AI Aircraft drop Paveway IIIs too close to their target

[Northstar98]

Hi everyone,

With the most recent update to DCS 2.9.6.57650, the Paveway III series bombs (GBU-24A/B, B/B and GBU-27) now correctly perform a "bump-up" after being dropped (which is really nice to see! ) which should in theory extend the range of the bomb, as well as better facilitate attacks from low-altitude (which is what the Paveway III series were designed for).

Unfortunately however, the AI seems to release Paveway IIIs too close to the target - from limited testing, they appear to drop GBU-24s/27s at the same distance as they would a dumb bomb (like a Mk 84) - as if the AI is computing a release point based on a ballistic trajectory.

What this results in is one of 2 things happening:

• The bomb performs its bump up and overflies the target (and the seeker will lose sight of the designating laser) and will land long.
• The bomb performs its bump up then overcompensates, performing a very steep dive onto the target, which it usually fails to recover from, resulting in the bomb missing (in tests, sometimes the bomb just misses the target, but sometimes it falls way short of it - this may point to an issue in the bomb's guidance itself, but the main issue I want to focus on here is the AI releasing the bomb from too close, as it wouldn't need to perform such a steep dive in the first place had it been released from farther away).

In the 3 tracks below, I have an F-16CM set to bomb an outpost at low altitude. In the 1kft track, the bomb overflies the target and lands long, in the 2kft track the bomb pitches down but doesn't recover in time, resulting in the bomb landing short and in the 3kft track, the bomb does recover but just misses the target.

Similar behaviour can be observed with the AI dropping GBU-27s, the bomb overflies the target when dropped at 1000 ft, has a miss (but close) at 2000 ft and the bomb falls very short at 3000 ft, due to it not recovering from its dive, see the remaining 3 tracks with the same setup.

AI_F-16CM_GBU-24_1kft_miss.trk AI_F-16CM_GBU-24_2kft_miss.trk AI_F-16CM_GBU-24_3kft_miss.trk F-117A_GBU-27_1kft_miss.trk F-117A_GBU-27_2kft_miss.trk F-117A_GBU-27_3kft_miss.trk

Edited July 12, 2024 by Northstar98