Rocket runs tactics?

[Stratos]

Ok, can someone tell me how to properly use the S-8 rockets please? I mean regarding tactics, range, height, speed, etc. It seems I cannot hit anything with a weapon before the basterds got me, so any help will be apreciatted.

 

Thanks!

[lmp]

Try launching at a distance of 2km and a speed of 200m in level flight. Do not overfly the target. Immediately after firing turn away from the enemy. Use short bursts.

 

If your target can reliably hit you at that distance, you probably shouldn't be engaging it with rockets.

[John C Flett]

Strangely I just used this link a few days ago on a different topic.

 

http://www.simhq.com/_air14/air_508b.html

 

Lots of factors but dive angle makes a huge difference to dispersion.

 

I've not flown the Kamov in a while but I'm learning the A10-C at the moment and I'm finding steeper has really improved my gun and rocket accuracy.

[lmp]

Diving attacks will of course be more accurate but I personally find level (or almost level) attacks easier to execute. It's also what the Mi-8 manual recommends. The Ka-50 does have a much better sight however and that will make diving attacks easier to perform, so... try both I guess.

[Stratos]

Very interesting article, but flying a low altitude ingress which altitude should I reach before the dive? (asume no big SAMS in the area)

[foxtheancient]

I personally found very little use for unguided rockets and usually don't even equip them to my missions as they are 90% of time only dead weight. I found cannon more useful in almost every situation as it can take unarmored and low armored targets (for hight armored targets you have missiles) with greater precision on greater range thus don't expose you to enemy fire. Ka50 is made from glass. It is not armored like Mi24 so it is not designed to fight close to enemy units and absorb enemy fire (not even hand rifles). With rockets you must basically approach to 1 km if you actually want to hit something. They say you should fire rockets from min. 1 and max. of 2 km. But at 2 km you are happy if you hit big building. Precision is low due to balistics and disperse is significant. I felt fine shooting unguided rockets even from 500 meters. Those rockets are useful in scenarios with multiple unarmed targets close to each other (where dispersion is actually useful) or to attack fortified structures like bunkers or bridges (cannon is no use here and missiles are needed several and they are usually too precious to such a waste). For me works best speed ~100 kph with nose down ~5° and collective set to maintain straight flight (don't descend or climb). Fly and wait as targeting cursor is closing to your target. Fire slightly before they meet as fire recall will raise your nose. Use medium burst settings. GL :)

[Frederf]

The 80mm HEAT (KOM) rockets have little use. Anything worth hitting with a HEAT rocket has weapons which will discourage firing from close enough to have much chance of hitting. Close misses are misses. The exception is perhaps the self-propelled artillery which is armored enough to take quite a few precious cannon but doesn't defend itself well enough to require inaccurate standoff. They can even be fired to good effect in pairs if technique is good.

 

HE (OFP2) rockets are more useful as they are compatible with being launched 2km+ away. A very important control when lining up the pippers is the collective. Trying to align and keep aligned the pippers for rocket attack using cyclic alone will be frustrating. As speed increases in the dive use the collective to combat the nose-up tendency. Be as smooth as possible from a good distance. It is not good enough to have the pipper pass through each other at high speed. The pippers must be stably aligned for 1-2 seconds through the attack or accuracy will be poor. Don't be stingy with rockets, using 1/2 or all rockets per attack.

 

Smoke and illumination can be very useful if their capabilities are warranted. If there's a possibility of needing either of these I often choose them over a damaging type.

[BitMaster]

I like rockets to take out Road Blocks once they have been cleared from troops and AAA etc.

 

Saves a few Vikhrs this way.

[Slazi]

Infantry. Rockets are perfect for attacking closely packed infantry, especially when dug in or in light building. However, dcs does a really bad job here and doesnt really model infantry tactics, supression, injuries, or fragmentation damage. Maybe one day.

[Amarok_73]

The only tactic I use for rockets is "get between them with speed and fury, and KILL'EM ALL, motherfathers!!!" And surprisingly, usually I end-up with only some minor damage... ;-)

[Fri13]

You can train to use the rockets, but currently in DCS they are totally broken (unusable).

Why?

 

1) There are no fragmentation modeling what so ever.

2) There is no damage modeling in the ground vehicles what so ever.

3) AI will cheat as it can see you immediately and engage you at max range based its AI level

4) AI is like a highly trained sniper (or use to be, should now be far worse in aiming.)

 

 

The AI just is nearly impossible to be surprised as when you do a correct pop-up against unaware target, it will turn its weapons at you faster than you can require the target and fire at it, as it has already shot at you the deadly shots that very likely takes out your Skhval or something worse like hydraulics and second engine.

 

It would be just a nice if the rockets would be usable like they should be, and same time many things would change radically as AI would behave more human manner under high stress or surprises.

[ShuRugal]

You can train to use the rockets, but currently in DCS they are totally broken (unusable).

Why?

 

1) There are no fragmentation modeling what so ever.

2) There is no damage modeling in the ground vehicles what so ever.

3) AI will cheat as it can see you immediately and engage you at max range based its AI level

4) AI is like a highly trained sniper (or use to be, should now be far worse in aiming.)

 

This, basically.

 

There are some exceptions, however. The S-13 is powerful enough to kill tanks and APCs from 3-4 km with practice, and I have successfully used it to kill Strela and Igla MANPADS at 5-6 km. In the wild-weasle role, S-13's give you an excellent rate of success for your initial strike: I like to use them to suppress a known AAA/SAM position at the start of an engagement (before the AI is 'alerted' to you). Since the AI becomes alerted the moment you fire, using rockets on your first pass lets you break contact sooner than using a Vikhr does.

 

S-8 KOM are, as mentioned, worthless. OFP-2 are useful for killing platoons of infantry (use medium burst setting, 2-3km range, 200-300m AGL) when you are providing CAS against an enemy lacking any significant AAA threats.

 

The best use for rockets on the KA-50, though, is smoke markers. Carry a pair of S-8 TSM pods with you when flying online, and you can let your buddies know where your leftover targets are once your vikhrs run out. Launch from 6-8km and then talk your supporting element onto the target from wherever they land.

[msalama]

The rockets as modelled now leave a lot to be desired, true, but they're still far from useless against soft targets. I can routinely destroy stuff with the S-5s even, so IMHO they're still passable. Well not that they couldn't be BETTER still ;)

[sLYFa]

Ka50 is made from glass. It is not armored like Mi24 so it is not designed to fight close to enemy units and absorb enemy fire (not even hand rifles).

 

Where did you get that from? The Ka-50 is heavily armoured for a helicopter. Its rotorblades are designed to sustain 30mm hits (and they did in Chechnya once). The cockpit is heavily armoured too (look at the armor plates left and right) and can withstand 12.6mm rounds (not exactly a hand rifle is it?). The Ka-50 can definetly take a punch, even more than the Mi-24, which is basically an Mi-8 with pylons and guns.

 

Back on topic, I used to practice a lot in the Mi-8. Although a different helicopter, the weapon ( s-8 ) is the same so it should be comparable. 1500m distance at 200kph in level flight worked best for me in terms of precision vs. safety. With the Ka-50 targeting systems, you could even get good results at 2000m. Anyway, its really important to have the chopper stable and trimmed well before firing range. After firing, break hard and make erratic altitude changes (but keep the speed up). That will make it very hard for AAA to hit you. And dont forget to pop flares to avoid IR SAMs

 

Oh and make sure your rocket selector on the back panel is set up correctly, otherwise the impact point calculation will be off

Edited October 8, 2016 by sLYFa

[Weta43]

Ka50 is made from glass. It is not armored like Mi24 so it is not designed to fight close to enemy units and absorb enemy fire (not even hand rifles).

My experience in the sim is it will soak up a reasonable amount of small arms fire, but if you think about it, a significant portion of the Mi-8 or Mi-24 is there to carry passengers or cargo and so is just skin over empty space - of course small arms and heavy machine guns are going to have little effect if they just pass through empty space.

The Ka-50 doesn't have those voids, and so is more densely packed with damageable items. If you hit it, you're more likely to hit something significant.

It is however armoured:

Extensive all-round armour installed in the cockpit protects the pilot against 12.7 mm armour-piercing bullets and 23 mm projectile fragments. The rotor blades are rated to withstand several hits of ground-based automatic weapons

[Ilyushka00]

Infantry. Rockets are perfect for attacking closely packed infantry, especially when dug in or in light building. However, dcs does a really bad job here and doesnt really model infantry tactics, supression, injuries, or fragmentation damage. Maybe one day.

 

+1 I mostly use them against infantry, within 2km range and at low altitude so I don't have to dive at a steep angle but rather spray those rockets around with the pedals :D In MP however I almost always equip TsM rockets.

Edited October 10, 2016 by Ilyushka00

[Cik]

approach low at 150 km/h, fire at 1.2-2.2~ km on medium burst setting, once done attacking (as fast as possible) lower collective, push nose down, jam right pedal and get into abeam as fast as possible; if no incoming rounds, do a gentle turn out, if there are rounds incoming then use your collective / nose authority to dodge until you are at the threat's max range, wait for it's last volley and then turn out and run.

 

repeat until target destroyed. if you want your rockets to do anything you should install the warhead mod by the way, it makes rockets (for every platform) worth taking.

 

anyway, the trick to rockets is to avoid coming in near VMAX as you are likely to kill yourself if you have to yaw. you can fire from a hover if you like but i think the recoil is far worse then.

 

burst settings are the best feature of the aircraft, by the way.

[Schmidtfire]

The rockets are fun but its hard to be practical with them in the KA-50. I usually go for the cannon instead. However, in low intensity scenarios rockets are quite fun to mess around with, pelting areas in high speed passes. Real life Ka-50 and Ka-52's usually carry S-8 rockets, guided missiles seems rather uncommon (judging from flight and combat videos).

[MaxDamage]

Rockets are must have against unclear targets like infantry and fire nests.

 

There is a mission in Deployment (6th i think) where you must escort a mi8 to a downed pilot's radio signal to pick him up. As soon as you arrive the ambush happens and you must quickly blanket fire it with s8KOM which works perfect in this situation.

 

IRL ka50 only launched vikhr 3 times during 1 month of combat (hit 3/3) because you dont have targets worth spending an atgm really. Such a target would be a sam/aaa site or a tank or a gang leader.

 

I would love to have more useful situations for s8 in the game just like there are plenty IRL. Infantry covered in trees or between buildings or uncovered in the open = perfect. It woks like a pocket high precision MLRS

Edited November 12, 2016 by MaxDamage

[metzger]

Yes, the problem is in dcs there are no missions which are more siutable to ka50 and unguided weapons. As max damage says, in deployment there are such missions, 2nd one you escort a convoy and there are troops in the forest, unguided rockets works hreat there too. Shooting sams is for sead equiped aircraft. Ka50 is more for attacking convoys, enemy camps etc.. with less aaa/sam and more infantry and unarmed targets.

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk