Starlight

It's not that the helo is a useless weapon. It depends on many things... weapons, tactics, ROEs. In the first Gulf War (1991) a joint helo team did fire the first shots of war, opening a breach in the Iraqi EWR net and allowing ALL other aircraft to do their job. They flew even before Black Jets. And helos performed well throughout the war. In later conflicts maybe they performed a little worse, but there isn't much real data to talk about. It's much about guesses. There have been many weapon systems fielded during the Cold War that were well designed. Some were made in the West some in the East. I don't think you can say that USSR or USA made better weapons. Sometimes they put out good designs sometimes they didn't. There is the common conception that Russian built weapons are rough, austere, simple and do work, while western weapons are pretty tech toys that do not work in the battlefield. I think that is a misconception. First because some Russian built weapons are really marvels of high-tech, and not always cheap and rough systems. Then, some western weapons, while being also tech marvels, did prove to work, and also very well. And, a final thought about the fighters "running fine" from grassy runways. First, you have to build a prepared grassy runway, it must be flat and solid. You can't takeoff/land wherever you want. Then, its operational utility is very very very limited, because you must have logistic structures for refuel/rearm and maintenance. And that's not simple to do away from an airfield. That is, ok you don't need a runway to fly a squadron of fighters. Ok, but you still need some hundren men and some dozens vehicles for logistic support. And they can still be cut to shreds by enemy attacks.

I also think so... definitely low-viz USN grey camo, with some weathering AND the golden shining canopy! it's a must have! As soon as I'll have my scanner up'n'running I'll scan and post a copy of some Prowler tails in service. for the main camo scheme just "google" it...

really great skin man ;) the weathering and the detail are wonderful. And the first screen is also amazing, it looks real!

Well Lomac has not a precise timeframe... Ka-50 and Su-25t are modern aircraft, but there are also older aircraft (like F-4 Phantoms, Mig-23...) The Standard ARM (STARM) was in use until late eighties, maybe as "backup" weapons. In case of large scale conflicts, stockpiles of modern weapons deplete quickly, and sometimes older weapons are used. In Lomac the STARM 3D model is already present (as ship-based SAM) so it would "just" need to be software-tuned ;) Anyway if you're referring to the Prowler, EA-6Bs (ICAP/ADVCAP) usually carry AGM-88, not STARMs.

Glad to see you again, man ;)

In "Modern Air Combat" Bill Gunston said the Viggen was 4 to 11 times less expensive than US fighters. The book was printed in 1983, so I don't know which US fighters he's talking about. Anyway, the Viggen had outstanding performance, a revolutionary and modern design, coupled with good avionics. A good bargain at that price.

While this is a great manual, ED would probably need NAVAIR 01-F14AAD-1A, which contains chapters 25-36 about the F-14 weapons system (radar included). And I think that is classified Anyway, great manual!

Sorry there must have been some misunderstandings, I didn't want to get into a ""I know more than you about geography" pissing contest". I just said that I'm quite sure that most of these locations were correct. There was a bit of error caused by googleearth which swapped two airbase names at that zoom level (and deleted bitburg). IMHO the tone of some replies (not just yours) were already of the kind "I know more than you". Anyway, no problem here, I don't wanna start a flame over a stupid map ;)

RoE were restrictive because it was felt that it wasn't a real full-scale war, but an intervention to push North Vietnam to the negotiation. I've already mentioned some of the most stupid ones (killing aircraft in the air but not on the ground, killing SAMs only after they had deployed). You couldn't really gain air superiority in such a situation. Often American aircrews described fighting in Vietnam as fighting with the hands tied behind their backs. It gives the idea of what they could really do to effectively win the war. This goes beyond every technical discussion of how the Phantom performed in the combat arena against the Mig-21. But this is also the most influential part of the RoE, because I don't think that even if F-4s had Phoenix coupled with TCS or TISEO the air war over Vietnam would have had different results.

God, 150 aircraft lost in 10 years is a tremendous record.... Yet, with the Tornado, which is considered a modern, capable and safe system, you see that German forces (Luftwaffe and Marineflieger together) lost about 25 aircraft in 8 years. It's not a good record either... http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRDaten/FRMilunf.htm

F-4s were usually less maneuvrable than Mig-21s and Mig-17s. They were also without guns, and they were large and smoky, something that isn't much appreciated in WVR combat. And yes, crews in Vietnam were more trained for nuclear strike and BVR missile combat. So the early stages of conventional air-to-ground operations and WVR A2A combat were not much successful. Other than that, the Americans (not just F-4s) were victims of the RoE as much as they were victims of enemy actions... destroying aircraft in the air but not on the ground, destroying SAMs after they had deployed instead of killing them while they were being downloaded from Soviet ships.... on and on.... you couldn't win such a war. It's proved that RoE, mass-media and opinion, can do much more harm than many enemy weapons systems. It's still true 30 years later, just look at Iraq...

The data about airbases in former GDR is taken from Jane's World Air Power Journal issue #20 (article "Red Stars over Germany"). Merseburg is north of Nobitz. There is also a problem for identification because some names were in use by Russians, and were different from the original German name. eg: Finow/Eberswalde, Nobitz/Altenburg and many others. Just one note: the map I've published is a screen taken from GoogleEarth, but the level of detail and zoom, does create some confusion. Some names are swapped, some are moved, some are deleted. But if you zoom in, airbases are located where they should be. I've used a mix of coordinates/GoogleEarth search to acquire visual ID of airbases. It's not guaranteed to be 100% error-free, but there was some form of data-validation ;)

C'mon man... PS: just a little "errata" in my previous post: it's GoogleEarth and not googlesat, and the bookmark for "Birburg" was corrected to "Bitburg" ;)

It isn't further east and south now... zooming out Googlesat moved the name Norvenich close to Geilenkirchen AB, which is really close to Netherlands, more than Belgium. I've not changed my bookmarks in googlesat. I just zoomed in and added borders. Second, these are some (not all) airbases in Central Europe, I've never said that these are German airbases. In the original map you can also see some Polish and French airbases. Soesterberg (not Soesterburg), aka Camp New Amsterdam is in the Netherlands.

please review your geographic skills before posting ;)

I know it's not complete... just a quick note, "AFB"s are only in USA, overseas should be just "AB". AFAIK.

Typical noob question: "How can I open hangar doors?" Typical answer: "There is a shorcut, press CTRL+E+E+E" I've seen tons of these jokes :D

http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/4466/winter.html I was impressed by Thule when I heard about BMEWS and when I saw these winter photos. Look at the captions... the author says they were taken about at noon and at 2 p.m.!!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner!!!! It's Thule airbase, located in northern Greenland (yes it's really cold there!). It's one of the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) centers.

tip: is operated by US forces and begins with the letter "T"

IMHO it's quite obvious that this scenario appears many times in simmers' wishes... it's not a news that each and every aircraft built in the last 50 years was planned with such a scenario in mind. Even most modern fighters were planned in that timeframe and for that purpose. That is just because R&D for a modern craft lasts tens of years. Aircraft like Gripen, EF2000, Rafale and in some ways also the Raptor, were already in advanced planning phase when cold war ended. There were early drafts of EAP and Gripen even in the 1983 book "Modern Air Combat" so they can well be considered "cold war fighters" too.... The main obstacle to modelling such a scenario IMHO are the densely populated terrain and the huge size of the forces in the area. Just NATO's 2nd ATAF could count 700+ jet aircraft in peacetime, plus about some hundred of reinforcements. But it wasn't alone. Then you would have to add 4th ATAF to NATO side, and about three Air Armies to the Warsaw Pact side, with more than 2,000 aircraft. It's easy to see that you are talking about an order of battle of 4,000-5,000 aircraft, maybe more. Not to count land forces, which were really huge too... For the "bad guys" syndrome, I don't think is appropriated. There are many sims about WW2 Luftwaffe vs Allied forces. Yet there isn't much to talk about who were the "bad guys" in that timeframe, but many simmers enjoy flying those technical marvels produced by Germany in that period. I think sims are just sims. Are games... are dots blinking on a screen. If I fly with a WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft it doesn't mean I'm a Hitler fan. Back to the CEUR scenario, In the cold war both sides were taught to be the "victims" of a likely invasion. Yet only one side (AFAIK) had printed coins, money, medals, prepositioned weapons caches and "enemy-compatible" mobile equipment to use for a possible invasion of the other side. Guess which one it was... ;) It's just a good thing that nothing happened IRL! But that doesn't mean it would be a bad idea a sim with a "what if" cold war scenario.

Yours is quite a common opinion, but it's a shame that is not supported by facts. Cold war scenarios were not really modelled very much in flight sims, and there are really few exceptions. One of them is Microprose's stealth series (F-19 and F-117), which belong to the early nineties (15 years ago!!!). There you could fly against Soviet forces in Germany and North Cape, but it was much more arcade. "Gunship!" takes place in central Europe (after "cold war" ended) but, again, there is no realistic modelling of the terrain. Falcon4 takes place in Korea. There is a Euro mod, but it's a mod, not a game.... "Tornado" had generic "european" and "desert" style terrains, but both were fictional. could you please tell me which games simulated a cold war scenario (NATO vs Warsaw Pact)?

which airbase is this?

you'll like this one:

that source is probably exaggerated (even though it seems to have a lot of data). Remember that the APG-66/68 is one of the few systems which is air cooled. The other (bigger) airborne radar systems should be liquid-cooled. here's what I've found: APG-66 Characteristics: Weight: 296 lb Power: 3.6 kVA Cooling Air: 2.8 kW Volume: 3.63 ft3 http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=406&gTable=mtgpaper&gID=96648 just click "see first page" another source reported the APG-66 to be lighter (about 236 lbs) I don't know if peak power could reach such a high value, but it doesn't seem likely. Especially if you compare it to AWG-9 and APG-63/70 which have much longer range (and therefore are much higher-powered)