Apache rocket attack....drunken shotgun of the gods

[Flanker15]

"those men in the attack choppers are far braver than the insurgent filth we are fighting"

When I see Apache pilots deliberately crashing into enemy positions I'll believe that.

Seriously there is literally no higher bravery than doing something you know will kill you no matter what.

No offenses to the gunship pilots but I can't see how pressing a button to shoot someone 2Kms away that can't shoot back is more brave than driving a van full of explosives into a tank.

[Bigduke6]

No, that's what you are assuming. Vids on the Internet is evidence, but it is not conclusive evidence.

- We don't know how representative those strikes in the vids are, of strikes overall.

- The people making the vids public (helicopter jocks and their friends) have a vested interest in publicizing the accurate stikes, and keeping evidence of goofed-up strikes out of the public.

- As a general rule, any air strike, throughout the history of air strikes, looks far more effective than it is.

- From what I could tell those vids that we did see showed rockets launched w-a-y out of the range of a rifle, meaning the chopper jock faced no threat to speak of. Which is very different from the environment, and pucker factor faced by A/I chopper pilots in CMSF.

- It is clear that some of the vids show Apaches firing accurately. I am not arguing that they never hit the target. However, we only have the word of the poster that the people the Apache pilot was killing, were the right people.

If the goal is figuring out how effective Apaches would be in a war against Syria, you have to aks, how many of those people rocketed and flex gunned to death in the Internet vids, were in fact people that needed murdering? Not morally, but from a practical tactical POV.

We don't know. But we do know it is not really credible to expect that all of that mayhem was inflicted without mistakes. Helicopter pilots are studs, but they are still human. So we have to ask the question, what portion of those Apache gun camera vids are dead on target, but the wrong target?

As noted, in the game that I am playing there have been now 5-6 passes by an Apache gunship. From what I have seen, it's not been off target by more than 50 meters in any pass. so far it has waxed a couple of Syrian vehicles, missed a couple of times and hit houses and street, and one time wiped out a couple of US squads by accident, with Syrian infantry at that point in time firing like crazy 20 - 60 meters away. All these passes struck within an area of about 150 meters by 150 meters.

Based on what I've seen so far, I'd say that's a reasonable replication of what one might expect if the US invaded Syria and a US combined arms team/task force got involved in an urban fight with a rougly similar-sized Syrian regular army force.

Originally posted by Lee:

Well, the point is that we've seen plenty of videos with U.S. choppers (Apache, Blackhawk, etc.) making highly accurate rocket attacks on terrorists who certainly have rifles on them, and our pilots don't seem particularly concerned about it. It's certainly not affecting their ability to make devastating precise attack runs.

The rockets are obviously *way* too inaccurate in CMII right now.

[Pandur]

@Bigduke6

to bring this back from the theoretical to the pratical realm for a moment, how do "you" target apatche strikes in order to see such accuracy, in the game!?

it seems hardly anyone including me seems to be able to get this huge bursts from the rocked pods into a 150x150 area. i get them more in a area 200 broad and 400 to 500 deep.

next time someone get one of those, take a screenshot

[Bigduke6]

Pandur, in the battle I'm in right now I'm not the shooter, I'm the shootee. Well, at least when it comes to helicopters.

:mad:

At least some of the strikes are cannon and flex guns; and of course it's up to the A/I not my opponent to decide what weapon the A/I Apache pilot decides to use.

As a general thing it sort of seems to me like the A/I Apaches prefer rockets for big areas like a hunk of desert or a bunch of soft vehicles. But frankly I haven't really seen many Apache strikes in the games I've played.

In the present game, I would have to say that the A/I pilot is pretty much doing the best he can given his training. He's clearly biased towards cannon and MG (well, some kind of automatic weapon anyway) and his top priority is very obviously armored vehicles.

Too bad CMSF doesn't have a quick battle function like CM1, we could fire up a couple of test battles and get some really good data on what Apaches do and do not do. As it is it's either anecdotal evidence from people playing battles, or design a scenario from ground up which is more than a bit of a chore.

[John Kettler]

the Fighting Seabee,

Am afraid your argument has some major holes in it.

Your first video, absent other information, is very hard to determine scale and distances from. Thus, it's very hard to say what the CEP is.

Your second video shows not rocket fire, but 30mm cannon fire from the previously mentioned SpecOps version of the Blackhawk.

Your third video is by far the more useful of the two rocket videos, for it gives at least some sense of dispersion. Would really help to know what the standoff range was.

Your fourth video isn't rockets, but is 30mm GAU-8 fire from an A-10. Note that the ground goes skyward first, after which comes the telltale honk of a high ROF Gatling gun.

Bigduke6,

Regret to inform you you've made a colossal miltary-technical error. An SA-6 can't go anywhere near the distance you talk about. Don't believe me? Warfare.ru lists 24 km max range.

http://www.warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=264&linkid=2321

Regards,

John Kettler

[Pandur]

But frankly I haven't really seen many Apache strikes in the games I've played.

ok to make this clear, i have seen every single one of them in my games. i play wego only and its not like i miss something of that importance(if only it is nice in the replay ).

now i closely watched apatch and kiowa strikes when i ploted some, and i have to say that i cant remember "any" remarkable incident where Airpower realy payed off, compared to other means of doing the job.

i have one incident(destroying a single sitting tank) i dont really count as one was more or less forced to use only Air by the scenario designer and it had to worke out as you had no other way to do it.

i am no expert but i asume that a mortar or howitzer barrage is relatively cheap compared to the call of a helicopter. so when we take the performance of the helicopters in the game, we have a expensive yet highly uneffective way to do mostly the same as a more cheaper asset could do sometimes faster and more reliable.

i guess the real advantages for airsupport in CAS role is that you can "talk" to it, it has its eye in the sky and you can direct it and all this things, simply talk to to him.

you can partly do that with arty too but its much more unresponsive and doesnt see itself what to do or what could be done.

and you dont want to pile up collateral damage with arty fire so helicopters score in that point too.

and thats lacking in the game i say, air support is comparable to a slow and sometimes inaccurate artillery in different calibers for me right now in the game.

the only job you can trust it to compleat is destroying a vehicle with a heavy strike(->hellfire)

As a general thing it sort of seems to me like the A/I Apaches prefer rockets for big areas like a hunk of desert or a bunch of soft vehicles.

to me it seems that this has nothing to do with the area it tries to strike but what strike type you select(area, point/light, medium, heavy).

if i plot a area target i couldnt notice the AI aiming at something, it just hit somewhere with a bunch of rockets.

thats why i changed to point target for air support since quiet some time.

but thats just what i gathered from watching my air support at work. i find that point target doesnt make it more accurate itself but a rocket burst comes close to the point target at one point. imagine it like a tangent(sp!?) hiting the circle at one point.

and the hellfires the apatche fires in point target mode are good to damage houses also, i dont saw these fired in area target mode so far.

so to make a point, if air support "should" work like arty in the game, it should be reasonable in effectiveness!

if it should depict the advantages of airsupport and not act like arty, it can do that, but it would need a biger rework in my eyes.

[Clavicula_Nox]

Originally posted by Lee:

Well, the point is that we've seen plenty of videos with U.S. choppers (Apache, Blackhawk, etc.) making highly accurate rocket attacks on terrorists who certainly have rifles on them, and our pilots don't seem particularly concerned about it. It's certainly not affecting their ability to make devastating precise attack runs.

The rockets are obviously *way* too inaccurate in CMII right now.

But CMSF doesn't represent Phase IV operations, so why should we be using Phase IV videos as a standard?

[Splinty]

Originally posted by Flanker15:

"those men in the attack choppers are far braver than the insurgent filth we are fighting"

When I see Apache pilots deliberately crashing into enemy positions I'll believe that.

Seriously there is literally no higher bravery than doing something you know will kill you no matter what.

No offenses to the gunship pilots but I can't see how pressing a button to shoot someone 2Kms away that can't shoot back is more brave than driving a van full of explosives into a tank.

Hey Flanker, most of those "enemy positions" are markets, shops, and mosques filled with civilians. That's not courage, it's murder.

[cool breeze]

I bet he wasn't talking about those. I remember he was talking about blowing up a tank.

[Battlefront.com]

I'll chime in on this one

We've had this discussion before, both here and internally with our testers. We made changes to the pattern at one point (1.06??) to better reflect documentation of pattern spread. The documents came from the Army IIRC. Here it is:

One of our testers, an ex-artillery man, explained the chart as follows:

The chart refers to 29 milliradians, not 29 metres. That means that at 1000m the 50% CEP is 58m across (2 x 29mils *1000m/1000). At 2000m it's 116m across (2 x 29mils x 2000m/1000), and at 500m the CEP is 29m across (2 x 29mils x 500m/1000).

The main point is that the overall dispersion is keyed to engagement range (as is typical for all weapons, but most obvious in long range, area-effect weapons, like the Hydra or indirect fire weapons)

Incidentally, I suspect that CEP chart is somewhat idealised, as longitudinal dispersion for unguided weapons is typically much greater than lateral dispersion.

The above chart is also "idealized" in that it isn't taking topography into account. If the gunner aims at the top of a hill the pattern is going to be a lot different than aiming at a flat spot in the middle of a fairly even piece of terrain. Relative angle of the strike area to the position of the helo is also very important.

Because of recent experience of threats to helos, and the SOPs that have come about from it, we assume the choppers are at a pretty good standoff range and fairly low altitude. This makes the pattern fairly long vs. wide and not as accurate as it could be. Also remember that each individual rocket has a 29 CEP, which means it can hit anywhere within a 58m diameter circle of where it was aimed at the time it was fired. And that aim point is not necessarily where the gunner's crosshairs are.

The conclusion we had back then, and I still see as valid now, is that the Hydra attacks are an area suppression weapon and not good for point attacks. I'm pretty sure that in the current beta the virtual copter pilot doesn't use rockets very much against urban terrain and/or point targets as it does in v1.08.

Steve

[ June 17, 2008, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Lee]

Flanker15: While it is true that, say, assaulting a German bunker loaded with troops and MG42's with your U.S. rifle squad in WWII takes more sheer courage on the part of a soldier than taking out terrorists at long range with a Cobra's 20mm cannon, what these arab terrorists do has nothing to do with courage at all. There is *no* comparison with our soldiers, Marines and airmen.

These terrorists go around deliberately mass murdering innocent men, women and children to try to force their sick deranged religion on us. And they think after they've committed these horrendously evil acts they are going to some sort of paradise where they will be rewarded with a bunch of sluts. These terrorists aren't "brave", they are mentally ill.

[Bigduke6]

John, my nomenclature error, I should have written SA5/S-200. You're quite right, SA-6 range is must shorter, thanks for catching me on that.

Steve,

Does the game take into account varying AAA threat? Or are rockets just assumed always to be launched from a nice calm hover? (As the chart indicates, if I read it right.)

It's not a big deal BUT it would seem to me that in a Syria invasion what with updated SOPs and Syrians being a (somewhat) more competent opponent than the Iraqis, US helicopters would have to keep moving and stand off, and so the strike pattern the chart indicates is labratory accuracy, not probable combat accuracy.

In other words, is that chart the basic template you guys used for rocket strikes? Or did you tweak it, and if so how? Maybe you can give a little background on how the game decides how accurate or not to make a rocket strike...

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, for the record I think the HE is too effective against infantry. A single main gun round against a dispersed squad in the rough, and the entire squad is as dead as Caesar. Repeatedly. It's like they're firing nerve gas, maybe you guys can take a look at that?

[Clavicula_Nox]

Originally posted by Lee:

Flanker15: While it is true that, say, assaulting a German bunker loaded with troops and MG42's with your U.S. rifle squad in WWII takes more sheer courage on the part of a soldier than taking out terrorists at long range with a Cobra's 20mm cannon, what these arab terrorists do has nothing to do with courage at all. There is *no* comparison with our soldiers, Marines and airmen.

These terrorists go around deliberately mass murdering innocent men, women and children to try to force their sick deranged religion on us. And they think after they've committed these horrendously evil acts they are going to some sort of paradise where they will be rewarded with a bunch of sluts. These terrorists aren't "brave", they are mentally ill.

Take it easy, man. Your heart is in the right place, but not everyone we're fighting fits into some kind of mold. Though they are the enemy, they are human, some are that way, some are not. Some are genuinely fighting what they believe to be a tyranical occupation by a foreign Western power, and I can't say the US Govt has allowed us to do much to prove them wrong.

[redbear]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I'll chime in on this one

We've had this discussion before, both here and internally with our testers. We made changes to the pattern at one point (1.06??) to better reflect documentation of pattern spread. The documents came from the Army IIRC. Here it is:

One of our testers, an ex-artillery man, explained the chart as follows:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The chart refers to 29 milliradians, not 29 metres. That means that at 1000m the 50% CEP is 58m across (2 x 29mils *1000m/1000). At 2000m it's 116m across (2 x 29mils x 2000m/1000), and at 500m the CEP is 29m across (2 x 29mils x 500m/1000).

The main point is that the overall dispersion is keyed to engagement range (as is typical for all weapons, but most obvious in long range, area-effect weapons, like the Hydra or indirect fire weapons)

Incidentally, I suspect that CEP chart is somewhat idealised, as longitudinal dispersion for unguided weapons is typically much greater than lateral dispersion.

The above chart is also "idealized" in that it isn't taking topography into account. If the gunner aims at the top of a hill the pattern is going to be a lot different than aiming at a flat spot in the middle of a fairly even piece of terrain. Relative angle of the strike area to the position of the helo is also very important.

Because of recent experience of threats to helos, and the SOPs that have come about from it, we assume the choppers are at a pretty good standoff range and fairly low altitude. This makes the pattern fairly long vs. wide and not as accurate as it could be. Also remember that each individual rocket has a 29 CEP, which means it can hit anywhere within a 58m diameter circle of where it was aimed at the time it was fired. And that aim point is not necessarily where the gunner's crosshairs are.

The conclusion we had back then, and I still see as valid now, is that the Hydra attacks are an area suppression weapon and not good for point attacks. I'm pretty sure that in the current beta the virtual copter pilot doesn't use rockets very much against urban terrain and/or point targets as it does in v1.08.

Steve </font>

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke,

We presume that the firing is done under stress and not perfect conditions, which accounts for the somewhat sloppier outcome than that chart (which is, in and of itself, somewhat "sloppy" ).

Redbear,

I think what you're talking about is that the pattern spread is oriented the wrong direction? That's what I think you were saying back in your post on the previous page.

I'll see what can be done about making a point target get fewer rockets per run. That should help out, I think.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Forgot to add this to the post with the graphic:

"Also remember that each individual rocket has a 29 CEP, which means it can hit anywhere within a 58m diameter circle of where it was aimed at the time it was fired."

What I needed to add is that roughly 1/2 of the rockets will hit within a 58m circle around the target, 1/2 will fall somewhere outside of that. That's a huge margin of error.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Just discussed this with Charles. Currently 10 rockets are fired for a volley. He's going to reduce that to 6 rockets. That should help out quite a bit for Point Target missions as well as increase the number of volleys.

Another thing he said he'd do is make the spread tighter. Looks like he's using more or less a worst case spread so it's going to be significantly tighter with version 1.1. Maybe by as much as 50% less spread.

Steve

[ June 17, 2008, 05:02 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[c3k]

Thanks.

[redbear]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Just discussed this with Charles. Currently 10 rockets are fired for a volley. He's going to reduce that to 6 rockets. That should help out quite a bit for Point Target missions as well as increase the number of volleys.

Another thing he said he'd do is make the spread tighter. Looks like he's using more or less a worst case spread so it's going to be significantly tighter with version 1.1. Maybe by as much as 50% less spread.

Steve

Good to hear that steve.

[Battlefront.com]

Note that the accuracy will still suck. It will just suck less Kinda like a drunken guy with a shotgun who can hold his booze a bit better than the current one!

Steve

[julien673]

weekend storie ?

[Pandur]

Just discussed this with Charles. Currently 10 rockets are fired for a volley. He's going to reduce that to 6 rockets. That should help out quite a bit for Point Target missions as well as increase the number of volleys.

Another thing he said he'd do is make the spread tighter. Looks like he's using more or less a worst case spread so it's going to be significantly tighter with version 1.1. Maybe by as much as 50% less spread.

Note that the accuracy will still suck. It will just suck less

nice steve! thats great news!

[Lee]

Great news. If the rocket attacks can be adjusted so they are like those in the actual combat videos posted in this thread (which are surprisingly accurate), then we'll have a very high degree of realism in this aspect of the combat sim. Looks like the 1.1 patch is going to be loaded with good stuff.

[John Kettler]

Regarding helicopter rocket delivery accuracy, I'd be remiss to fail to note that using the performance of the elite 160th Special Operation Aviation Regiment helicopter pilots as the norm for typical CMSF helicopter fired rocket deliveries is to grossly overstate the likely outcome. The best of the best aren't the same as everybody else, which is why only the creme de la creme of helicopter pilots are chosen for the Night Stalkers. Those of you interested in the Night Stalkers will find this vid of interest, particularly at 0:16, where the MH-60K DAP's forward firing armament is in plain sight. Turns out the 30mm is on a proper gun mount, not a GEPOD-30, as I'd expected. Is the gun the same as what the Apache has, but in a fixed mount?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCixVjDbJXg&feature=related

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Steve,

Something I belatedly noticed in the various 160th SOAR (A) (oops on leaving that (A) out) videos I watched is that it seems quite common to fire a single rocket from each pod, meaning a pair, not the 6 or 12 you indicated would be the case after tweaking the firing logic. I don't know know, though, whether this practice is peculiar to the 160th or is instead practiced throughout the Army and (soon in game) Marine helicopter communities. Was further intrigued to see that diving attacks seem to be preferred, rather than firing from the hover. I speculate that this facilitates the gun run side of the attack.

In a related matter, I think I flubbed the DAP's model designation. Most of the vids say MH-60L, not MH-60K as I wrote. Am also curious as to what rocket warheads are available for the HYDRA in CMSF. Particularly interested in whether flechette and WP are in.

Regards,

John Kettler