days of NVGs, it was primarily used to detect cars and trucks carrying arms and troop shipments from Pakistan into Afghanistan at night. At night the contrast between the cold desert background and the hot vehicle exhausts was strong enough to give a return. From that point on I believe they either engaged it with the missile and/or dropped a flare on the location to use rockets and cannons. Apparently this method worked. Cuban MiG-23 pilots allegedly did the same when fighting in Angola, using both the R-60 and R-23/24T (can't recall which) against soft or lightly armoured vehicles.

The options will likely be the OFZ-30 (high explosive) and BR-30 (armour piercing), same as the 2A42. As far as I know you can use a mixed belt.

The initial position is set manually by using the dials on the base of the map holder. Now, for it to work properly, the custom map creator would have to make sure it fits one of the accepted scales used in the helicopter, and the pilot would have to set it accordingly.

You're getting both. The AI is able to spot and target with the Shturm missile and Raduga sight, but can also fly and fire the forward-firing armament. According to a developer interview the pilot AI is able to take-off, fly the mission, engage targets, return to base and land without issue.

Like WinterH said, the gun has a low rate-of-fire mode that barely affects the nose, and in that mode a tap of the trigger will get you one to two shots. The Mi-24 is a very stable platform by design, in the slow mode the recoil is hardly an issue. You can see it well in this video (starting at 1:55): As for the range, it's still a better performer than the YakB in any scenario. At longer ranges where the YakB simply can't reach the GSh-30 can still go for area effect fire, and at close ranges where the YakB is marginally effective the GSh-30 beats it both in accuracy and firepower.

The Afghan experience with the Mi-24P and accuracy...