MBot

That is a funny defenition of entire envelope... In other words, the slatted F-4E is a better sustained turner than the MiG-23MLD where it matters most.

Interesting, the Tin Shield search radar which was added in the previous patch as 19J6 has now been relabeled as SA-5 SR. Curious decision, as it has a detection range which is only about half the SA-5 maximum engagement range.

Any chance that this ever gets fixed? I noted the new 19J6 Tin Shield radar is now in the game. I had high hopes that this new radar might be an usable replacement for the flawed 1L13 and 55G6 EWR. Unfortunately the 19J6 has only a range of 150 km (which is correct) and is not set up to accept an EWR task in DCS. As such it is unfortunately not viable as a new GCI radar and we still depend on the 1L13 and 55G6 to get their script detection range fixed. I am still convinced this is a one minuted DB fix, it's just that no one at ED bothered to look at it. Waiting for 4+ years now.

Though the issue is neither about your distance to the bandit, nor your distance to AWACS (=the DL connection), it is about AWACS' distance to the bandit.

Also keep in mind that there is the issue that the Tomcat is not receiving datalink targets from AWACS that are further away than 150 NM from AWACS, even though AWACS can track targets much further away (and reports them on the radio).

Thanks Grimes. Since you are no stranger to scripting, I figured for you I can provide a little more complex example. In the attached mission, all individual members of a group of 4 are assigned a GoTo mission task 5 minutes into the mission. The catapult of wingman 4 is blocked so that it cannot take off. With aircraft 4 still on the ground, aircraft 1 to 3 basically go dumb upon tasking and start to orbit a point ahead of the carrier. If you remove the obstacle for aircraft 4 and allow it to take off, with all aircraft in the air, when being tasked all 4 aircraft correctly execute their individual mission task and fly towards coordinates x=0,y=0 as defined. GoToDeparture.miz

On the Open Beta I cannot see a difference between formations. In the attached missions, two single-ship groups are assigned an orbit. One with a formation assigned, the other with default formation. Bot execute an identical tight 58° bank orbit. OrbitFormation.miz

AI is unresponsive to tasking as long as one of the flight's wingmen is still on the ground. In the attached track, the group is tasked to orbit at the departure waypoint in order to facilitate join up. Wingman is deliberately parked to take off later than leader. Leader will take off and proceed on route and only start to orbit once the wingman has taken off as well. By which time the leader has flown a long distance, which the wingman will then cover at full afterburner. If the group is reduced to just the leader, he will start to orbit right after take-off. So apparently tasking is inhibited as long as some flight members are not airborne. The orbiting is just an example. In more complex scripting situations, I also experienced that you cannot assign mission tasks to individual group members as long as some group members are still on the ground. The tasked group members will turn dumb and fly off unresponding until all wingmen have taken off, then complete the assigned task. TaskDeparture.trk

Since about a month or so I noticed a change in AI orbit behaviour. Previously I think that circular orbit size was based on a fixed bank angle (I think it was 23°), so orbits would be wider with increased altitude altitude and weight. Now it seems that circular orbit is fixed to a 3.5 NM diameter. This means that at high weight and high altitude, AI tries to fly tight circular orbits at up to 60° bank angle and at full AB. Unnecessary afterburner usage will break any fuel planing for the mission. Under unfavorable circumstances AI is even unable to sustain a tasked orbit. Also wingmen are often unable to join up with their leader in such orbits. Orbit.trk

No, AI can only be spawned from the defined spawn parking positions (statics cannot be turned into active units). The Stennis (and the Supercarriers) do not have nearly enough to launch a large strike package.

That is a good wish, but this is outside the control of HB and something to bring up to ED. But defining parking spots on the landing area is I think something that HB can actually do.

I am not proposing opposite parking spots though, and the parking spots should be spaced to make it work in DCS anyhow. What I am hoping for is that space at the back of the ship (on the landing area) is used for additional higher numbered spawn slots. ED's supercarriers are set set up with parking spots for ongoing flight ops where no parked aircraft blocks the landing area. I want to set up cyclic operations for large strike packages which requires spawning aircraft from the landing area. I as the mission designer am able to accommodate the fact that landing on the carrier is not possible 100% of the time.

I have a question for the Mirage experts. What are the differences between the Spanish F1CE and the Greek F1CG? As both are wired for the 4 Sidewinder armament, they look remarkably similar. Are there any differences in avionics or cockpit instrumentation/labeling? The F1CE used as an F1CG substitute might make a really good fit on the Cyprus map.

I have one big wish to HB. Please configure your carrier to have as many spawn positions as possible, including at the back end of the ship to serve catapults 3 and 4. For single-player it just so important to have to have sufficient space to spawn Alpha Strike sized elements from a parking position (versus spawning AI on the catapults, which looks lame). I am fully aware that these extra spawn positions will block the landing area. For single player this is a non-issue, as this can be managed by the mission designer (schedule no landings when a big strike is to launch). And for multiplayer, honestly, when was the last time that you saw more than 8 guys spawning simultaneously on carrier outside of an organized group event? Small number of players will always spawn from the lower numbered parking positions if free, and these can be set up to be outside of the landing area. Organized groups events with large number of players that spawn in the landing area should be able to coordinate no landings during mass launches. So please, do not be shy to put as many parking positions as possible on the landing area.

Has this bug been acknowledged? I am trying to build missions with cyclic carrier ops, for which it is essential to send aircraft from the Marshal to a recovery tanker individually. Individual tasking is essential to control the amount of fuel that each aircraft receives (offload fuel by the recovery tanker is limited and must be distributed among all aircraft in the recovery cycle). All scripting is complete but is voided by the above bug.

That may well be the requirement of the aircraft, but it does not fit the role of the ship it has primarily served on. The Kiev class cruisers had an ASW and secondary anti-carrier role (not that any would have likely survived long enough to approach a USN carrier). As such I just don't see the ship and its Yak's being used in close support of amphibious operations (which were rather small scale anyway in the Soviet Navy). A role that I could see would be striking an unlucky forward operating small NATO corvette or small ASW frigates than would not be worth the main battery Sandbox missiles of the Kiev. For this the Kh-23 of the Forger might have been of some use. But any target with Sea Sparrow or more would have been off limits.

An interesting statistic from one of Yefim Gordon's books. Between 1976 and 1988, the Soviet Yak-38 fleet logged 24'302 flight hours and 71'733 landings. This equals an average flight duration of just 20 minutes. As much as I love this quirky aircraft, but ouch that is short legged

To be fair though, neither aircraft was to fight the other. The Royal Navy carriers were the center of ASW task groups that were not intended to seek engagements with Soviet surface forces. The small detachments of Sea Harriers on board were intended to fend off Soviet maritime patrol aircraft (*). Equally, the Kievs would also most likely have been the center of ASW task groups (in defense of their arctic SSBN bastions), or if used offensively, would have launched its anti-ship missiles and broke off long before coming into Forger striking range. Again, the Yak's primary task would have been to fend off maritime patrol aircraft. As such, the Sea Harrier and the Yak-38 had very similar operational roles, the Sea Harrier being superior due to having a radar. * The Royal Navy's use of their carriers and Sea Harriers s in the Falklands War was quite in contrast to their intended role within NATO.

The closest equivalent to the Yak-38 would be with the contemporary AV-8A, which operated off amphibious ships with the USMC, as well as off carriers in the Spanish Navy and the Royal Thai Navy.

I always had a big sweet spot for the Yak-38. Of course it would be crappy and limited and uncompetitive But that would be part of its appeal and why it would be an interesting module. I think this aircraft must be judged by its most important trait, which is that it could provide the Soviet Navy air power at sea where no other fighter could go. And among the blind, the one-eyed is king. A Yak-38 present is better than a no-show MiG-29. The primary role of Yak-38 was probably to counter NATO maritime patrol aircraft. You have to keep in mind that previously any Soviet surface action group at sea could be shadowed by NATO P-3 Orion or Nimrods with impunity. They could orbit just outside of the SAM engagement range of the warships all day long, observe and provide continuous up to date targeting information for NATO air, sea and sub-surface strikes. The Kiev-class cruisers with the Yak-38 were able to restrict NATO maritime reconnaissance in certain areas and therefore increased survivability of Soviet ships and submarines at sea far beyond pure air defence. Interestingly, this is exactly the same role that the Royal Navy had assigned to its Sea Harriers prior to the Falklands War.

I very much agree. Those radar domes scenery objects should be copy pasted into active mission units. This way, when required by the mission designer, we can remove the scenery object radar by trigger and replace it with an identical looking active EWR unit that serves a purpose in the mission. And we definitely need usable EWR capable radar units for both blue and red. A perfectly suitable P-37 Bar Lock 3D model (perhaps the most widespread eastern GCI radar) has been in the game for years. This should be turned into a usable unit. These unit types are so important for Cold War scenarios before AWACS was a thing. I am waiting for new EWR forever now, because the existing 1L13 and 55G6 have this annoying bug (reported since years) where they only return detected targets in the scripting environment within 120 km (instead of their true 300+ km range). This is a huge problem for creating GCI mission scripts for me. I lost any hope that this bug will ever be resolved, but perhaps a new EWR unit will not suffer from it?

A successful PSTT shot is basically impossible. In my experience, in DCS you need to be as fast and high as possible and launch shortly after maximum PD detection range (60ish NM) in order for the Phoenix to be able to climb and intercept the target nearly head on. Remember that even if launched high, the missile still has to climb around 40'000 ft. It seems that AS-4 interceptions are over, and apparently the Tomcat was never capable to do so. Such a shame, as I really enjoyed them

I have carrier comms and the LSO calls/grading on the regular Stennis, so I would expect them to work equally on the Forrestal. Not that the carrier comms are very well done for that matter, the LSO calls any help beside stating the obvious or the grading ever working correctly... Most of the time I simply ignore doing the scriped comms and fly zip-lip anyway. The only significant thing missing from the supercarrier will be the very cool deck crew, which while being a shame, is mostly eye candy. Hopefully, this could be added to the Forrestal later.

I brought this up 15 years ago, but I think with the addition of the Hind its time again to request Volume Fire for non-computed air defense fire. TYPE AERIAL PLATFORMS COURSE AIMING POINT Jet/cruise missile Crossing Two Football Fields in Front of aerial platform Nose Jet/cruise missile Overhead Two Football Fields in Front of Aerial platform Nose Jet/cruise missile Directly at You Slightly Above Aerial platform Nose Helicopter Hovering Slightly Above Helicopter Body Helicopter/uav Directly at You Slightly Above Helicopter Body Helicopter/uav Crossing One half Football Field in Front of Nose

You are right, it was the doctrine of Soviet Naval Aviation to launch a divisional strength attack per target carrier, so between 40 (two regiments) and 60 (three regiments) missile carrying bombers plus a decent number of escort jammers. A carrier operating alone was unlikely to be able to defend against such a strike (and this was recognized in the US Maritime Strategy of the 1980s). USN carriers thus would have operated at least in pairs or more for mutual defensive support in high threat theaters (Norwegian Sea, Mediterranean, North Pacific). But then, the Soviets would probably assign additional bomber divisions to strike such groups as well, so who knows how this would have gone. Let's play with the numbers a bit. A single carrier had 24 Tomcats. If we assume that 10 of them could be airborne to meet a Soviet attack, each carrying 6 Phoenix, they could shoot down a 60 bomber division if the Soviets approach most cooperatively, every single Tomcat is in a perfect position to engage every single bomber and every single missile hits. Now of course it is rather unlikely that every Tomcat carries 6 Phoenix (aircraft to loiter on CAP would probably carry 2 to 4) and we all know how missile PKs are in combat. A bomber killed for every 2 missiles would probably have been an excellent result. But most importantly, the Soviet bombers would have attacked from multiple axis simultaneously. The carrier intending to position its CAP several hundreds of miles away for the outer air battle (to kill the archer), is forced to spread its CAP over a wide arch of hundreds of miles to cover all possible axis (and as such, one CAP cannot shift to support another CAP). The Soviets would thus have had the initiative to either also spread their bombers over the full range of available attack directions or put extra weight on certain axis (generating a Schwerpunkt) for a breakthrough. Under these circumstances it is almost certain that some bombers, and even likely that a significant number of bombers, would have reached a missile launch position. Making the above assumption and wargaming these scenarios in both DCS and strategy games, I always thought that it would make sense to keep a small fraction of your defensive fighter force close to the carrier to commit it against any breakthrough once identified. In mechanized ground warfare this is the classic role of the reserve of a ground commander. Such Tomcat reserve held in a central position (either on CAP close to the carrier or launched from deck alert) would be able to be vectored on any attack axis. But since it cannot reach any supersonic bombers before they come into missile launch range, would need to be able to intercept the missiles launched from this attack axis. As such I was always under the impression that the Tomcat should be able to engage the Backfire's missiles as well. Otherwise, a single squadron of 10 bombers making it through the outer screen unchecked (which I do not think is too unlikely) would be able to launch a missile salvo that had a decent chance to overwhelm the carrier escort's air defense screen (pre-AEGIS).