A-6 "Intruder" by Razbam

[ghostdog688]

The thing to remember is that although the f18 is a good multi-role aircraft, the a6/a7 mix is GREAT at bombing but poor at fighting. The real reason for the hornets existence wasn't because these were bad planes: rather the navy was tired of the training and logistical nightmare of having to run and supply 8 planes on one carrier (k/e/a6, f14, s3, c/e2, sh-60). Why not collapse that down? Ideally they would have one helicopter and one plane doing it all. The fact is that all of the planes the hornet replaced were good or excellent in their role at the time of their replacement, and the hornet of the time was 'OK' at them all.

 

 

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[Aginor]

Yeah, I think many people don't realize that when talking about topics like

F-14 vs. F/A-18

A-6 vs. F/A-18,

even F-4 vs. F/A-18

and so on.

 

The great thing about the Hornet is not that it is better than all of them in their specific roles, but that it is _good enough_ in everything they did. And not having to train people on all those different planes and not having to have maintenance for all those different aircraft is a huge advantage.

 

I am STILL looking forward to all those "old" planes as well. :)

[Home Fries]

The great thing about the Hornet is not that it is better than all of them in their specific roles, but that it is _good enough_ in everything they did. And not having to train people on all those different planes and not having to have maintenance for all those different aircraft is a huge advantage.

 

The other thing is that GPS guided munitions made for a huge paradigm shift in how bombing is performed. Sure, we had PGMs in Desert Storm, but most of the ordinance dropped was dumb iron. The difference between a Mk84 and JDAM is a relatively inexpensive GPS kit that can be affixed to the bomb, so that makes for a major force multiplier. With a GPS guided Mk84 (JDAM) you don't need a bomb truck because you need only one bomb to take out your target.

 

I used to stress to my students that a single hornet carrying 2 JDAM has the strike power of 200 B-17s because you could count on the JDAM hitting the target, whereas you would need a whole B-17 strike to ensure enough dumb bombs are dropped in order to hit the target. Rule #1 in weaponeering: accuracy is a force multiplier.

 

I love the A-6, and as a platform the A-6 is much more capable than the Hornet when it comes to low level delivery in poor weather. However, the JDAM is a high-level delivery weapon, and as long as the high-altitude SAMs have been taken out, a hornet can go in high, drop and leave with a lot less drama or workload than the A-6.

[Einherjer]

The other thing is that GPS guided munitions made for a huge paradigm shift in how bombing is performed. Sure, we had PGMs in Desert Storm, but most of the ordinance dropped was dumb iron. The difference between a Mk84 and JDAM is a relatively inexpensive GPS kit that can be affixed to the bomb, so that makes for a major force multiplier. With a GPS guided Mk84 (JDAM) you don't need a bomb truck because you need only one bomb to take out your target.

 

I used to stress to my students that a single hornet carrying 2 JDAM has the strike power of 200 B-17s because you could count on the JDAM hitting the target, whereas you would need a whole B-17 strike to ensure enough dumb bombs are dropped in order to hit the target. Rule #1 in weaponeering: accuracy is a force multiplier.

 

I love the A-6, and as a platform the A-6 is much more capable than the Hornet when it comes to low level delivery in poor weather. However, the JDAM is a high-level delivery weapon, and as long as the high-altitude SAMs have been taken out, a hornet can go in high, drop and leave with a lot less drama or workload than the A-6.

 

 

You are absolutely right... But somehow everybody loves drama ;)

Maybe in the simulation genre its more a matter of "fun" then effectiveness. But in the real war, everybody Is happy with a boring job, when it's not dangerous but effective.

[Home Fries]

You are absolutely right... But somehow everybody loves drama ;)

Maybe in the simulation genre its more a matter of "fun" then effectiveness. But in the real war, everybody Is happy with a boring job, when it's not dangerous but effective.

 

No question. When it comes to DCS, I look more toward the low level all-wx strikes in the Intruder and Mudhen than I do the surgical JDAM strikes in the F/A-18C. :thumbup:

[OneBlueSky]

You are absolutely right... But somehow everybody loves drama ;)

Maybe in the simulation genre its more a matter of "fun" then effectiveness. But in the real war, everybody Is happy with a boring job, when it's not dangerous but effective.

 

Absolutely. In a sim, we want to have fun and to have a challenge. In real life, the goal is to make things easier and put as little risk on the crews as possible. Something like the A-6 will provide a much more fun experience in game than something like the F/A-18 for us. And for those who want to come in and never be at risk, never get dirty but rather press a button and fly away without a scratch, the F/A-18 will be more fun.

 

Different strokes for different folks, and I look forward to the day we have the option of both! :pilotfly:

[Kev2go]

Absolutely. In a sim, we want to have fun and to have a challenge. In real life, the goal is to make things easier and put as little risk on the crews as possible. Something like the A-6 will provide a much more fun experience in game than something like the F/A-18 for us. And for those who want to come in and never be at risk, never get dirty but rather press a button and fly away without a scratch, the F/A-18 will be more fun.

 

Different strokes for different folks, and I look forward to the day we have the option of both! :pilotfly:

 

Then again f18 isn't limited to smart munitions. just like the a10c you can still be able to arm unguided types if you wish and still cpnduct bombing the good old fashion risky way

Edited March 16, 2016 by Kev2go

[Vampyre]

Then again f18 isn't limited to smart munitions. just like the a10c you can still be able to arm unguided types if you wish and still cpnduct bombing the good old fashion risky way

 

The F/A-18 is limited by range though, and its lo-lo-lo profile is abysmal. Its hi-hi-hi profile isn't anything to write home about either. The A-6 and A-7 were far better strike assets than the Hornet in this regard. The Navy took a huge risk going with the Hornet. Short range means its base, id est the aircraft carrier, has to operate closer to enemy offensive assets for its aircraft to be able to hit important targets within the battle space. This means the modern carrier is more vulnerable than a carrier was in the mid 80's when conducting strike operations. The tradeoff for cost savings is higher risk to the aircraft carrier itself. As many different missions as the Hornet can do, it cannot do anything from Davy Jonses locker. That is what the Navy actually did when they divested the A-6, A-7 and F-14 from the fleet.

[Kev2go]

The F/A-18 is limited by range though, and its lo-lo-lo profile is abysmal. Its hi-hi-hi profile isn't anything to write home about either. The A-6 and A-7 were far better strike assets than the Hornet in this regard. The Navy took a huge risk going with the Hornet. Short range means its base, id est the aircraft carrier, has to operate closer to enemy offensive assets for its aircraft to be able to hit important targets within the battle space. This means the modern carrier is more vulnerable than a carrier was in the mid 80's when conducting strike operations. The tradeoff for cost savings is higher risk to the aircraft carrier itself. As many different missions as the Hornet can do, it cannot do anything from Davy Jonses locker. That is what the Navy actually did when they divested the A-6, A-7 and F-14 from the fleet.

 

 

Compared to the mig21 and f5 though the f18 might as well be a non stop flight airliner.

 

with the map size we have f18 will suffice besides players can fly thier planes how they like. Which is what I'm getting at. You have both option of guided and unguided munitions plus also going for a dedicated air to air role. both heatseakers and Amram. F18 can pretty much self escort.

 

It's not like the mig21 is being flown right since it doesn't simulate proper point defuse interception with guidance from ground controllers.

 

Besides by the time f14 was retired the us navy already had the f1E/F super hornets which improved upon its range. Apart from being improved with avionics systems and a larger airframe

Edited March 16, 2016 by Kev2go

[ESAc_matador]

The other thing is that GPS guided munitions made for a huge paradigm shift in how bombing is performed. Sure, we had PGMs in Desert Storm, but most of the ordinance dropped was dumb iron. The difference between a Mk84 and JDAM is a relatively inexpensive GPS kit that can be affixed to the bomb, so that makes for a major force multiplier. With a GPS guided Mk84 (JDAM) you don't need a bomb truck because you need only one bomb to take out your target.

 

I used to stress to my students that a single hornet carrying 2 JDAM has the strike power of 200 B-17s because you could count on the JDAM hitting the target, whereas you would need a whole B-17 strike to ensure enough dumb bombs are dropped in order to hit the target. Rule #1 in weaponeering: accuracy is a force multiplier.

 

I love the A-6, and as a platform the A-6 is much more capable than the Hornet when it comes to low level delivery in poor weather. However, the JDAM is a high-level delivery weapon, and as long as the high-altitude SAMs have been taken out, a hornet can go in high, drop and leave with a lot less drama or workload than the A-6.

 

Just for the record. The JDAM kit is more expensive than the bomb itself.

[_Acoustic_]

A-6 is my all time favorite aircraft, followed by the F-4 Wildcat. I guess for some reason I love ugly but badass machines built by Grumman. Head scratcher.

 

First day buy plus a few extras for others just because. Although I do agree with some of the posts in here about the A-7 being first for single player issues.

 

Either way its great to see more movement from developers into DCS. It is the future of flight simulation.

[OneBlueSky]

Either way its great to see more movement from developers into DCS. It is the future of flight simulation.

 

Yep. At the end of the day, more quality releases coming more frequently will bring a much larger player base. That's what DCS needs most. Nothing compares and I want to see it grow.

[Home Fries]

Just for the record. The JDAM kit is more expensive than the bomb itself.

True, but the $25k cost of a JDAM kit is the same cost for 1 hour of flight in the F/A-18. That's comparatively inexpensive. :D

Edited March 17, 2016 by Home Fries

[mkellytx]

Think about it this way: aircrew coordination is a huge challenge even among professional aviators in the same aircraft. It is only over time that crews begin to gel and start thinking alike.

 

Randomly jumping into another cockpit may be a disaster, but then if you find a serious counterpart it may be a lot of fun. Either way it will be challenging.

 

If you're the pilot, imagine flying through the mountains in bad weather with nothing but DIANE cueing you when to climb/dive/turn, and depending on your B/N to back you up with the ground radar (and being able to read ground radar returns, which is art as well as science). Your B/N gets a fix off the ground radar (again art and science) and updates the INS, and your DIANE shifts accordingly. You have to decide whether to trust that fix, as well as the word of your B/N when he gives you his confidence. All of this happens well before you even get to your target area, where you depend on the B/N to set up your approach, put DIANE into attack, and set Master Arm on.

 

If you're the B/N, you've got the radar. Your pilot depends on you to keep the INS solution tight so his DIANE cues are accurate. You also need to trust your pilot to fly the cues, but you're constantly looking at the radar returns to make sure you don't see "mountain shadow" which indicates a peak higher than your current altitude. If you see it, you need to call it and make sure your pilot makes the right move to avoid Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT). You're like a coach: you're calling the shots, but you're dependent on your pilot to execute.

 

Either way, it's a major challenge. That said, either way, when it works it's exhilarating! When it doesn't, it's frustrating, but you can learn and do better next time (providing your counterpart is serious). As long as you have a serious counterpart, it will be rewarding either way.

 

So well said Home Fries! You captured the essence of what I loved best about my aircrew time on the BUFF; professionalism, coordination and trust. Watching two navs, two pilots and an EWO work together to get 400,000 lbs of air frame, fuel and fuel and bombs to the target was a thing of beauty. You started reacting to the intonation in peoples voices...God I miss it.

[mkellytx]

The thing to remember is that although the f18 is a good multi-role aircraft, the a6/a7 mix is GREAT at bombing but poor at fighting. The real reason for the hornets existence wasn't because these were bad planes: rather the navy was tired of the training and logistical nightmare of having to run and supply 8 planes on one carrier (k/e/a6, f14, s3, c/e2, sh-60). Why not collapse that down? Ideally they would have one helicopter and one plane doing it all. The fact is that all of the planes the hornet replaced were good or excellent in their role at the time of their replacement, and the hornet of the time was 'OK' at them all.

 

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The last three years of my military career were as an acquisitions puke, driving a desk, building hours towards my 5,000 hr PowerPoint badge;)

 

All joking aside the Navy acquisitions path during the late 90's has some merit, they went with good enough (F-18E/F) and replaced a lot of tired iron. The AF went with best and got 187 Raptors and are now on the 2nd or 3rd mid-life update of the Viper, Mud Hen, Eagle...

 

A good question would be if the higher marginal cost of the higher performing A-6F and Super Tomcats would justify their performance advantage over the Super Bug, but that's a big counterfactual...

 

That said, the range of the A-6E would have been nice to have in A-stan.

[mkellytx]

I love the A-6, and as a platform the A-6 is much more capable than the Hornet when it comes to low level delivery in poor weather. However, the JDAM is a high-level delivery weapon, and as long as the high-altitude SAMs have been taken out, a hornet can go in high, drop and leave with a lot less drama or workload than the A-6.

 

Not to mention a JDAM lofted from 50 kft at 1.5 Mach has a range greater than 20 nm, that's good enough to defeat a lot of single digit SAMS. That can be nice at times...

[OneBlueSky]

The last three years of my military career were as an acquisitions puke, driving a desk, building hours towards my 5,000 hr PowerPoint badge;)

 

All joking aside the Navy acquisitions path during the late 90's has some merit, they went with good enough (F-18E/F) and replaced a lot of tired iron. The AF went with best and got 187 Raptors and are now on the 2nd or 3rd mid-life update of the Viper, Mud Hen, Eagle...

 

A good question would be if the higher marginal cost of the higher performing A-6F and Super Tomcats would justify their performance advantage over the Super Bug, but that's a big counterfactual...

 

That said, the range of the A-6E would have been nice to have in A-stan.

 

I've wondered about the costs too. I know the Super Bug is no joke, but it's still a "Do everything pretty ok, but nothing spectacularly" where the higher specialization of the A-6F and Super Tomcat were extremely good at their particular tasks (obliterating ground targets at longer ranges in the A-6, and fleet defense for the Tomcat), and the Tomcat also a pretty good "jack of all trades" if need be. Maybe the "do everything ok but nothing brilliantly" saves money in the long run, but couldn't it also cost more in some areas since it's not specialized? I've always wondered if it would have cost more or less in the long run to have greater capability between the two older birds/updating the airframes for fatigue rather then upgrading the Hornet to be "just a little bit more ok" and giving up that greater capability between the two others.

 

Though I guess better weapons eventually (or maybe already) counter the Intruder's longer range, and advances in defensive weapons will (or maybe have already) eliminated the need for the far superior capability of the Tomcat for fleet defense.

Edited March 18, 2016 by OneBlueSky

[Home Fries]

All joking aside the Navy acquisitions path during the late 90's has some merit, they went with good enough (F-18E/F) and replaced a lot of tired iron. The AF went with best and got 187 Raptors and are now on the 2nd or 3rd mid-life update of the Viper, Mud Hen, Eagle...

 

Part of that is because you can afford 2 or 3 MLUs on your birds. Most AFBs are in dry climates, and you tend to deploy to the desert. Navy deploys on a carrier, so the planes are constantly exposed to corrosive salt air for 6 months at a time (not counting workups). Between the salt air and the violence of carrier operations, our airframes just don't have the same lifespan.

 

FWIW I was also in acquisitions for a spell, and I saw some jaw-dropping incompetence on the Navy side.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Home Fries

[tombeckett2285]

The thing is, with the advent of ultra precision targeting pods and weapons, even something as simple as a Hawk could be suitably modified to provide more accurate ground attacks than the original A-6 did at a much lower cost of both acquisition and operations. That's why ALL fighters now being produced (Typhoon, Rafale, F35, Su-30, Super Hornet) are multirole.

 

Remember the four dimensions of any military aircraft: Length, Wingspan, Height and Politics. The only criteria that matters in the real world is the last one ;)

 

 

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[Backy 51]

day 1 purchase for me

 

I second that motion. I think Jake Grafton will even come out of retirement to fly her. ;)

[mkellytx]

Part of that is because you can afford 2 or 3 MLUs on your birds. Most AFBs are in dry climates, and you tend to deploy to the desert. Navy deploys on a carrier, so the planes are constantly exposed to corrosive salt air for 6 months at a time (not counting workups). Between the salt air and the violence of carrier operations, our airframes just don't have the same lifespan.

 

We only afforded the MLU's because we couldn't afford their replacements. At least you kept your requirements reasonable and could afford replacing a good portion of your tac air fleet and still have money left over for a bunch of Arleigh Burke's and Virginias. Despite the super bug's perceived or real short comings they for the most part met the thresholds and did so on time and under budget, the same couldn't be said about us. We threw ours away on B-2 and F-22 and don't have a lot to show for it. Best analogy is if you guys had gone high end again after the A-12 saga and were forced to make the A-6 soldier on another 15 years.

 

Totally agree about the landings, but a surprising number of bases in the sandbox are pretty close to the gulf. We had our share of corrosion also.

 

FWIW I was also in acquisitions for a spell, and I saw some jaw-dropping incompetence on the Navy side.

 

Don't get me started...

[Home Fries]

We threw ours away on B-2 and F-22 and don't have a lot to show for it. Best analogy is if you guys had gone high end again after the A-12 saga and were forced to make the A-6 soldier on another 15 years.

Interesting take. I always figured the AF was better at acquisition than the Navy because we're always having to "make do" with stuff that should really be funded, but it's really more of an operational focus with the whole point of the Navy to be deployed.

 

Totally agree about the landings, but a surprising number of bases in the sandbox are pretty close to the gulf. We had our share of corrosion also.

Good point. I wasn't thinking about Manama, but that makes sense. I was thinking more of PSAB.

[ghostdog688]

A-6 "Intruder" by Razbam

 

My concern would've been what they did with the a-6e airframes. Given the rough life many of the planes went through (some of them started as -a's), and MLU to a 'super intruder' might actually have been very expensive and fraught with danger as those aged planes would've gained more weight and had higher stress on already worn frames.

In retrospect, the hornets weren't a bad idea; I just have concerns about their procurement and whether they did what they said on the tin. We don't have a replacement c2, e2 and using the hornet as a buddy refueller isn't something I hear about often, so the hornet really only filled in for the intruder and the tomcat. And now, CVBG's carry hornets and super hornets.

Sounds like there was a trade of one set of problems for another, but I'm just a 29-year-old Brit with no knowledge of the USN decision making process...

 

 

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Edited March 19, 2016 by ghostdog688

[Home Fries]

My concern would've been what they did with the a-6e airframes. Given the rough life many of the planes went through (some of them started as -a's), and MLU to a 'super intruder' might actually have been very expensive and fraught with danger as those aged planes would've gained more weight and had higher stress on already worn frames.

In retrospect, the hornets weren't a bad idea; I just have concerns about their procurement and whether they did what they said on the tin. We don't have a replacement c2, e2 and using the hornet as a buddy refueller isn't something I hear about often, so the hornet really only filled in for the intruder and the tomcat. And now, CVBG's carry hornets and super hornets.

Sounds like there was a trade of one set of problems for another, but I'm just a 29-year-old Brit with no knowledge of the USN decision making process...

With regards to the A-6 airframes, the SWIP (Systems/Weapons Improvement Program) program in the early 1990s replaced the old wings with composite wings as well as the full-blown systems upgrade. SWIP and the A-6F would have been a very feasible service life extension for the A-6 if the USN hadn't botched the A-12 and thew too much money down the tubes. Thing is that SWIP was introduced within a few years of retiring the A-6, so we can only think about what could have been if the A-12 + defense cuts + Tailhook didn't come together to create the perfect storm.

 

Regarding trading one set of problems for another, that's just life in the military, in aviation, and space restrictions of operating from a boat. You just manage compromises to make the best outcome.

[tombeckett2285]

And now I've gone and watched 'Flight of the Intruder' because of this thread which has made me 'quite interested' in an A-6 Module!

 

A mighty fine aircraft - still not a patch on the Bucc, but definitely a mighty fine aircraft ;)

 

 

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