Question: Why entering QTY for JDAMs?

[Rongor]

I have to depress the pickle button for each JDAM anyway, so what's the purpose?

I would've expected the QTY being dropped by a single pickle.

[Svend_Dellepude]

It does here. Be sure to hold the pickle for a second or so.

[Tippis]

JDAMs (and GPS/INS guided weapons in general) need a valid firing solution to drop. If somehow you have set to release 4 bombs, but 3 of them don't have valid setups, only one will drop. Depending on how (and when) you feed them that setup information, you can have them all drop in one ripple, each guiding towards its own specific target, or you need to go through a whole song-and-dance with each of them to get them to drop.

 

This means that you can't solely think of QTY in the regular sense of “how many bombs am I going to drop”, but also as “how many bombs am I going to program” (or vice versa). It has different functions at different times during the setup and delivery process.

 

So if you have QTY 4 -> setup weapons -> QTY 2 -> PIckle, you'll release two. Conversely, if you go QTY 2 -> setup -> QTY 4 -> Pickle, you should still only drop 2 (or just none at all) because your setup is incomplete. This process is slightly complicated by how you can assign TOO and PP targets, and have different stations set up in different ways which means they have very different launch parameters and will react (or not) to the pickle command differently so trouble-shooting exactly why nothing drops can require a bit of menu spelunking.

[Rongor]

3 hours ago, Svend_Dellepude said:

It does here. Be sure to hold the pickle for a second or so.

Thanks man, tried it again and keeping the pickle depressed for some seconds made them come loose

[rob10]

14 minutes ago, Rongor said:

Thanks man, tried it again and keeping the pickle depressed for some seconds made them come loose

And to clarify that further, you need to hold the pickle button until ALL the bombs in the series release.  If you're releasing 2 bombs as a pair you don't need long, but if you're releasing a quantity of 6 dumb bombs but releasing them as singles with a bigger spacing between you'll have to hold it down for quite a while longer (and until the last comes off).