OT: Archer&Aphid turning SAM

[D-Scythe]

Another, more "Afghan" scenario, has the bandits REAL close, merged with the troops in eye-to-eye contact. It is to close for a 500 lbs weapon, and the real option is the gun.

 

I think in such circumstances the A-10, whichis moving slower, will have a better awareness of the situation. Making a strafing pass in a fast jet is a very stressful situation, narrowing your field of view to tunnel vision since you really have to take care how you fly to point the gun (or rockets).

 

If then some roque fighter fires a manpad, you won't be seeing it coming.

 

The slow moving, very well controlled and manoevrable A-10 will have more time to look into the situation and maybe even see the igla guy on the rooftop.

 

So, for Very Close CAS, I think the A-10 might have an advantage in "SA".

 

The A-10 pilot may have better situational awareness in such a situation, but the advantage is *minimal* at best. If you're strafing a target, you're eyes are NOT scanning for other targets/threats - your eyes are gonna be on you gun piper and the target. Your priority shouldn't be *reacting* to threats - it should be hitting the target without any friendly casualties and then getting out of there ASAP.

 

Also, the old adage "speed is life" is crucial here. Iglas and Stingers are easily more manueverable than a Hog at corner speed, thus the A-10's low speed agility is meaningless since the enemy missiles can beat your best turn. The options are to beat the missile kinematically, or decoy it - and the A-10 in most situations isn't going to beat ANYTHING kinematically.

 

A strafing A-10 may put more rounds on target than an F-16, but the Viper is much harder to shoot down.

[nscode]

Did you pull that 40% out of a rather large body crevice, or do you actually have something to substantiate that statement?

 

I was gonna say half, but it sounded too many :D

[Force_Feedback]

Nice trolling prevention attempt, I like that.

 

So, why do you think the A-10 pilot would see more? Yes, in Iraq, Mongolia, Great Sahara desert, both polar regions and Greenland (if the penguins start to produce WMDs), where there are lots of open spaces and little vegitation, perhaps, but not in the other regions, where you have enough green to hide entire devisions. And 'Igla/Stinger guys' don't stand on rooftops like in lomac (really hate when people start thinking lockon represents real life tactics, avionics and unit placement realistically). manpad operators are either standing near a tree line, with spotters all around, and can even fire from inside buildings, given the rooms ar big enough, for not to popping his/her eardrums. Same goes for mobile short range SAMs, do you really think they will just stand out in the open, waiting the whole day for something to come by while reading the sunday paper? No, they will be placed stategically around the object, but not close to it, and will have some form of communication, so, if there is, lets say and A-10 coming from the west, and it's 30 min away, that the commanders could send a couple of MANPAD squads to assist the small mobile SAM. This is in a situation where the defending armed forces don't have medium and long ranged SAMs. With those it gets a tad more complicated, placement wise, as such systems tend to be less flexible in deployment than their "all in one" counterparts, but still, 5 min to do all the checks, establish communications, extend some radars masts(the pole mounted ones take under an hour to deploy, so not in those 5 min :P). Offcourse there are also all kind of jamming devices, jamming almost everything in the visible and non visible spectrum, and dedicated spotters all around the country provided there is not enough radar coverage.

So that black dot you see in lomac, may also appear as a black dot in real life, so that black dot could also be a rock, a tree trunk, a farmer, or an animal. And although portable SAMs have worse seekers than dedicated A-A IR missiles, they are advanced enough to give a one shot one kill situation, even if flares are used. And, if you see a launch, you're already too late, as such things only take seconds to hit you, and not give you half a minute to react like S-125 at Rmax.

[nscode]

Without opening another thread, I would like to point out this interesting article on R-60 overhaul: http://www.ecdlcentar.com/baza/ecdl_informacije/vazni_clanci/y20/6_remont_i_konverzija_vodjenih_raketa.pdf

 

 

It also has pictures of the ground launcher... during launch :)

[jurinko]

If I remember well, there were about 2,000 Stigers delivered to mujs and only small part was actually used in combat. Before, there were SA-? from Afghan stocks used as well. Updated tactics, flares and more PGM on the Soviet side countered that. To say few hundreds manpads defeated 150,000 Soviet Army is like AK-47 drove off US from Nam.

 

I still think that against hi-tech enemy, the best solution are shoulder-fired AA and AT weapons, a lot of them plus enough folks ready to fight to death. No JSTARS can see the rocket tube, in the contrary to vehicles which should be immediately JSOWed, JDAMed or HELLfired. Think about Hezbollah. There is always a good chance that perspective of heavy casualties on armor/helicopters can prevent the enemy to attack, or in a conflict they can outlast the enemy from the same reason, at least till they will not run out of rockets.

[Pilotasso]

This reminds me of the chaparral wich we also use. Its a piss poor system. We conducted live firings the last summer and all missiles, well... missed. They are utterly useless right now, but we still have them in active duty. They wont hit squat but low level afterburning aircraft. Thats how bad low range IR batteries are. By the time you get an IR lock the target is already on the way to get out of range.

[GGTharos]

The AIM-9E is a pretty old weapon. You need to replace those things with stinger batteries, or a more advanced sidewinder if you /really/ want an oomph out of your IR SAM (Stingers have a very small warhead and no prox fuze)

[nscode]

Btw, AFAIK the ground launcher is now used only for testing of the actual R-60KM.