Assuming soft targets, is combat mix or all HE 30mm best?

[Kevin509]

I fly the KA50, the Apache and the Hind. Against soft targets and especially scattered infantry I find the 30mm cannon in the Hind to be weaker that either of the other 30mm helicopter cannons and it seems like you need to land basically direct hits to kill infantry.

But I've also only used the default "combat mix" ammo choice. Do you guys find the all HE belt to be a better choice? 

Fyi my computer is out of commission at the moment or I'd test myself... Bored and waiting for a new CPU to arrive in the mail 

[AeriaGloria]

I love combat mix, allows me to take out anything but tanks. 
 

The HE rounds should have a 7m kill radius for infantry. 
 

Pretty sure the combat max is HE, HE-T, then AP. In combat mix the tracers never bounce which means they are HE. 
 

Assuming all soft targets HE all is fine. AP only really becomes necessary for high end APC, IFVs. Even with combat mix the BMP-3 is very hard to kill. With all AP rounds you can do finishing kills on nearly dead T-55/72 and boats. But yeah, you can always take S-8KOM to make up lack of penetration. 

[Avimimus]

I'd go with all AP against soft-targets - the lack of a self-destruct fuse means I can attack them from a safer distance

[AeriaGloria]

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

I'd go with all AP against soft-targets - the lack of a self-destruct fuse means I can attack them from a safer distance

What ranges? Sight maxes out at 3.5 km. Bullets go 940 m/s. If they don’t slow down that’s almost 6 km travel for the 6 second lifetime of the bullet self destruct fuse. They would have to alien to an average of 583 m/s to go 3.5 Km In less then 6 seconds. But I will admit that with the high rate, sometimes I have often been able to hit stuff by firing long huge bursts 3 km away 

I read a source once that said the tracer should only last 2 seconds. And that Ka-50s had special ammo with slightly less explosive and a longer 6 second tracer. 
 

If the tracer was changed to 2 seconds, would be interesting for those 2 Km shots 

[Avimimus]

I'm trying to break off at 2 km (as that keeps me out of the effective ranges of heavy machine guns and 20mm/23mm anti-aircraft guns). This requires me to start firing at about 3.5 km - I then observe the fall of shot and correct. Ironically, I have to start the run so far out because the bullet flight times are so long that I need to wait quite a bit to observer the fall of shot before correcting for the next burst (and it often requires three bursts to get onto the target).

At these long ranges I suspect that most of the flight time of the bullet is subsonic - certainly, the first burst will appear to fall out of the sky onto the target (it looks more like a maximum range shot from an M230 than a GSh-2-30... almost indirect fire)!

P.S. Interesting to hear about the longer burn-time for the Ka-50 tracer. Btw. I've often wondered if the ammunition on the SPPU-22 (Su-25 carried) has such a short time fuse - as they tend to self-destruct if I fire them from high altitudes. I do wish that the greater dispersion of gunpods from the relatively more flexible mountings provided by hardpoints was modelled - it'd make the UPK, SPPU and even the GUV better at suppressing MANPADS.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Avimimus

[AeriaGloria]

2 hours ago, Avimimus said:

I'm trying to break off at 2 km (as that keeps me out of the effective ranges of heavy machine guns and 20mm/23mm anti-aircraft guns). This requires me to start firing at about 3.5 km - I then observe the fall of shot and correct. Ironically, I have to start the run so far out because the bullet flight times are so long that I need to wait quite a bit to observer the fall of shot before correcting for the next burst (and it often requires three bursts to get onto the target).

At these long ranges I suspect that most of the flight time of the bullet is subsonic - certainly, the first burst will appear to fall out of the sky onto the target (it looks more like a maximum range shot from an M230 than a GSh-2-30... almost indirect fire)!

P.S. Interesting to hear about the longer burn-time for the Ka-50 tracer. Btw. I've often wondered if the ammunition on the SPPU-22 (Su-25 carried) has such a short time fuse - as they tend to self-destruct if I fire them from high altitudes. I do wish that the greater dispersion of gunpods from the relatively more flexible mountings provided by hardpoints was modelled - it'd make the UPK, SPPU and even the GUV better at suppressing MANPADS.

 

Supersonic speed is around 350 m/s. Your bullets leave the barrel at Mach 2.7. So I think it’s going to be a while before they slow down that much. 

 

The Gsh-23 has a 715 m/s speed, and in ED LUA also lasts 6 seconds before self destruct. They have 5.6 mil dispersion. By comparison Gsh-30-2K is 4 mil dispersion.  It would be great if dispersion was increased based on the platform, but the SPU-22 is only one axis. So similar to Ka-50 with it’s limited mount I would think would be pretty accurate. By comparison I don’t know if the Apache incorporates some dispersion from the turret mount, but it’s LUA shows it being just as accurate as the Gsh-30-2K and the other Soviet 30mm