How to defeat or avoid the ZU-23?

[Istari6]

I now have some 45 hours in the Mustang and I'm feeling pretty comfortable with managing the aircraft. I've worked through most of the Challenge Campaign one time and learned a great deal. I can consistently beat Red Rover, Red Rover and am close to success at Alamo. The Mustang is my first DCS aircraft, and it's been a great learning experience.

 

Before moving onto the High Stakes campaign and the small pool of user-created missions, I wanted to do a quick pass again through the Challenge Campaign missions and see if I could ace them to prove totally ready for greater challenges.

 

Then I came up against those ZU-23s again in the .50cal strafing missions, and suffered two deaths and a number of destroyed engines requiring bailouts. I'm clearly doing something wrong, but not sure how to improve my technique (and a forum search has come up empty).

 

Here's where I'm at, hoping to get some advice:

 

1. ZU-23s are easy to avoid within their envelope by simply flying around them and jinking vertically every 2-3 seconds. Just porpoising up and down, I can fly rings until they run out of ammunition. But this seems rather gamey and probably not what was intended by the scenario designers in the Challenge Campaign.

 

2. However, where I consistently get blown away is trying to line up for a gun attack within their range, whether on a ZU-23 emplacement or a nearby target (e.g. trucks). I can jink vertically on my approach and consistently avoid getting hit, but I have to line up for at least a few seconds to get guns on target and hose it down. During that settling, I get hit, particularly since these missions place the ZU-23 guns right near the trucks so time of flight for the 23mm projectiles is very short. I try to time my settling for the periods between the salvos, but this seems about 50/50 versus any single gun pit and when two are firing on offset times, I just can't seem to get a long enough window to fire effectively.

 

3. I've tried the approach of diving on the target below it and then pulling up my sights to settle on the target at the last second, but even a steady dive pointed below the target gets me hit. I need to actively be jinking (which then requires a few seconds to settle for accurate strafing).

 

4. I found a YouTube video on line that talked about making an arcing approach under continuous G and drawing the guns across the target without ever straightening out. Great idea, but in DCS I find that I have to be extremely close to get .50cals on target while pulling G and it's difficult to execute near the ground without crashing.

 

I understand that with enough practice, I'll eventually get to the point where I can have split-second timing and can settle my guns on the target and fire effectively with only a second of time, but that seems like a very high bar of pilot skill for these missions (which are only partway through the Challenge Campaign). Perhaps ZU-23 accuracy has been changed since the original missions were developed back in 2012-2013? It just seems like an enormous spike in difficulty.

 

Given the incredible accuracy of these ZU-23 crews, if I had a choice, I'd avoid doing a solo attack on a truck convoy lying just 100-200m away. I'd try to attack with a wingman to split the gun crews attention or use rockets, but I don't have a choice. The mission requirements clearly intend for the player to get in and out flying solo against two ZU-23 batteries. Any tips on how an average pilot could effectively deal with ZU-23s without requiring the kinds of split-second skills that only an elite few ever developed historically?

 

Chris

Edited January 14, 2017 by Istari6

[MadDog-IC]

Then I came up against those ZU-23s again in the .50cal strafing missions, and suffered two deaths and a number of destroyed engines requiring bailouts. I'm clearly doing something wrong, but not sure how to improve my technique (and a forum search has come up empty).

 

Here's where I'm at, hoping to get some advice:

 

1. ZU-23s are easy to avoid within their envelope by simply flying around them and jinking vertically every 2-3 seconds.

 

Chris

 

Played recently with one of the P-51 missions using this technique and survived quite well.

 

I would fly above the zu-23's max firing range altitude of 2.5km (might be higher due to ground elevation) so as to not get targeted in the first place, I would then fly slightly left or right of the target until it was aligned along the side of my cockpit between the the wing root and windscreen support, roll onto my back and dive almost vertical onto the Zu-23, when the target is in the top half of your windscreen / Hud, reverse roll 180 degrees line up the shot and finally start strafing and pulling out of dive, this should be like a surprise attack and not give the Zu-23 time to see you and aim / fire. You will have to be vary careful of final dive speed not exceeding the mustangs rating of 500mph or you will lose your wings on the pull out.

 

Good luck with it.

 

Regards, Ian.

[Zimmerdylan]

If I remember correctly (It's been a long while). You can just run them out of ammo. I have done this time and time again. Their aim may be good but out maneuvering their rounds is pretty easy when you are just circling around them drawing their fire. After that....they're useless. I have beat many of those mission just by sheer patience. You got to be careful though. Sometimes they won't shoot at you when you are teasing them. In that case, I start my run and as I'm coming in I look for the muzzle flash. At that point I lower the nose of the AC and bank out of the run.

It may not be the hero's way, but I know that it works.

[Zilch]

Trying to beat these with only the provided rockets or 500 lb bombs is a bitch.

 

My first attempt, I added gun ammo to use on anything I missed with the warheads. I'm currently doing another play through for YouTube without messing with the miz files, once I get a good run I'll post the video with Tacview.

[Istari6]

Thanks all for the replies. Sounds like you're all having the same experience I'm having: the Zu-23s are quite lethal when approached conventionally. MadDog, I'll give your technique a try and see if it can help me deal with these d**d batteries.

 

Zimmerdylan - I thought the same thing, that I could just run them out of ammo by circling them and running them out of ammo, but then I tried one of the few P-51 User Missions last night (Operation Hangover) and confronted 4 ZU-23 batteries defending the train of AFVs. Yet after 15 min of flying around them, two of those batteries never ran out of ammo despite probably doing 12-15 circles around them. I don't know if the mission designer had set them as unlimited ammo, or whether they had some enhanced resupply being so near the railway, but the reality is that long after the ZU-23s of training missions would have run out ammo, these guys were still firing.

 

At that point, I felt this mission (admittedly from 2012) was ridiculous. 4 x ZU-23 batteries with two of them having unlimited ammo... fine, consider your train protected from attack by a single P-51 :<. It's a shame there are so few missions or campaigns for the P-51 on the User Files section, and many of these are back from 2012-2013 when the DCS P-51D first appeared. It feels silly to try to attack a train covered by such a nest of AAA just waiting for me. Perhaps something changed in the AAA accuracy or other dynamics between when the missions were created and now, but it just feels like a waste of time.

 

What I'm taking from the discussion to date is that ZU-23s are really lethal and there aren't general methods for dealing with them, although there are some advanced maneuvers (like MadDog) that might work to hit the target while avoiding their superb accuracy.

 

Chris

[HotTom]

If it makes you feel any better, keep in mind that the ZU-23 and its even nastier brother the ZSU-23 were developed in the 1950s and fielded in the 1960s. Nothing historically accurate about facing them in a P-51.

[Zilch]

A couple of videos from my Challenge Campaign play through that may help people struggling with this. Technically, you can just go into the Mission Planner and add whatever weapons that would be helpful, but for the purposes of this video series I'm doing everything with the stock settings...which is why it's taking forever to complete it. :)

 

None of these scenarios are realistic, and the mission design is freaking brutal. My interpretation of this campaign, however, is not to simulate a P-51 engagement but to give you some artificial challenges to overcome despite the overwhelming odds against you. With that in mind, the merciless mission design is easier to stomach after failing 10 times in a row against those damn AAA guns.

 

The more "tactical" videos follow, relevant to OP's issue:

 

Mission 13 - Strafe Moving Targets - I talk quite a bit about your very problem in this video.

 

Mission 15 - Rockets with More Difficulty - This one is a bitch! I started diving steeply, which helped accuracy and keeps you fast enough to avoid most of those ZU-23's. Just completed this today...damn, what a mess.