How do you perform ground attack effectively?

[Fred00]

I'm having trouble performing ground attack. A couple of examples are the ground attack instant action mission and the single mission "Quicksand". The problem is that I often get shot down. What do you do to avoid being shot down? Dropping from as high altitude as possible with steep dive? It seems like they hit me very easily...

 

Also, how do you actually destroy the convoy in the instant action mission with just two drops?

[Art-J]

Never tried the "Quicksand" mission, so cannot comment on this one.

 

The instant ground attack mission on the other hand, You deal with it either by:

 

a) watching and learning from this fellow:

 

[ame]

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b) ordering Your wingman to attack them (he's better at droping clusters than You) and using Your cannon. It's difficult, but in this mission You don't have to destroy all vehicles, only five or so, If I remember correctly.

[Deathbane]

Bombs are difficult to use, and inaccurate, whilst S24A is pretty much place piper, release, watch things die to its huge warhead.

 

My squadron places more faith in the s24 series and groms. We use hardly anything else for ground attack in the main as its too unreliable for little if any gain.

[Nerd1000]

Bombs are difficult to use, and inaccurate, whilst S24A is pretty much place piper, release, watch things die to its huge warhead.

 

My squadron places more faith in the s24 series and groms. We use hardly anything else for ground attack in the main as its too unreliable for little if any gain.

The S-24A's 120kg warhead seems to produce a larger explosion than a FAB-250. Make of that what you will, but it is IMO the best A2G weapon the MiG has unless you're attacking ships that lack point defense.

[Kuky]

S-24 rockets won't kill many targets, so for me B-8 rockets are more versatile and still quite accurate... and gun is also enough for few light vehicles.

[Darkwolf]

We tried AG real hard. As deathbane says, s24 is simple : shoot, miss you target by 10m, still get the kill + everything around. It also go thru MBT like butter.

 

In the other hand, the other small rockets are not even a guaranteed kill on a bmp1 top/flank hit.

 

Same goes with rbk/fab bombs. Anything else than a direct hit won't do shit against IFV. Even infantry.

 

 

Gun run is useless too. Can only shoot truck, which doesn't worth the risk.

 

 

 

 

we fly CAS like you would run a VFR approach. Fly parallel to the ennemi, 5km high, 5km far. Look for target. When have one in sight, wait its on your 5/7 o clock, do a 180° turn into it. When you attack, use half your flare and weapon on target. Take speed on the dive, and do not ever ever use your burner. Stay in low regime when you escape. You dont want manpad to lock on you.

rince and repeat. When out of flares and/or weapon, RTB. No gun run. Worthless.

[Deezle]

Unless you have precision guided munitions, really don't bother with anything armored. With DCS's limited explosion and damage modeling it's just not worth doing, ideally you could severely damage and disable armored vehicles with a close bomb hit, but in DCS it's either dead or alive, no in-between. With rocket pods you can do quite a number on trucks however.

[cquail]

I pretty much only use the S-24's for ground attack. They have laser accuracy and will pretty much take out anything.

[WinterH]

S-24 is very powerful indeed and overall best attack option on the MiG. Just point it, fire, and watch anything in their general direction die. Even top class tanks.

 

Bombs can do quite an impression but aren't reliable. You really need to be very precise with your control &release, and also be lucky. I'm not sure but lately FAB-500s blast & power feels like reduced too. If you can accurately drop 8 fab 100 & 2 fab 250 over a convoy, you can get many kills, but it's difficult to pull off with any reliability. Same goes for clusters. A well put duo of fab 500 from a dive attack is potentially powerful too but either getting rusty or bombs get weaker lately or nay be both, I just can't do much with them lately.

 

S-5 is nearly worthless. A few days ago I have seen one land right in front od a humvee and did not even nick it.

 

If you are accurate steady with controls gun works very well vs IFVs but it can be difficult. But I certainly don't think gun is bad at all.

 

Kh-66. This one is fun but can also be frustrating. Need to keep the plane quite steady. S-24 provides a longer standoff distance since you can just turn away after firing. With Groms, while you can fire the missile much further out, by the time they hit you usually are dangerously close to target area.

[Stratos]

I agree with bomb reliability problems, but bombs see a lot of use on real life. Maybe we should use against building only?

 

Wish ED can fix the damn fragmentation damage problem once for all.

[Darkwolf]

But I certainly don't think gun is bad at all.

 

All our training tracks show otherwise, with BTR-80s getting like 30-50 rounds without a scratch.

[mattebubben]

I just wish it was possible to launch one S-24 at a time =P.

 

Since that would make it up to 4 targets instead of 2.

 

Due to this my standard air-ground loadout is usually 2x S-24 on the outboard pylons and 2x UB-32 Rocket pods.

 

Sure the S-5 does not have the punch of the S-24 but you got alot more of them.

 

And they are decent against most targets weaker then tanks.

[Art-J]

All our training tracks show otherwise, with BTR-80s getting like 30-50 rounds without a scratch.

 

Maybe it's vehicle issue then? I remember the easiest way to get through the "Ground attack" instant mission in 1.2.16 was not using the clusters, but firing a long cannon burst along the convoy column. US tanks were obviously not impressed, but APCs were set ablaze like matches.

 

Never tried this mission in 1.5 though.

[Darkwolf]

Well, our target range feature BTR and BMP1. Direct hits shown no effect whatsoever on them, with S-5 and guns.

 

Maybe with bradley it works, but that's still a big change from picking BMPs with 66m man held rockets in ArmA 2 :D

 

But after that, we fly between 2 and 4 planes, so that's still a lots of vehicles that burn after our pass. :D

[HugePanic]

Bradley can be opened with the gun.

Leopard can be easily opend with the unguided rockets. It is very doable to plink 4 leopards with 1 loadout. I assume that you can even open 6 tanks, but I have to try.... Not sure about other MBT's, but I expect similar results.

[Chrinik]

Remember guys, the gun also has an Air-to-Ground specific load.

Before you trash the gun in A2G use, make sure you used the correct belting.

 

S-24 is indeed very powerful in DCS and has a large blastradius, there is a reason why it was the standard weapon for the SU-25 for a long time XD

 

For me, it depends on the target. Runways = BetABs, convoys = rocketpods, heavy armor = S-24/Grom, AAA = Grom, (guys, there is a throttle...the missle has a 10km launch range, if you throttle down, there should be no way in hell that you get "dangerously close" unless you try to plink SAMs with it.)

 

And unless it is a strategic target, like a large factory or an airfield with lots of planes on the ground, I don´t use bombs at all. Bombs are only good when you fly large sorties and need to saturate an area that has lot´s of weak targets, like buildings or parked aircraft (funnily enough, bombs seem to do quite a number on parked airfields, serriously damaging 3 or 4 with a single impact.).

Edited January 15, 2016 by Chrinik