Air Support should have attack axis

[Battlefront.com]

We've made further refinements to the Hydras. I think you should give them a try again in v1.10

There is no support in the game system for showing the attack vector before it happens. It's not something we will add due to the time it would take to implement.

Steve

[Lee]

Here's some more videos showing F-18's strafing. In the first one, terrorists are caught trying to set up a car bomb and are hit by one of our F-18's. If you crank your volume up really loud, you can hear the gun being fired near the end of the video as he strafes other terrorists who come out to help the ones that just got bombed.

The second video shows a great clear shot of a strafing run in the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j-JUB-dt2I&feature=related

Steve: Glad to hear there have been improvements to the modeling of the rockets, currently they can be wildly inaccurate (more so than is realistic).

[c3k]

Strafing? Well, no one would realistically strafe in a REAL war. Heck, you wouldn't even need guns on planes in a real war: the radar and IR missiles are too good.

Oh, has that argument been tried? Back in the '50's you say? No guns on fighters? Then Korea and Vietnam came along? Now they ALL have guns? I wonder why...

I thought only A-10's and Harriers would strafe.

But, that's not our decision.

Regards,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

The fact is that the cannons on modern day fighter aircraft are designed for air to air combat as their primary roll. It is a backup system and there is a very small ammo load allocated for the weapon as well. Fighters in today's world are not supposed to be swooping in at low altitude and putting themselves at risk. Millions of Dollars worth of equipment and armaments on the planes are there for the explicit purpose of NOT engaging ground targets up close and personal. Other airframes are designed for that, specifically the A-10.

Having said that, in a low threat environment (such as Iraq since the invasion and Afghanistan), with limited aircraft available for support missions, it is absolutely the case that the cannons of fighter aircraft are used against ground targets. Nobody is disputing that, including the pilots we communicated with. But in an active, "hot" combat area like our Syrian setting... no way. It's not what they are designed to handle, it's risky, and as F-15 pilots told us "it's not our job".

If an F/A-18 or F-15 were brought down by a shoulder fired rocket/missile in Iraq or Afghanistan tomorrow, I think you'd no longer see the occasional ground strafing runs by them.

One thing though... there is a discussion about the need for less powerful air support capabilities in low intensity situations, especially in urban areas. Even the SDBs (250# bombs) that were introduced to lessen collateral damage are often still too big for the targets assigned to them. Yet at the same time the traditional airframes used for such attacks, specifically helicopters, are too vulnerable to ground fire (even manually aimed small arms). So cannon fire from fighters has been called in as a field expedient. Also, in some cases fighters are the only form of air support in the area of operation so they have to make do. But all of this is irrelevant for us since CM:SF is not a low intensity simulation.

Steve

[c3k]

What are you doing posting on the forum? You have a patch to get out the door! Back to it, I say!

All good points, but instead of talking to an air superiority trained F-15 driver, how about a Marine F/A-18/F-35 pilot? Or F-16/F-35/A-10/F-15E, to keep it USAF? Despite how it sounds, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, merely pointing out that an F-15 has a totally different mission and different training/doctrine than the other airframes I've listed. If someone's assigned CAS, they MAY drop down to strafe in a future conflict, despite what the planners think today. (That was the point of my previous post: today's assumptions about how a future conflict will be engaged are rarely spot on.)

My understanding of the SDB/collateral damage issue in Iraq: I think it's the Navy experimenting with less fill and cases designed not to produce shrapnel (cellulose??). They're looking for the blast radius to define the weapon's effect, rather than a combination of blast (overpressure) and shrapnel. Tuning the blast is done by varying the mix formula and the amount. (Then they need to test its effect on accuracy, release, CG, etc.)

So, how much longer until I can start a thread on strafing with UAV's?

Thanks,

Ken

[dan/california]

We need to start a thread on when we are going to do to do anything with UAVs.

[dan/california]

I have read in several places about the 105 mm on the AC130 being replaced by the as yet experimental XM395 guided mortar round. Is their any reason that it could be deployed from UAVs or other aircraft in this role.

For that matter if they have a 120mm guided mortar round, a small UAV and the battalion mortar platoon are all the air-force you need for a lot of situations. Even if the rounds are expensive the battalion UAV doesn't burn 50,000 dollars a mission in jet fuel whether it drops any ordinance or not.

[c3k]

I don't think a UAV will ever, in the foreseeable future, carry anything other than guided ordnance. Guns on UAV's don't make much sense.

Although, as you postulate, if the USAF can change how UAV's are operated, I'm sure the Army would be happy. As it is, USAF runs the UAV's from Nevada and in-theater, but far removed. (At an ops center in a country 100's of miles from the action.)

I don't know of any platoon getting real-time data feeds. I'd love to be proven wrong. The technology should be driven down to support the small unit, not to let the HQ guys have a say in who should shoot at what.

But if we DID have shooting UAV's in CMx2, I'd make a plea to be allowed to DETERMINE THEIR ATTACK AXIS.

Regards,

Ken

[dan/california]

In an aviation application I think the guided mortar rounds are just dropped.

[Battlefront.com]

The simple fact of the matter is that in a complex, high threat environment the fighters don't do gun runs on targets for any other reasons than exceptional circumstances. Look at how shot up A-10s got during OIF, and those things were designed for taking the hits. A F-16 would not. All evidence indicates that doctrine would be stuck to in a future war as it was in OIF. If someone here cares to make a methodical, factually based case for gun runs in a CM:SF Syrian setting... go ahead. But if it boils down to "I want it" or "in theory they can do it" then by definition it isn't good enough

We will likely not get to UAVs until CM:SF 2. The primary purpose of these is still recon, which isn't very useful even with a straight vector. To do it right the player needs to control it like a unit. That's something we simply don't have time to code.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, tonight Charles made some tweaks to how the system selects what the angle of attack should be based on the mission and some other factors. I've not tried it yet, but hopefully that will smooth out some of the questionable choices the system used to come up with.

Steve

[Lee]

Steve: Sounds great, looking forward to seeing the new more accurate air strike model in action.

[Lee]

Here's another cool video of an F-18, both strafing and rocketing terrorists in Iraq.

And an extra video of an arab soldier trying to fire what looks like a recoiless rifle. haha

[Lee]

Here's an interesting video. An F-18 is conducting a rocket attack in Iraq, and you can clearly see the rockets being fired, which is something you don't often see on video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDcqTGwjNT0&feature=related