This theater is savage!
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Hi all, anyone else having trouble with the difficulty here? I really like this theater, but im struggling to complete even a single mission. Flying from ramat D, i have the blk30’s to use, the sufas are too far south. First mission i tried, was a strike against some towed artillery in a small valley. Couldnt pick up the targets in the recon screen, so went ahead with default loadout of cbu’s. Just over the border, got enaged by multiple sa17’s, result, died very quickly. Tried again with a low level ingress, and different waypoint setup, got closer to target, and having no tgp im trying to use gmt on the fcr to find the targets. I do find them in a nice row on the road, but again i get engaged by several sa17 & aaa batteries once i poke my head up for a pop up attack so died again. Then tried to target the sa17’s with rockeyes, again didn’t make it far at all, even shot at low level. Also tried a low level, stealth approach with radar quiet, but enemy fighters are all over the place and the awacs guys are having a fit. MY wingman is gone, several others too, eventually gave up on that one. Tried a flight futher down the day’s ato, same thing. This is cadet difficulty
Any tips on survival here?
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The Barak Cs are better suited for engaging static targets early in the campaign.
If you are going on movers, go with the Is or the you have the 109 in RMD which is a D block 30. You’ll have TGP available there.
And yeah, picking your targets and approach paths is very important in early campaign
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In my humble opinion, I have found a couple of useful tactics that seem to work no matter what day of the campaign you may be in. 1. Peel back the defenses. For example, your target is an enemy bridge which is defended by a battalion of KS-19s. There are also SA-10, SA-11, and SA-17 placed in strategic locations near your target. First take out the SAMS. Whether you crash and burn or take one of them out. Fly against the same target again. Eventually, you will have a cleared path. 2. Find that exact bridge either on the map or in the Order of Battle list. Right click on the map or the name in the OOB list, and select Add Package. A dialog window will open Set the time for take off. Give yourself enough time to either taxi or ramp start. Select the NEW button This dialog window will allow you to choose the type of aircraft and number of them, the mission, drop down the list and choose the appropriate on like SEAD or ESCORT or STRIKE. Choose the squadron and the skill level. Then press OK. The new flight will be shown in the Add Package window. You may left click on that new flight and then at the bottom of the UI screen, press the Weapons Load Out. Select the weapons which you want the flight to use. You can add more flights to this package by clicking the Add NEW. The same aircraft and squadron will show up again. You can use it or pick another aircraft. When you are done press the OK button. When you want to fly one of these new missions, open the ATO air tasking order and choose the All Flights box at the bottom. The list is divided into the type of missions, like OCA for example. Your mission will most likely be a strike mission. Find the flight you just created. Click on the little + to expand the list showing all of the flights in this package. Find the one you want to fly. Right click on the flight and select the JOIN option. When you do that, you will notices that the mission will now be on your squadron’s ATO. Pick the aircraft slot and load in your DTE to set channel 15 as TOWER and you may want to put the target bridge in the target list. If you have never done this it may seem daunting, however, the rewards are extremely worthwhile. Now when you take off, you will be joined with a group of aircraft which will bolster your odds of coming back alive.
BMS is pretty realistic experience is it not?
Raven
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Isn’t it a general rule of thumb to frag your own missions in BMS? I always uncheck ‘set by HQ’ at the beginning of a campaign and meticulously plan every package with the entire sqn. at my disposal.
It takes longer, but my odds of survival are way higher.
The only thing I’ve been having a hard time with Is taking out Patriots without HARMs. I’m still at a loss as to how to dispatch them. Especially when they are on the move. Using the Delilah makes me too vulnerable to enemy intercepts and skimming the patriot engagement zone while tracking the Delilah AND keeping SA is quite the task.Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk
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If I uncheck set by HQ, am I just fragging mission for my squadron or all the squadrons in the theater?
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Just your squadron, if that’s all you unchecked set by HQ.
C9
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My VFS started an ITO Campaign, vs. Syria yesterday. We fragged a SEAD Strike, 4xDEAD and 4x Escort. The host of the campaign edited the files so that we flew Helenic 52/CFTs with HARMs.
The SEAD strike went OK, but we had to abort mission because across the israeli north eastern border everything is swarming with SA17s. If we were to go at them with a conventional israeli loadout, the only viable weapons would be delilahs and CBUs, both being poor choices since an SA17 battalion has 8 launch vehicles, all with independent radars and it would take a lot of delilahs and time to take them out. Spice bombs are out of the question because those sites haven’t been reckoned yet, so TGT SPTPs aren’t an option.Day 1 SAM density is off the chart and without proper anti radiation missiles, it can be quite frustrating.
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The HARM is such an effective weapon against SAMs. The Israeli aircrafts do not carry HARM.
It would be helpful to know how real Israeli pilots deal with SAMs.
Anybody with knowledge on this, please share. -
IAF has two things to take down SAMs - ECM and MITL weapons
Main difference between RL and BMS at that respect is that in RL you have other platforms that help you pinpoint SAM batteries and give you realtime coordinates of the targets allowing rapid reaction time for “DEAD patrols”.
In BMS we had to offset that by giving you built-in HAD - as it is currently the only way currently available to get radar positions. -
So the built in HAD is not true to life in the Sufa?
My life was a lie
I thought those nostrils below the IFF antennas were a built in HST pod.
MITL weapons, IMHO, aren’t that good against long range air defenses and those that are on the move. They make you a sitting duck for some time before it impacts. You’re heads down, mostly flying straight and in need of some serious escort if the Campaign is still young and swarming with enemy fighters.
In any case, I had some mixed results with low level snake eye runs. It seems that it is pure luck whether or not a Patriot engages you or not. If it does and you’re close, you’re dead. Studying some ACMI files, it sometimes decides to fire SAMs at you from maximum range and other times it only fires at you when you get much closer. It also seems to ‘feel’ when you’re out to kill it or just flying about(I’m guessing ones aspect to the Patriot factors into it’s attack decision making), capping the area. Sometimes I had a missile shot in my face roughly 2 miles away without a ‘P’ spike(strange, in the debrief it said patriot, not Stinger, though BMS might not differenciate between the two since they are part of the same battalion). Other times I wacked it with the aforementioned snake eyes without any launches at all. Going quiet and hitting the deck well before the IP seems to highten my chances of getting close. Still, surviving the attack run is always a dice roll with this method. -
you need to make your holding pattern in a smart way, and outside threat area
so holding about 75nm out is the best thing you can do you will usually will not be engaged by the SAM at this range and if you do, because you are beam or close to it, missiles will not reach you.
launching from this range will give you one or two “go arounds” with the Delilah.BTW, in 4.33 there is a different RWR modeling, some systems have better accuracy then others. some have better coverage then others. there is also the whole radar frequency, as some systems can pick up more frequency ranges then others.
so maybe Patriot is not being picked up due to being in the dead zones or something.
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I’ll practice more with the Dililah then
I guess the trickiest part is timing and location of the holding pattern(which is nicely emphasized in the training manual), though it can be even more challenging on Day 1 SAM hunts, with numerous bandits about.
In the manual it says that the Delilah covers roughly 9nm per minute. Does this vary with cruising altitude and release velocity? If yes, by how much? -
Don’t know if it’s the best tactic, but in the first days of the campaign I’d mostly do A-A sweeps in order to achieve a decent air superiority and take care of the SAMs only when skies are a bit more clean… is it a crazy idea?
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Don’t know if it’s the best tactic, but in the first days of the campaign I’d mostly do A-A sweeps in order to achieve a decent air superiority and take care of the SAMs only when skies are a bit more clean… is it a crazy idea?
Not crazy at all. Used to do it all the time when I flew often. I’d hijack as many Barcaps as I could and use them as Sweeps, fly the Sweeps too for a solid 2-3 days if I had to.
I’d also occasionally use a few of the hijacked Barcaps, load up some iron and take out ground units just beyond the FLOT. I’d use the wingies as air cover while I searched for 'em.
C9
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@Cloud:
Not crazy at all. Used to do it all the time when I flew often. I’d hijack as many Barcaps as I could and use them as Sweeps, fly the Sweeps too for a solid 2-3 days if I had to.
I’d also occasionally use a few of the hijacked Barcaps, load up some iron and take out ground units just beyond the FLOT. I’d use the wingies as air cover while I searched for 'em.
C9
The way we cracked the SAM threat in ITO was with SDBs. You can’t hit the SA-17s when they’re moving, but if they’re nice enough to sit still, which they sometimes do, you can launch > 20nm get hits, but still have time to turn away. It’s dicey, though, because you have maybe one minute between the time the TGP is in range and when you have to abort. Still, we wiped out many battalions of SA-17 with this method.
Obviously, you have to take one of the platforms that have TGP and SDB capability (F-16I for sure, don’t know about others) for this to work.
If they’re moving, Delilah is basically it. And IMO it’s one of the hardest weapons in the entire sim to use well.
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If they’re moving, Delilah is basically it. And IMO it’s one of the hardest weapons in the entire sim to use well.
but IMHO, by far the most satisfying weapon as well
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but IMHO, by far the most satisfying weapon as well
Ha! Yes, there’s something awesome about seeing an SA-17 get bigger and bigger in the MFD. Especially if you don’t forget to arm the fuse.
One thing I’ve been contemplating with the SA-17 threat is whether a combination of LGB lofting, buddy lasing, and terrain masking might work sometimes. It might be tough to pull off, but it would be pretty awesome. I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work in theory, but of course you’d have to get lucky with the location to have terrain in the right place.
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Ha! Yes, there’s something awesome about seeing an SA-17 get bigger and bigger in the MFD. Especially if you don’t forget to arm the fuse.
One thing I’ve been contemplating with the SA-17 threat is whether a combination of LGB lofting, buddy lasing, and terrain masking might work sometimes. It might be tough to pull off, but it would be pretty awesome. I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work in theory, but of course you’d have to get lucky with the location to have terrain in the right place.
should work just fine
you have the designator up high and safe, locate the target, feed coods to the bomb carrier. which then lofts on the Target position. while designator maintains LOS -
should work just fine
you have the designator up high and safe, locate the target, feed coods to the bomb carrier. which then lofts on the Target position. while designator maintains LOSYeah, the open question is whether an SA-17 can detect, track, launch, and shoot down the loft aircraft before it can get down behind the terrain again. Because you’re going to need to be well within engagement range at loft time. Still would be a super fun mission to run with some friends.
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if you are fast enough and aggressive enough, answer is yes, you can. you can get the bomb off at 8nm at less then 2000ft AGL, but you’ll need to to the pull down very very quickly (less then 30 seconds from pull up to low level). assuming that you are not detected before the pull up