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VRP & VIP


Lace

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During Wag's latest video demonstrating the use of VRP and VIP, in both cases he is attacking pre-planned targets at a known location.  In this instance, why would you not just position the steerpoint directly on the target during planning and do a standard 30/30 pop up based on distance to run?

What is the advantage of the VRP/VIP attack?  Is it a remnant of pre-GPS attacks when the IP would actually be used to update the position by using an easily recognisable feature? (is this why it needs a TMS up on passing the point?)

What am I missing here?

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If you play on a server like GAW and you want your sensors to look at a target all you need to do is. enter the distance and bearing to the target from the steerpoint and boom no need to enter coordinates.
also AFAIK you TMS up to get steering to the target 

"Visual Initial Point Sighting Option. VIP allows the pilot to define a target location based on bearing, distance, and elevation from a known steerpoint or IP that can be visually acquired. The pilot then overflies the IP and updates the SPI for a more accurate delivery. The HUD azimuth steering line and TD box are displayed relative to the target steerpoint diamond and the HSI provides position and steering information to the IP. The pilot may slew the steerpoint diamond directly over the IP sighting point to refine its definition at any time. After the pilot overflies the IP and designates (TMS-forward), all steering is to the target. CCRP delivery procedures after system update are identical to direct sighting." 

have fun because its very use full and its already in the sim but be careful because if you turn off vip-to-tgt and mess with the sighting point rotary it will crash the game


Edited by janitha2
changed sighting point to sighting option
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If you look at the Korean or Norwegian F-16 employment manual online, you will see a huge section on pop up planning and execution.

Sure, you could put a Steerpoint on a target and sort of guess how much to turn, how high to pop, when to pull down, etc.... But it would seem that as late as the early 2000s, the bread and butter of F-16 surface attack involved being able to execute these complex pop attacks from low level with dumb bombs. And it looks like mission planning those attacks was a big part of the core competencies of the community.

The VIP/VRP gives you the exact points to fly to match the exact parameters of your pre-planned attack. Maybe you do this to avoid threats, or to avoid the fragmentation from your wingman's bombs by deconflicting with time, altitude, or geography in the pop.

Think about flying at 500 feet at 500+ knots in a tactical formation and then attacking a defended target. You don't want to be reaching up to the ICP to cycle Steerpoints and checking to see if the sensors slaved to the target. VIP/VRP is a tool to have all that complex attack stuff tied to one STPT.

Now.... How much has anyone used this stuff in the last 15-20 years? I don't know. Flying in circles over the desert doing unopposed CAS with JDAM and GBU-39 probably hasn't done much for these skills related to conducting CAS in a major combat operation. Neat thing about DCS, is we can see how useful the tools are in any scenario we want.

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This feature does come from an earlier era, when there was no GPS and visual confirmation of the IP was vital for accurate delivery. Also, attacks were with LGBs and dumb bombs often from low altitude, so pop-up was the name of the game. The primary use for these features are preplanned pop-up attacks. Together with CCIP (or DTOS, if you want to loft the bombs), VIP and VRP basically take all the hard work out of flying one of those.

Depending on what you're doing, these techniques are still useful today. Obviously, bombing mud huts with GPS-guided bombs doesn't leave much room to play around with these, but for that, you might well put a trained monkey in the cockpit. Against a defended target in complex terrain, with dumb CBUs, often a pop-up will be necessary to put the bombs on target without getting shot to pieces.

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^^^ all of this is great, but it still doesn't really answer the use case.  I know it is nothing to do with medium level CAS wheels,  I do have some tactical application appreciation, but I can do low-level pop up attacks and toss CBU-87/97 with CCRP without VIP/VRP against a known location target by careful positioning of steerpoints in mission planning.

Is it simply to reduce the number of steerpoints in a flight plan?  or to allow multiple targets to be attacked from the same IP?

Like all of you, I want the Viper to be as feature complete as it can be, but I also like to know the 'why' as much as the 'how' with each feature added.

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IRL, for a very long time you couldn't place steerpoints with that kind of accuracy. If you don't have GPS, then punching the steerpoint in before the flight will not give you a very accurate fix. INS will drift, and coordinates themselves may have error, because the map itself may not be 100% accurate (even satellite images may have coordinate errors, especially pre-GPS). In the field, recon teams didn't have fancy GPS units that gave them coordinates. What they had was a compass and a handheld rangefinder. With that, they can get the bearing to the target from their location, and they can get the range. In VIP and VRP, you enter the data in the exact same "azimuth+range" format that you get them from this method, minimizing reliance on maps, and you don't have to worry about INS drift, either. 

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My understanding is that the relative IP-to-target distance and bearing could be accurately determined even in the 80s from aerial reconaissance photography. The precise targeting did not come from a foolproof, super accurate on-board GPS but from semi-reliable INS guidance. If you fly low-level under terrain masking conditions, you simply cannot visually identify the target first - you identify the known IP in the approach path, fine-adjust your steerpoint, mark it by TMS-up, and the guidance computer will then tell you exactly where the actual target is. You could use a bridge in one valley as a visual IP, and based on these coordinates pop up for an attack on a warehouse in an adjacent valley. So for the VIP case I guess this is a very useful tool. It's just looks unnecessary in the DCS F-16 as here the INS/GPS guidance is always perfect, as far as I can see.

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38 minutes ago, SeaBass80 said:

My understanding is that the relative IP-to-target distance and bearing could be accurately determined even in the 80s from aerial reconaissance photography. The precise targeting did not come from a foolproof, super accurate on-board GPS but from semi-reliable INS guidance. If you fly low-level under terrain masking conditions, you simply cannot visually identify the target first - you identify the known IP in the approach path, fine-adjust your steerpoint, mark it by TMS-up, and the guidance computer will then tell you exactly where the actual target is. You could use a bridge in one valley as a visual IP, and based on these coordinates pop up for an attack on a warehouse in an adjacent valley. So for the VIP case I guess this is a very useful tool. It's just looks unnecessary in the DCS F-16 as here the INS/GPS guidance is always perfect, as far as I can see.

This is a good example of the feature. What most tend to forget in the discussion of the VRP/VIP is the fact that they both are primarily NON-VISUAL bombing modes in lesser accurate co-ordinate scenarios when direct visual contact with one point (RP/TGT) can't be established either because of night, IMC conditions, camouflage etc. whereas the other point (TGT/IP) has better probability to be acquired because of distinct features or has more accurate co-ordinates available.

If this is not the case and you are attacking in an ideal world of accurate co-ordinates and lovely weather, target steerpoint can also be used as a primary option. In this case the only benefit of VRP/VIP will offer is to avoid changing steer points in a time compressed environment and additional cues available in HUD/HMCS before starting the actual attack sequence for better SA. (As explained by TheBigTatanka above in his Para 3)
 

11 hours ago, TheBigTatanka said:

If you look at the Korean or Norwegian F-16 employment manual online, you will see a huge section on pop up planning and execution.

Sure, you could put a Steerpoint on a target and sort of guess how much to turn, how high to pop, when to pull down, etc.... But it would seem that as late as the early 2000s, the bread and butter of F-16 surface attack involved being able to execute these complex pop attacks from low level with dumb bombs. And it looks like mission planning those attacks was a big part of the core competencies of the community.

The VIP/VRP gives you the exact points to fly to match the exact parameters of your pre-planned attack. Maybe you do this to avoid threats, or to avoid the fragmentation from your wingman's bombs by deconflicting with time, altitude, or geography in the pop.

Think about flying at 500 feet at 500+ knots in a tactical formation and then attacking a defended target. You don't want to be reaching up to the ICP to cycle Steerpoints and checking to see if the sensors slaved to the target. VIP/VRP is a tool to have all that complex attack stuff tied to one STPT.

Now.... How much has anyone used this stuff in the last 15-20 years? I don't know. Flying in circles over the desert doing unopposed CAS with JDAM and GBU-39 probably hasn't done much for these skills related to conducting CAS in a major combat operation. Neat thing about DCS, is we can see how useful the tools are in any scenario we want.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

 

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13 hours ago, Gattling said:

In this case the only benefit of VRP/VIP will offer is to avoid changing steer points in a time compressed environment and additional cues available in HUD/HMCS before starting the actual attack sequence for better SA. (As explained by TheBigTatanka above in his Para 3)

But, and please correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not yet completely familiar with the Viper, can't one set the DED to automatically switch to next steerpoint when arriving at one, so the pilot isn't bothered by that?

Also, if INS drift makes using steerpoints for the attack phase not accurate, wouldn't VIP and VRP suffer from that same drift (as you set positions in reference to a steerpoint)

 

Again, I haven't touched the Viper much yet, so I probably don't know exactly what I'm talking about, but when I saw this new feature video from Wags, my first thought was exactly what @Lace says in his OP.

Is this actually used much irl?

I can only imagine VIP/VRP really being useful if a situation occurs where something happens that wasn't pre-planned. Like troops behind enemy lines spotting a high value target that needs to be taken out asap.

But in pre-planned attacks, wouldn't it just be easier to do all this with steerpoints? 

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Below is an example from a third-party software. As you can see, unlike steerpoints, the VRP, PUP, OA1 and OA2 will be visible throughout the entire maneuver in addition to the actual target and guide you through the very specific attack profile which has been pre-calculated with specific speeds, altitudes, exposure times, tracking times, G-forces, release height, headings, etc. that are adapted to suit your loadout and the type of threat you're attacking. There are other applications for this but this is one example.

 

atk-prof.png

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The -34 manual for the F-16 has some details on this in the "Preplanned weapon delivery modes" section. It recognizes the need to update the bombing geometry prior to the attack run. The standard methods for doing so are (1) direct sighting of target by GM radar (2) offset sighting using GM radar or (3) visual sighting using VIP/VRP.

(1) does not require explanation. (2) would mean that the flightplan includes an IP steerpoint which has clear radar returns (e.g. a bridge in the target approach). When this is the selected steerpoint and the radar is slewed to the actual ground return, the system will remember the offset from the steerpoint. This is the functionality that everyone wonders about what it is for. Normally, we don't care and always "cursor zero / CZ" before doing anything. Actually it is quite smart. If the next steerpoint after the IP is the target, the offset found by the GM radar slewing will directly carry over to the target position and the system will point you to the correct position as the INS drift during the long approach to the IP does not matter any more.

The early F-16 was designed to operate without targeting pod, and the CCRP bombing modes provide no mechanism to "visually" set the offset between where the system thinks the IP should be and what the real world says. This is where the "visual" IP mode comes in: it allows you to visually identify the IP, slew the HUD marker over it and then do the attack run. This would be method (3)

In the modern F-16 with the targeting pod, you can also use that to "visually" do the offset correction. You would just have an IP steerpoint and a target steerpoint. Overflying the IP steerpoint it can be identified and marked with the targeting pod... this also creates the correct offset correction for the following target steerpoint. Maybe it is harder though to use the targeting steerpoint in nap-of-the-earth terrain masking conditions, so the VIP/VRP modes are still preferable there.

Just my two cents on how I *think* this tool was meant to be used.

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7 hours ago, sirrah said:

But, and please correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not yet completely familiar with the Viper, can't one set the DED to automatically switch to next steerpoint when arriving at one, so the pilot isn't bothered by that?

Also, if INS drift makes using steerpoints for the attack phase not accurate, wouldn't VIP and VRP suffer from that same drift (as you set positions in reference to a steerpoint)

1. You can do that but the feature isn't very well optimized for the A-G attack profiles. The proximity and step up logic will cause steer points to change at occasion where you won't wish it to do that. Probably, suitable only for ML or HL navigation profiles only.
2. Yes, the initial positioning will be affected by that but then the slewing option is available for the same purpose. Acquire the point visually, slew the existing symbols to the exact location and TMS Fwd. All inherent errors of INS/GPS are now corrected for all points in concern.
 

 

7 hours ago, sirrah said:

I can only imagine VIP/VRP really being useful if a situation occurs where something happens that wasn't pre-planned. Like troops behind enemy lines spotting a high value target that needs to be taken out asap.

But in pre-planned attacks, wouldn't it just be easier to do all this with steerpoints? 

1. Like I said in my previous post, they are PRIMARILY Non-Visual Bombing Modes and caters for any scenarios in which direct visual contact isn't assured n all cases and situation may develop into any other variation. Any other utilization would be extrapolation and further uses of the tool.
2. Yes, an ideal attack will always have a target as a steer point with exact co-ordinates and elevation data and a lovely weather/outside factors to execute the planned profile.

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Can VIP/VRP info be loaded into the data cartridge irl, or is this always entered manually by the pilot?

System specs:

 

i7-8700K @stock speed - GTX 1080TI @ stock speed - AsRock Extreme4 Z370 - 32GB DDR4 @3GHz- 500GB SSD - 2TB nvme - 650W PSU

HP Reverb G1 v2 - Saitek Pro pedals - TM Warthog HOTAS - TM F/A-18 Grip - TM Cougar HOTAS (NN-Dan mod) & (throttle standalone mod) - VIRPIL VPC Rotor TCS Plus with ALPHA-L grip - Pointctrl & aux banks <-- must have for VR users!! - Andre's SimShaker Jetpad - Fully adjustable DIY playseat - VA+VAICOM

 

~ That nuke might not have been the best of ideas, Sir... the enemy is furious ~ GUMMBAH

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On 4/19/2022 at 6:59 PM, Gattling said:

1. You can do that but the feature isn't very well optimized for the A-G attack profiles. The proximity and step up logic will cause steer points to change at occasion where you won't wish it to do that. Probably, suitable only for ML or HL navigation profiles only.

In fact, in the real Viper, the feature is disabled in A-G mastermode for precisely this reason. It'd step steerpoints when running in if that wasn't the case. If I can find an unclassified manual confirming that, I'll report it to ED as a bug.

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On 4/18/2022 at 4:17 AM, Lace said:

^^^ all of this is great, but it still doesn't really answer the use case.  I know it is nothing to do with medium level CAS wheels,  I do have some tactical application appreciation, but I can do low-level pop up attacks and toss CBU-87/97 with CCRP without VIP/VRP against a known location target by careful positioning of steerpoints in mission planning.

Is it simply to reduce the number of steerpoints in a flight plan?  or to allow multiple targets to be attacked from the same IP?

Like all of you, I want the Viper to be as feature complete as it can be, but I also like to know the 'why' as much as the 'how' with each feature added.

I wouldnt dwell on this too much, its a pre gps method when INS drift was a thing that isnt even taught anymore due to having gps. Plop a steerpoint and be happy. If you wanna fly pre gps then this is great.

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On 4/22/2022 at 9:40 AM, Carbon715 said:

I wouldnt dwell on this too much, its a pre gps method when INS drift was a thing that isnt even taught anymore due to having gps. Plop a steerpoint and be happy. If you wanna fly pre gps then this is great.

Does anyone believe we'll still have GPS on Day 2 of any war with a near peer? 

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vor 2 Stunden schrieb VarZat:

I was able to use the VRP function.

1. Make sure you have pressed 0/M-SEL on the ICP over the VRP/VIP

2. You need to be in CCRP

3. Make sure you dont have both VRP and VIP activated

 

 

 

Wait what you can't use it in CCIP?

Ok, then it is useless as of now... I have to dig some public manuals, I guess.

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