CBU-87 and CBU-103 Performance Explanation

[NineLine]

1 hour ago, hawk4me said:

So in the document it lists JSOW A's working better than CBU-87 and 103's but they don't hit crap either. Is this change going to impact the JSOW A as well since it's essentially tossing out the same bomblets that the mk-20's and stuff do? I read through the document and it's great stuff although the HOF, Spin, and azimuth cannot be changed in the F18 anyways so I'm guessing this mostly applies to the F16 right now. 

The fixes on the sub-munitions should have an affect there, but the pattern work was all about the CBU-87/103. 

 

That said, I would need to see a track of your issues with the JSOW to know for sure, sometimes its the target you are aiming at as well, again, for anything with any armor, you really need a direct hit with a sub-munition, and that can be tricky when they are flung all about.

[Harlikwin]

2 hours ago, hawk4me said:

So in the document it lists JSOW A's working better than CBU-87 and 103's but they don't hit crap either. Is this change going to impact the JSOW A as well since it's essentially tossing out the same bomblets that the mk-20's and stuff do? I read through the document and it's great stuff although the HOF, Spin, and azimuth cannot be changed in the F18 anyways so I'm guessing this mostly applies to the F16 right now. 

 

I mean its all down to how tight the pattern is whether something gets hit by a submunition or not. And then whether that submunition can get through the armor. So lets say you have a hawk site or SA-2 or whatever, perfect use case for a wider pattern, those are lightly armored things and should get damaged or destroyed by lighter submunitions or frag. Then you have a SA6 site, well turns out thats armored, and you better use stuff wtih a tight pattern to hope to get a hit, mainly on the track radar.

[Enduro14]

Well no clue if it was affected but i just launched 2xjsow A at a Scud Launcher site,  Took them all out very nicely.  From the Viper, have not checked the Hornet but would assume the same?

 

[NineLine]

23 minutes ago, Enduro14 said:

Well no clue if it was affected but i just launched 2xjsow A at a Scud Launcher site,  Took them all out very nicely.  From the Viper, have not checked the Hornet but would assume the same?

 

Yeah I have not seen any major issues with JSOW, in fact how well the JSOW worked is what gave us reason to go back to look at the 87/103s

[P.Carrasco =Keep Flying=]

Yes! Good work 4 the team!, ok,ok go to the next fix! thanks 4 everything!

[PetRock]

Looking forward to seeing this kind of re-evaluation across all cluster weapons - they need it badly.

[Mojeaux]

On 9/21/2021 at 4:10 PM, BonerCat said:

This

It's good to see reworks for under performing weapon systems, for sure, but while you're at it, CBU-99/Mk20 Rockeye (as well as Bk-90, and probably few others) have seen low performance damage wise for some time now
Would definitely be great to see you guys taking an interest in those weapons as well!

 

Nicely put "BonerCat"  (No I don't wanna know1)  hehe

[hawk4me]

20 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

 

I mean its all down to how tight the pattern is whether something gets hit by a submunition or not. And then whether that submunition can get through the armor. So lets say you have a hawk site or SA-2 or whatever, perfect use case for a wider pattern, those are lightly armored things and should get damaged or destroyed by lighter submunitions or frag. Then you have a SA6 site, well turns out thats armored, and you better use stuff wtih a tight pattern to hope to get a hit, mainly on the track radar.

I understand it's down to how tight you can get the pattern. However we cannot configure the pattern in JSOW's in any aircraft. The always detonate at 2000ft HOF then you got wind and everything else blowing them around. I have stacked 20 trucks literally 10ft apart dropped 4 JSOW's on the middle of the group and killed 2 sometime's you get 4-5 but there should be 0 chance that everything is not damaged/destroyed with 4 JSOW's at 2000ft HOF ripping through that convoy line. A lot of it I guess does depend on the fragmentation. A lot of discussion here is how good the JSOW A is but frankly from what I can see it just doesn't stand up as a good enough weapon to deploy from any airframe.

 

Please don't take this as complaining or anything it's just something that needs a bit more work and I totally get that. It's great news what we are hearing from the team and always look forward to improvement's. I am merely discussing thing's I am seeing so they are out there in the great flood of input from the community.

Edited September 24, 2021 by hawk4me

[Ignition]

5 hours ago, hawk4me said:

...A lot of discussion here is how good the JSOW A is but frankly from what I can see it just doesn't stand up as a good enough weapon to deploy from any airframe.

 

 

I agree, its really unpredictable.

 

Good news about the 87/103, I never used them in the A-10 since they were useless and even a gbu-12 was more effective with the same risk.

[randomTOTEN]

Did DCS World always calculate the impact of every single of the 202 BLU-97/B? Or is that a coming addition to the simulation?

I remember for years having trouble with the CBU-87, but then within the last year rediscovering the weapon (I specifically remember killing 2 BMP's with a single canister after experimenting with the settings).

[Frederf]

Yes all 202. They just aren't shown graphically. If you park a whole field of T-72s and dump a CBU-87 on them at 1/64x time speed you'll see some get damaged by the invisible BLU-97s. Problem is that one CEM takes like 2/13ths of the HP bar so you need to hit with 7 of the suckers to kill a tank. And that's hit, not get close. Plus the hitbox is a little smaller than the tank visually. The front fender doesn't count.

[Enduro14]

Cbu 87 are not meant to engage nor destroy a main battle tank....

[Vanguard]

On 9/24/2021 at 4:31 AM, Harlikwin said:

 

I mean its all down to how tight the pattern is whether something gets hit by a submunition or not. And then whether that submunition can get through the armor. So lets say you have a hawk site or SA-2 or whatever, perfect use case for a wider pattern, those are lightly armored things and should get damaged or destroyed by lighter submunitions or frag. Then you have a SA6 site, well turns out thats armored, and you better use stuff wtih a tight pattern to hope to get a hit, mainly on the track radar.

 

Not at all to be honest. This has been brought up 1000s of times here, but the real issue IMHO is how DCS models damage in general and specifically ground/naval units. A CBU-87/103/JSOW-A IRL would shred the hell out of the radar systems, pop tires, damage circuit boards, etc and render the unit useless. DCS only models damage to the armor. A JSOW-A's bomblets would do well to disable a SAM site IRL.. in DCS, each unit just has a number of hit points, not subsystems, and those hit points are based on explosive damage vs armor.

 

A shaped charge warhead on say a hellfire, is the same deal... It might put a hole in the side of the tank and blow up inside. The critical systems... including the er, crew, would be done for, but the "tank" might be largely still in-tact. IRL no one cares if the tank is melted or a smoldering mess, just that it's out of the battle. I've seen a number of KIA tanks, and from the outside, you wouldn't know it was damaged.

 

Wikipedia has a good pic:

 

From a HEAT round. Pretty sure the driver is having a bad day, but from the other side of the vehicle, you wouldn't know it got hit. In DCS, this vehicle would be 95% alive and well.

 

When engaging a tank, the idea shouldn't be to put so many GAU-8 rounds on it to the point its own mother wouldn't recognize it... a round or two to the engine block should suffice. Without power, she ain't gonna do much.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Vanguard

[draconus]

@Vanguard Did you know ED has plans for detailed ground and naval units DM?

And besides current health points there are tresholds that make some units slower to react, less mobile, unable to shoot etc. before the kill.

[Vanguard]

Yes, I'm aware they have many plans... until my great grandchildren witness some of the eventual outcomes, it works as I described. I heard that some units "slow down", I don't believe that applies to radar units i.e. SAMs like a BUK or S-300 from my JSOW-A type example which is what I was really on about.

[Enduro14]

The current damage model is very fluid I agree.  I have witnessed damaged radar units stop emitting due to damage thus the site becomes non lethal, same with main battle tanks disabled thus non lethal and no threat to ground forces. Glad the 87 is up to standard now as far as the weapon modeling goes.  Damage model will come and its one of the most anticipated things in my book.  JSOW-A and any weapon for that matter isn't a guaranteed  kill or disable of tgt. 

[Frederf]

16 hours ago, Enduro14 said:

Cbu 87 are not meant to engage nor destroy a main battle tank....

Yes it is. Why would it have like 2" armor penetration otherwise?

[Enduro14]

4 minutes ago, Frederf said:

Yes it is. Why would it have like 2" armor penetration otherwise?

Not main Battle tank Armor…. Light Apc maybe…..

[Mars Exulte]

2 hours ago, Enduro14 said:

Not main Battle tank Armor…. Light Apc maybe…..

  The roof and turret tops are all universally thin, even on tanks. They're heavily armored on the front, so so on the sides, not at all on the rear and top. Otherwise the 70 ton Abrams would weigh 100+ tons.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Mars Exulte

[NineLine]

18 hours ago, Vanguard said:

until my great grandchildren witness some of the eventual outcomes

It's easy to communicate with you, when you are not being insulting, thanks.

[NineLine]

8 hours ago, Frederf said:

Yes it is. Why would it have like 2" armor penetration otherwise?

Even people in know know that fly and have dropped these say the same things, they are not doing much more than light damage to tanks. Don't expect the 87/103 to be magic wunder weapons now, they will still need to be used to their strengths, and understand, on a spread out target, and only dropping one, you could miss if not dropped well. 

 

With the 87, you will probably want to drop 2, with the 103, you might get away with 1 as the wind wont be as much of an issue.

 

I have a mission I tested with some BMPs, a couple T-55s, troops and transports in a outpost like layout in about 200 square feet, dropping with the right settings, and getting a good drop wipes out almost everything but the T-55s, but they sustain some damage.

[Captain Orso]

One might have to take this with a grain of salt, because the values for armor I've found for the T-55 are from Wikipedia, but...

 

Turret roof: 30 mm

Hull roof: 16 - 33 mm

 

An inch is 25.4 mm. So if the submunition actually can penetrate 2" of armor, and is firing at a fairly perpendicular angle, and hitting the flat roof of turret or hull, it seems that it ought to penetrate at least some portion of the time, and then it would depend on where it pernitrate, and what is behind the point of penetration. Maybe an ammo locker (BOOM), maybe a tool box (not so much boom).

Edited September 26, 2021 by Captain Orso

[bmbpdk]

On 9/26/2021 at 5:41 AM, NineLine said:

Even people in know know that fly and have dropped these say the same things, they are not doing much more than light damage to tanks. Don't expect the 87/103 to be magic wunder weapons now, they will still need to be used to their strengths, and understand, on a spread out target, and only dropping one, you could miss if not dropped well. 

 

With the 87, you will probably want to drop 2, with the 103, you might get away with 1 as the wind wont be as much of an issue.

 

I have a mission I tested with some BMPs, a couple T-55s, troops and transports in a outpost like layout in about 200 square feet, dropping with the right settings, and getting a good drop wipes out almost everything but the T-55s, but they sustain some damage.

 

On 9/26/2021 at 7:14 PM, Captain Orso said:

One might have to take this with a grain of salt, because the values for armor I've found for the T-55 are from Wikipedia, but...

 

Turret roof: 30 mm

Hull roof: 16 - 33 mm

 

An inch is 25.4 mm. So if the submunition actually can penetrate 2" of armor, and is firing at a fairly perpendicular angle, and hitting the flat roof of turret or hull, it seems that it ought to penetrate at least some portion of the time, and then it would depend on where it pernitrate, and what is behind the point of penetration. Maybe an ammo locker (BOOM), maybe a tool box (not so much boom).

 

As a former MECHINF/PNINF/PzGrn in the Royal Danish Army, i worked closely together with our Leopard 2 crews.
And they said that even 40mm frag grenades, 12,7mm, 60mm mortar and other such weapons  can "easily", relatively speaking, take a MBT out of action.
All the sensors and antennas are vulnerable to fragments, glass may not be penetrated but a shattered glass disables everything trying to look through that glass.
Even a simple handgrenade breaking the pin that holds the track together can disable a tank, and a tank with only one track is dead, completely dead.
And dont forget that a tank has MANY blind spots and the crew is busy in the important directions; distract them and you can run up and throw a satchel on the engines or a grenades on the tracks, a few seconds later and you may have a VERY expensive monument.
They also said that simple barbed wire (NATO wire in Danish service) can tear of the track, which makes the tank dead as a cockroach under a boot.
Tanks are VERY vulnerable in the modern battlefield, tanks have many soft spots.
So saying that a EFP able to penetrate 25mm of RHA is a waste against a modern tank is a sentence out of ignorance.

In conclusion: DCS has a very lacking damage model for ground units and forget everything about numbers vs numbers; numbers mean nothing in real life and when the music starts on the battlefield.
Numbers only have a value to those whose lifes dont depend on them.

I say the above from real life experience from tour in Iraq, 2½ years in the Army, 5 years in the Royal Danish Army Home Guard and form working closely with other service personel.
If the discussion is pure gameplay and how it is in DCS, then i know that its not realistic.

[NineLine]

Thanks, we have said all that in this thread and the document. Damage model is an important thing that we need to do, but not a simple task either. Real Life is very complex. 

[Roosterfeet]

Did the CBU update get pushed back to October? It's not mentioned in today's patch notes.

 

Thanks

Edited September 29, 2021 by Roosterfeet