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IRL effectiveness of BLU-108 in wooded areas


NoJoy

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With DCS 2.5 the trees became physical -so this brought me to the following question:

 

How effective are the BLU-108 skeets from the CBUs IRL if armor is hiding in wooden areas.

 

I mean IRL a T-90 wouldn't be parked in the wide open.

For sure you need to know it's right there under those trees. Let's just assume we know exactly its position. The BLUs have IR and Laser seekers afaik.

 

Could they spot heavy armor and hit it in this condition?

Anyone any knowledge about this?

Brrrrrrrrrrrt

I'd rather call in a Strike Eagle...

I7 6700K, MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB G.Skill Ripjaw V 3200, Inno3D GTX 1080, Samsung 970 Evo, Thrustmaster 1.6000M, TrackIr 5

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Can't speak with any authority on this, but I assume the rough answer would be "not very." As a system, it only works if the target is visiable. There might be some IR transmission through tree tops, but I can't imagine there would be much.

Remember the system (like so many others) was designed to destroy a literal horde of tanks swarming into Eastern Europe, where they would be in the open for pretty much of the time.

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IRL effectiveness of BLU-108 in wooded areas

 

one thing i have learned:

 

you try to avoid attacking through a forrest with your tank batallion.

A tank is best for its firepower and its mobility. You lose both in a forrest.

The preferred area for tanks is a wide open field (atleast 2-3km view range) where you see your land based oppenents from far out so that you can use your superior range to defeat the enemy.

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Could be artillery rather than a tank :)

At least in DCS they work fine between trees.

 

Anyways, we gonna carpet bomb it then.

Brrrrrrrrrrrt

I'd rather call in a Strike Eagle...

I7 6700K, MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB G.Skill Ripjaw V 3200, Inno3D GTX 1080, Samsung 970 Evo, Thrustmaster 1.6000M, TrackIr 5

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Can blu-108 hit a tank if its example hiding in a forest..

Well truth is i would say its less effective since tall tress and branches will make allot of the bomblets hit trees or get stuck and comfuse the sensors.

 

 

Also bomblets are "touch sensitive", with other words if they fall though branches then they properbly will explode before they hit the tank.

 

 

( The bomblets and sensor get activated xx meters above ground ).

So i would say its a no go ( but yes you can try and hope for the best )

 

 

I was an Pioner/combat engineer when i was a soldier. .And i have removed mines both by hand and via a mine flail.. Regarding the usage of clusterbomb ammonition used by the US in kosovo/bosnia then i can say that everytime they drop such a bomb then many of the bomblets ( small bombs inside ) do not explode and just end up laying on the ground.. These bomblets are touch censitive and lay behind long after the war where they hurt both animals and humans. By the way one way you can see if there are cluster bombs in an area are if you find some small thin metal pieces laying on the ground ( used to seperate the bomblets in the bomb ). Or if animals are dead in the area.

 

- In Afhanistan the soviets painted some so they have mickeymouse and other cartoon images on them so children would pick them up.

Today these can still be found.

Especially in kosovo landmines such as the ( ishocky puch shaped mine ) sometimes shift possition when it rain in the mountains and are washed away and land other places in the country. some explode some do not.

 

You can either run a mineflail though and area and destroy bomblets that way, or you can do it manualy by placing explosives next to them and detonate. (OR ) in special weather conditions and terrain you can with a 12.7 sniper rifle with a thermal scope see mines in the ground and shoot them since the mines temperature and the dirt temperature is not the same.

 

 

"funny story" i actual walked streight though a mine field 2 times without knowing... Both where bomblet from CBU's.

One time i first notised when i exit the mine field and see the warning labels on the trees... The other time we wanted to walk on top of a mountain, and a farmer stop us and said dont go any further my cows sometimes die.. when we look arround we coudl see parts from bomblets in the bushes while we where walking on the animal trail..

 

To stop this "off topic" story, i like to say mines now a days are smart mines ( some of them ).. example they can act both as mines with build in sensors that send a signal to HQ saying "hey" i hear a tank... and then mine fields can be turned on/off via a remote... or the mines can them self talk together and detonate to inflict as much damage as possible..

Some mines run on battery where you can adjust them to function for the next example 180days and then turn them self off.

That way they are not a risk after the war.

And also acroding to rules of war, any mine field need to be marked and saved and shared with friends/foes after the war so they more easy can be found and removed... same goes with usage of CBU they have to write down where its used.

 

 

CBU's are if i remember correctly only in the inventory of USA and RUSSIA, while pretty much all other countrys have signed a treaty to not use them, becourse of the above issue of UXO's ( unexploded ordenance ) that hurt the civilians long after the war.

 

PS...: When you see in a movie that someone step on a mine and he just stand there without it exploding.... well lets put it this way its properbly not gona happen in real life..

- fun little story.. In a mine field somewhere an EOD where removing mines... At some point he walked from a-b and somehow step on a "bouncing mine" that jump out of the ground and hit him in the balls.. He survived becourse it hit him in the balls, and reason is that the jumping mine first detonate once a wire is treatched and activate the explosives. ( the bouncing mine "jump" when presure is released ( or explode after x seconds no matter what if i remember corectly ). The idea is once activate it jump and detonate in example 1,5m height to send out scrap in all directions injurying more soldiers than if it just where burried in the ground and only rip off the a foot.


Edited by delevero
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BLU-108 is just the SFW dispenser. Maybe you are thinking of Mk118 or BLU-97 instead? This happens above the trees so the only concern is the function of the pucks during their flight. The pucks are supposed to detonate if they fall to ~50' and haven't yet found a target which most trees are not taller than this.

 

 

SWF is non-contact in primary function. The dual-sensor is probably looking for a hard vehicle-like edge and the other is looking for a change in IR signature. If memory is correct the original only had one sensor but the second was added for better positive detection.

 

 

Anyway the wobbling skeet's point under the sensor is moving very fast. The decision to detonate and fire the EFP is happening with maybe a few milliseconds timing at most.

 

 

Presumably if a tank is within a tree area but in an opening so its edges are not hidden, SFW should work fine. But partial LOS cover, not so fine.

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My understanding (from Raytheon's industrial advertisements) is that the skeets can ID specific vehicles, the idea being they won't attack friendly vehicle i.e. an HMMWV.

Wouldn't that suggest that they need a pretty clear picture of the target?

 

 

If you mean

at around 4 minutes, I don't believe SFW can figure out what kind of vehicle it is. Those are just labels added to the video tape for the presentation. If SFW could tell apart different but very similar vehicles that would feature far more prominently.

 

 

It says the IR sensor detects the vehicle, probably as practically a yes/no with limited field of view. The laser "profiles" the vehicle in the sense it's measuring range and so it's looking for ___/---\____ one dimensional range bumps which are on order size a target.

 

 

The warhead is wobbling at a few Hz so my guess is that on the first pass it detects the bump, remembers the edge-to-edge size, and the next pass waits until half that size has passed since the edge. Maybe it can fire first pass but this prevents measuring the total target width because by the time the laser rangefinder shows the far edge it's too late. The warhead doesn't have any control over its path or direction of firing. It wobbles very quickly and can only choose its moment.

 

 

What you can see if that the crosshair flashes are usually 2 aim points per vehicle but on larger vehicles it got more than one shot at it (3 C-130, 4 train). The trace of the aimpoint during the wobble is on order the size of a tracked vehicle.

 

 

shows the trace well.
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