Be able to drop multiple weapon types on the one advanced action

[Stonehouse]

From recent experience it seems that DCS will not allow an AI to drop a mix of weapons on the one advanced waypoint action. EG an AI F18 with different bomb types loaded tasked to a ground attack with one pass and all bombs to be dropped will only drop one of the bomb types. That is you will only see one bomb type dropped but not both. It requires additional attacks to drop the remainder of the bombs.

 

 

So for a wish list item, it would be good to be able to have greater control over what is dropped and allow a mix of weapon types and perhaps fusing on a single advanced waypoint action.

 

 

An example of why - it was fairly common for bombers in WW2 to carry a mixed load of incendiaries and bombs and even bombs with different fusing in the one load out and drop them all at once over the target. I believe I also recall reading of Vietnam missions where the aircraft dropped napalm and bombs at the same time on a CAS target or area. I'm not sure if it still holds as true in current times which is perhaps why DCS is the way it is. Probably now it would only happen if you wanted to suppress an area or attack a dispersed target (perhaps a column of vehicles) rather than attacking a single target although I imagine large aircraft like B52s or B1s etc would be still more likely to drop a mixed load out in one attack for the same reason as WW2 - you want to inflict different types of damage on an area rather than an individual single target (eg base of some type).

 

Most often in real life aircraft do not make multiple passes over the same target area as it increases the risk of being shot down and therefore having to do so in DCS just to deliver different weapon types seems to me to be wrong except where it is technically not possible in real life because the aircraft systems prevent it.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Stonehouse

[David OC]

 

An example of why - it was fairly common for bombers in WW2 to carry a mixed load of incendiaries and bombs and even bombs with different fusing in the one load out and drop them all at once over the target.

 

Most often in real life aircraft do not make multiple passes over the same target area as it increases the risk of being shot down and therefore having to do so in DCS just to deliver different weapon types seems to me to be wrong except where it is technically not possible in real life because the aircraft systems prevent it.

 

It's for accuracy, these days we don't just go and level 5 city blocks to try and hit a one ammo dump. :D and still miss.:cry:

 

What your talking about is carpet bombing and the reason was because the accuracy was crap and a waste of ammo too.

 

The Viggen era is more designed to do the one pass haul ass, still I'm quite sure you can only have the one ammo type to drop all at once. It comes down to the computers knowing the ballistics of said dumb ordnance and very accurately delivering that type onto a target CCIP etc. The next type is of course smart ordnance or dumb bomb with a kit, the computer will still tell you when to drop to get it in the ball park, then the laser/GPS and bomb with kit will do the rest for better accuracy.

 

I would also reevaluate your tactics here perhaps? Depending on the setting your after? If you have a carrier group you know how accurate a tomahawk is right or perhaps try a Viggen fully loaded.

Edited August 21, 2018 by David OC

[Stonehouse]

Yep definitely agree for modern era although even there I can think of odd times when you might want to drop a mix (air deployed mines for instance with a mix of AT and AP mines). However for earlier era's (including as recent as Vietnam and things like the B52 raids) carpet bombing was the way things got done so it is appropriate for those times. Tend to think it is of quite low priority but just wanted it out there so perhaps it might happen. I'm not holding my breath however.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Stonehouse

[mkellytx]

Yep definitely agree for modern era although even there I can think of odd times when you might want to drop a mix (air deployed mines for instance with a mix of AT and AP mines). However for earlier era's (including as recent as Vietnam and things like the B52 raids) carpet bombing was the way things got done so it is appropriate for those times. Tend to think it is of quite low priority but just wanted it out there so perhaps it might happen. I'm not holding my breath however.

 

IIRC the BUFF dropped mixed loads of M117 and Mk82's in Vietnam. More recently, it acquired the ability to drop multiple types of J-series munitions on the same pass. I personally conducted multiple missions where we dropped multiple JDAM's (GBU-31), WCMD (CBU-105) and dumb Mk82's in a single pass. Nice live video in the control room.

[mytai01]

Jettison weapons!

[Hyperion35]

As far as I can remember, the player-flyable aircraft are usually only capable of dropping one type of bomb per pass as well. If you load out an F/A-18 with Mk82s and Mk84s, you can only select one type at a time. Often this is related to the CCRP/CCIP calculations (or in the case of the Mirage, the type of bomb determines which method is used). It might be different in something like the F-5 since all bombing is manual, I haven't used that in A-G missions much. But for most of these aircraft, dropping a single bo,b type on each pass seems to be normal behavior.