Stinger Missiles

[db_zero]

The Stinger had a reputation as the bane of the Mi-24 in Afghanistan. So far in my limited CW game play, I'm not too impressed. I had 2 Stinger teams one with 11 missiles, the other with 15 missiles, plus a HQ with 4 extra missiles. All missiles were fired off and many times both teams fired at same time in same direction.

All missiles have been expended and only 1 Hind downed and that was with the very last Stinger. The Hinds were able to strafe and rocket my M-113s and infantry pretty much at will.

I haven't play too much so I can't say much other than to report what has happened with one of the first battles with Stingers and Hinds.

[domfluff]

In the Dollbach heights campaign mission, my two Stingers accounted for 3/4 of the Hind kills, with the four M163 only accounting for 1 between them. This didn't happen straight away, mind you, but they did keep the Hinds away for the most part.

Even in Cold War, the US air defences aren't great. Giving the Mujahideen Stingers in Afghanistan is a massive upgrade from their previous anti-helicopter weapon, which would be the RPG-7.

The impact of Stingers in Afghanistan is not actually entirely clear. There is some controversy as to their true effectiveness - the narrative of them being the scourge of the Soviets seems to be mostly a US one, as I understand it.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

According to the 1993 US Air Defense Artillery Yearbook, the Mujahideen gunners used the supplied Stingers to score approximately 269 total aircraft kills in about 340 engagements, a 79-percent kill ratio. This translates to the missiles being responsible for over half of the 451 Soviet aircraft losses in Afghanistan.

No idea how many helicopters that includes.

[domfluff]

It is interesting how few Soviet accounts mention them though. It's also been suggested that those kill rates were based on self reporting by the mujahideen, with successes being met with more weapons and funding, so there would be an incentive to massage those numbers. Both sources there have the obvious issues.

That doesnt mean that the Stinger wasnt significant - it's certainly a real AA capability - but it's quite possible that the systems importance has been overstated.

[Redwolf]

Well, there should be a noticeable difference between helicopters and fast movers.

Jets should be able to evade manpads at least when they are willing to scratch their mission. Helicopters don't have those options.

So far in CMCW it looks to me like there is an equal chance of shooting down a helo or a jet.

[kch001]

As with many weapons and doctrines, I think the true effectiveness of the MANPADs (and AAA) is forcing the helicopters and jets higher up and further away rather than killing them. The Hinds traditional attack profile, fast in a shallow dive, would be too dangerous, so you end up firing the heavy machine gun and rockets at the very edge of their effective range (or beyond). However, I have no idea whether this is modelled in the game. 

Edited May 28, 2021 by kch001

[domfluff]

So, it's a different topic but: There are a large number of problems with the implementation of air in CM titles - to the extent that, as things are now, I suspect the game would be better for (reluctantly) removing air assets entirely.


Since CM is really a platoon-level game, there's no need for 9 lines, dogfighting or similar additional content - the basic "call for fire" behaviour is pretty reasonable. Artillery performs well, with a decent amount of abstraction, so calling in aircraft similarly as off-map support as they currently do is a reasonable abstraction/compromise, I think. 

- The aircraft behaviour is identical to that in the WW2 titles - random directions and multiple strafing runs. That's fine for a WW2 aircraft, but doesn't work for this kind of high-threat environment. If a fast mover could dump all of it's ordnance on a single pass, that would be the quickest fix to this behaviour, and would probably be the "simplest" fix.

- Speaking of the WW2 titles, CAS is far too accurate and co-ordinated. There are a handful of attempts to do this in the real war, and they're notable because they are significant exceptions - and even in most of these circumstances they failed, to at least some extent.

- So, modern titles. Jets. Jets could have a much larger operational area - perhaps the whole map, and operate as a "delete" button. They could be point-targeted (e.g., lased) or just allowed to roam and deal with targets of opportunity. The intention for jets would be that they have a single, devastating attack, but that's all you're going to get out of them.

- Helicopters are different. At some point their behaviour was changed, and they became significantly less useful. In CMSF 1 and CM:A. helicopters will do multiple strafing runs over a couple of minutes - perhaps three over two turns. That means that it's possible to use a helicopter as if it was an off-map vehicle, supporting an attack by suppressing an enemy position or the like.

This would naturally make it extremely vulnerable, and that's not a bad thing. It would be good if there was a distinction between stand-off ATGM attacks and strafing runs, with the latter accepting more risk.

 - One fundamental issue that aircraft have in CM is a lack of decisions. Especially in multiplayer, aircraft are a very binary, very random thing. You choose whether to take aircraft, and you choose whether to take AA assets. Assuming you both make the correct choice blindly, the end result is something entirely out of your control - you might kill the aircraft, or you might not, and there's very little you can do about it.

That means that your investment in points for buying aircraft is entirely speculative, and likewise the investment in air defence - it's an entirely random process, free from any kind of thought or nuance.

Reverting to a CMSF 1-like system for helicopter strafing would go a long way to fixing that for rotary craft. Jets are pretty much always going to be that way, but making the choice between a wide area of effect (possibly just the whole map) or reserving the thing for a point-targeted strike would be at least some kind of choice.

*

In terms of just removing air entirely:

I think you could make a good argument that aircraft should be nowhere near the WW2 titles. I also think that you could fudge away aircraft in the peer conflict scenarios as being in too hot an environment. That mostly leaves CMSF as somewhere where they are actually needed. I do think that losing air in Cold War and Black Sea wouldn't be ideal - it's a bit hard to Airland battle without the Air part, for example.