Attack Movers with ATFLIR and AGM-65F

[Habu_69]

What is best way to attack moving targets with the AGM-65F and ATFLIR? Or is the Litening pod better for this purpose right now?

[toutenglisse]

I found both pods struggle to lock on moving targets (at least in morning light conditions), and while gbu12 cue stays on moving target when locked, MavF locking point tends to quickly stay behind target to a static point on ground. And I've failed also to be able to slew MavF as usual... I can only cage/uncage, slaving to pod (or radar GMT). New procedures to use ?

[Recluse]

Have a look at this thread:

 

 

One thing  you should also consider is using the GMT for the initial lock

 

For AGM-65F, it seems to work (for me) just fine with GMT only since the range is sufficient to be inside Radar Gimbal limits. For Laser weapons where you need to get closer, you have to hand off to the FLIR so it becomes the active sensor with it's larger GIMBAL limits.

 

In my very limited experience, it seems the ATFLIR does a better job than the LItening at getting Point (AUTO) tracks.

 

With either pod you need to slightly LEAD the target when in POINT/AUTO track modes.  GMT Radar works much better and Faster, and it gets the FLIR on target if you DO want to switch sensors.

 

[Habu_69]

Seems that the AGM-65F does not auto-step to next missile after releasing one. Need to test further.

[maxTRX]

5 minutes ago, Habu_69 said:

Seems that the AGM-65F does not auto-step to next missile after releasing one. Need to test further.

It did, whenever I used it.

[Recluse]

It definitely does.  Steps and video page stays up so you can prosecute another target.  As long as you have multiple Mavericks of the same type. It won't auto switch from an F to an E for example.

[Vanguard]

It's crazy the pros and cons of each airframe. I tried the PG Instant action mission titled Convoy Hunter... need to lock one moving target and then bomb 2 targets... 45 minutes of f***ing around with the tpod, couldn't lock a target. Opened the mission in ME and swapped F-18 for A-10C, took out both convoys (all 20+ units) in 4 minutes and didn't need to use my mouse/VR controller every 5 seconds to click some MFD buttons or weapons designate. Man it's awesome for some things, but for moving targets... a simple feat in 2021... F-18... nope. A-10 is so OP, it will continue to track while masked through a forest, even if the vehicle changes directions or stops. It has 6th sense *facepalm*

Edited April 22, 2021 by Vanguard

[Recluse]

Use the GMT Radar, Luke! 

[Vanguard]

@Recluse Oh? Am I missing something? There's a string of 8 or so vehicles in the convoy, I used GMT to slew the FLIR to the right place, but, does GMT have the fidelity to pick out a single vehicle out of the pack? The whole convoy looks like a single contact on the GMT screen.

[Harker]

@Recluse Oh? Am I missing something? There's a string of 8 or so vehicles in the convoy, I used GMT to slew the FLIR to the right place, but, does GMT have the fidelity to pick out a single vehicle out of the pack? The whole convoy looks like a single contact on the GMT screen.

You can use EXP2 or EXP3 to break out the bricks. Whether you can FTT the one you want is another story, because the radar will still lock on the strongest local return, but you can easily switch TDC priority to the TPOD and use that to refine the designation.

[Recluse]

When you designate the convoy on the GMT, and you load up the FLIR, you should see it slaved to and tracking ONE of the vehicles which you can then prosecute with AGM-65F. Gets more complicated with Laser weapons as you need to HANDOFF to the FLIR, which is where the issues come in.  But you should easily be able to attack a vehicle directly from GMT lock.

[Vanguard]

Yep, tried it, it "magically" locks onto the first truck, which is certainly not the vehicle you want to fire on. The convoy is two trucks, followed my an SR, and further down the line some launchers, the idea being, use 1 of your 2 mavs to make out the SR or the 2 launchers. I just tried it again, made the contrast so black and green a two year old could lock onto it, big small, zoomed in so the vehicle occupied the entire screen, 1 pixel in size, whatever, no dice, it would not lock on. The same pod sitting on an A-10 in point mode grabs every telephone pole, car, blade of grass, truck, whatever, pretty much locks on to everything but what you want it to, the 18, couldn't get it to lock on to the Burj Khalifa... seriously, try the mission, it's a joke.

[Recluse]

OK. The trick is to transfer the SOI from RADAR to FLIR once the RADAR has you on the movers. YES it is a PITA, but it can be done relatively smoothly with manipulation of SCS and SLEW

 

Here's a quick TRK I just recorded...not from that mission.  Did you mean DESERT CONVOYS? I couldn't find CONVOY HUNTER I will try that mission and see if I can get a TRK/Video.

 

In this TRK, I transferred the SOI from RADAR to FLIR and switched targets in the Convoy by slewing the FLIR out, going to PTRK and capturing another vehicle. Once the FLIR is SOI, you can repeat as necessary.

 

I took a quick look at DESERT CONVOYS, and it is true you don't have the luxury of a lot of time to mess with this.

 

OOPS... I re-watched, and the FLIR snapped back to the initial target vehicle instead of capturing a new one.  Have to mess with it some more..

 

 

GMT_FLIR_AGM65F.trk

Edited April 22, 2021 by Recluse

[maxTRX]

2 hours ago, Recluse said:

OK. The trick is to transfer the SOI from RADAR to FLIR once the RADAR has you on the movers. YES it is a PITA, but it can be done relatively smoothly with manipulation of SCS and SLEW

 

Here's a quick TRK I just recorded...not from that mission.  Did you mean DESERT CONVOYS? I couldn't find CONVOY HUNTER I will try that mission and see if I can get a TRK/Video.

 

In this TRK, I transferred the SOI from RADAR to FLIR and switched targets in the Convoy by slewing the FLIR out, going to PTRK and capturing another vehicle. Once the FLIR is SOI, you can repeat as necessary.

 

I took a quick look at DESERT CONVOYS, and it is true you don't have the luxury of a lot of time to mess with this.

 

OOPS... I re-watched, and the FLIR snapped back to the initial target vehicle instead of capturing a new one.  Have to mess with it some more..

 

 

GMT_FLIR_AGM65F.trk 2.12 MB · 2 downloads

 

 

I'm assuming you're using ATFLIR. When you designate a moving a target with GMT, select the FLIR on the same DDI (right), zoom in, when you get to around 13nm press undesignate and immediately designate (with TDC) anywhere around your movers. You can stay in INR or switch to SCENE and follow the movers by slewing the reticle to keep them in sight. Zoom in or out if you have to. (if you keep switching between MavF on left DDI and FLIR on the right, the INR diamond has a tendency to drift. It's a bug. In that case you might want to switch to SCENE which is stable. If you have LGBs and you just stay on the FLIR, the INR reticle works great)

Now, when you get to 11nm you can try to lock the movers in AUTO (point track). There is enough 'contrast' to keep the lock on your mover until around 8nm when it 'really grabs' the target. That's the way it works currently from my experience. If you're using laser ordinance and have to lase all targets yourself, make sure to designate either the next target or a point in the vicinity of other targets. If you were shooting at a moving column, after the first vehicle blows up, the others scram in all directions and stop whether they are damaged or not, so you won't be able to pick'em up on GMT scope. Having your next target locked with FLIR makes it easy to re-attack. Extend a little, turn around, LTD/R on and point at the new target. Adjust if you have to.

Here's a vid of using 2 LGBs on 2 moving tanks. I used 'trig' lasing since I like to over-lase, hehe. Well, in the situation shown in this clip, the first tank makes a sharp left immediately after I released my first LGB so, if I didn't start lasing early enough the bomb probably would have not been able to make the turn. It was released on a different vector and by the time the Auto-lasing kicked in, would have been late, from that altitude.

https://youtu.be/TCEdpMkULvA

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by Gripes323

[Vanguard]

Hi All,

 

No I wasn't using ATFLIR, just the standard loadout it gives you... ok then... I opened it up in ME, put myself broadside to the convoy (yes it's Desert Convoy), put on active pause and tried numerous attempts to point track. Granted the cursor was a little low on the first few, I adjusted the contrast, zoomed and tried 3 or 4 more times. I recorded it, enjoy:

 

Desert Convoy Clip

 

Please let me know what the hell is wrong with it or me... 

 

Edit:Spelling

Edited April 22, 2021 by Vanguard

[maxTRX]

9 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Hi All,

 

No I wasn't using ATFLIR, just the standard loadout it gives you... ok then... I opened it up in ME, put myself broadside to the convoy (yes it's Desert Convoy), put on active pause and tried numerous attempts to point track. Granted the cursor was a little low of the first few, I adjusted the contrast, zoomed and tried 3 or 4 more times. I recorded it, enjoy:

 

Desert Convoy Clip

 

Please let me know what the hell is wrong with it or me... 

 

 

 

I don't know. I haven't used the Litening pod in 2.7 yet. Possibly something changed. In 2.6, it was a little harder to handoff from GMT to FLIR. In case of a single vehicle there was no need to. .With multiple vehicles, the FLIR was necessary to select a specific target in a column. Except, undesignating the GMT track caused the FLIR to go to 'snowplow'. There were some tricks you could do to avoid that but it was a pain. I've only flown missions made by myself so far. 

I'm gonna load up the Litening pod just to see if there are any changes.

If you're only using the pod to acquire the movers as you did in your vid, you should have been able to lock them in PTRK from less then 8nm. I have no idea why it didn't work.

Well, I'll fire it up in a few.

[Vanguard]

Appreciate you taking a look and confirming I didn't miss anything and from what you saw, and it should have worked. Perhaps it's a new bug. I did in fact use GMT to slew the TGP, then TDC depress on the TGP to avoid it going back to snowplow. There are quite a few scenarios that cause that to happen, and is also quite annoying. I wanted to simply slew TGP to WP2 using WPDSG then goto WP1 and hit WPT for nav which turns out to also be a major PITA. Either undesignate which causes snowplow or select WP1 and TGP comes along for the ride, which I disagree it should. I should have to redesignate WP1 if I want to TGP to come for the ride, but it snowplows. Whatevs, I digress.

Back to GMT to TGP handoff discussion, it honestly does seem pretty magic and is also a bug IMHO. Regardless of contrast or how many vehicles are packed together, weather conditions, the TGP will snap to the first vehicle in the convoy and lock it like a hawk. It's BS. 

[maxTRX]

20 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Appreciate you taking a look and confirming I didn't miss anything and from what you saw, and it should have worked. Perhaps it's a new bug. I did in fact use GMT to slew the TGP, then TDC depress on the TGP to avoid it going back to snowplow. There are quite a few scenarios that cause that to happen, and is also quite annoying. I wanted to simply slew TGP to WP2 using WPDSG then goto WP1 and hit WPT for nav which turns out to also be a major PITA. Either undesignate which causes snowplow or select WP1 and TGP comes along for the ride, which I disagree it should. I should have to redesignate WP1 if I want to TGP to come for the ride, but it snowplows. Whatevs, I digress.

Back to GMT to TGP handoff discussion, it honestly does seem pretty magic and is also a bug IMHO. Regardless of contrast or how many vehicles are packed together, weather conditions, the TGP will snap to the first vehicle in the convoy and lock it like a hawk. It's BS. 

 

Hold on here, after trying the Litening now, all I can say is 'son of a...'    This thing worked like a charm!  Forget undesignating from GMT track for the FLIR to take over. All you have to do is move the FLIR reticle wherever you want and press TDC.  Now, you gonna have to move the reticle ahead of the vehicles until you get within 8nm, then go PTRK. I was able to lock 4 vehicles in a column of 6, one by one and hand it off to MavF and low and behold ... MavF's performed like charm also. 

I'm definitely not writing off the Litening pod for my missions from now on.  ED did some work on them for sure!

 

I did record it if you want to see it, will post later.  If I were you I'd try your own mission, made in the current build of DCS. 

[Bunny Clark]

7 hours ago, Vanguard said:

It's crazy the pros and cons of each airframe. 

One thing to keep in mind is that, indeed, the MavF is something of an afterthought for the Hornet. And the Navy sees it primarily as an anti-ship missile. The idea was to primarily use the MavE in the CAS role. 

 

Compare the Maverick implementation in the Hornet to the Viper as well. There's a massive difference. 

[maxTRX]

@Vanguard Here's the event. As I said previously, this was the first time I used this pod since the 2.7 update so I was learning 'on the fly'. I'll try this 'Desert Convoy' mission later just to see if there's something there that makes the pod unusable.

 

https://youtu.be/S6yEUnI_Yr4

 

[Vanguard]

Jesus, it's like you TPOD couldn't fail if it tried, whilst mine doesn't have a hope in hell of locking. This mission is new as of 2.7 I believe. @Bunny ClarkIt's actually a MavE in the mission, but that's moot since I can't even lock the target. I fear I may have hijacked the thread a little bit, but if I understand, we are both facing the same issue which is getting the initial PTRK lock through the TPOD on the target.

 

@Gripes323 I'll go try another mission to see if that changes anything, and yes, please check out Desert Convoy and see if there's something fishy going on there. The only difference I could see between the two clips was altitude, I'm at ~3500ft and you're at ~25k. 

[Recluse]

[Aside from TPOD issues] Problem I have with Desert Convoy now that I tried it is all the Sand and Dust being kicked up by the convoy makes it hard to ID the vehicles. Got a good shot off at what I thought was the SA-11 Command Vehicle but it was a ZSU-23..  I think I had the WRONG convoy as the briefing says the main convoy is protected by 2 ZSU, and the SAM convoy is ahead of them... 

[Vanguard]

Well I don't know what to say. I tried once more, I locked on to every vehicle 10 times in a row, and even when I wasn't close, it snapped to the closest vehicle within about 10ft. I just restarted the mission. 12k feet, 3k feet, 1.5nm, 8nm... no joy, can not lock a vehicle!? Anyone on a discord? I'll share my screen 

[Bearfoot]

For Mav-F, even if the TGP (whether the LITENING or ATFLIR) has an outstanding solid point track or auto, that the latest target position is not automatically handed off to the Maverick: switching to MAV DDI or caging/uncaging simply slews the Maverick head to where the point/auto track was acquired. If this is close enough to where the vehicle is currently, then you are in luck. If not, SOL. As far as I can tell, there's no formal hand-off from the TGP to IR Maverick head as such: the Maverick head just looks at the last designated position, which is many times NOT where the point track is looking. This means that it is impossible to have a workflow where you, for e.g., acquire a point track and then wait a bit (for whatever reason) before launching the IR Mav.

 

What you need to do is (on the TGP page), after acquiring a point/auto track, depress the TDC twice. Once to get the offset cursor (which will be superimposed on the point tracked vehicle), and a second time to designate the current offset cursor position as the target. THEN immediately switch to the Mav format page to launch (cage/uncage if needed to update the seeker head position) . If you find that the IR Mav has not locked on the vehicle or is on some spot behind the vehicle, then switch back to the TGP page, TDC depress once to redesignate the current offset cross (which should still be on the vehicle) as the target point and switch back the IRMAV DDI to get the head to look there.

 

TL;DR -- use the offset cross to designate the current vehicle position to the Maverick instead of just relying on the point track.

[maxTRX]

1 hour ago, Bearfoot said:

For Mav-F, even if the TGP (whether the LITENING or ATFLIR) has an outstanding solid point track or auto, that the latest target position is not automatically handed off to the Maverick: switching to MAV DDI or caging/uncaging simply slews the Maverick head to where the point/auto track was acquired. If this is close enough to where the vehicle is currently, then you are in luck. If not, SOL. As far as I can tell, there's no formal hand-off from the TGP to IR Maverick head as such: the Maverick head just looks at the last designated position, which is many times NOT where the point track is looking. This means that it is impossible to have a workflow where you, for e.g., acquire a point track and then wait a bit (for whatever reason) before launching the IR Mav.

 

What you need to do is (on the TGP page), after acquiring a point/auto track, depress the TDC twice. Once to get the offset cursor (which will be superimposed on the point tracked vehicle), and a second time to designate the current offset cursor position as the target. THEN immediately switch to the Mav format page to launch (cage/uncage if needed to update the seeker head position) . If you find that the IR Mav has not locked on the vehicle or is on some spot behind the vehicle, then switch back to the TGP page, TDC depress once to redesignate the current offset cross (which should still be on the vehicle) as the target point and switch back the IRMAV DDI to get the head to look there.

 

TL;DR -- use the offset cross to designate the current vehicle position to the Maverick instead of just relying on the point track.

 

I don't know if you watched the vid I posted above, attacking 4 movers with IrMavs. The Mavs were getting target handoff from the Litening pod. You can clearly see the Mavs tracking the movers. The first 2 Mavs hit 2 vehicles on the road. The rest of the vehicles ran off the road considerable distance when the following Mavs were still in the air. 2 more shacks dead on.