Spacing out Durandals
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Icarus, thanks for the pics and confirming that it can still be done “the old way” with just a little more altitude. Might be a bit odd having to fly over an enemy airbase at 1,000-1,500ft… feels too exposed. But then again it could be remedied by a little more speed, I guess. More experimenting and practice to do! And yes, the pylons kinda start protesting past 500 knots.
I too feel more comfortable at 4-500 feet at 500kts with lots of countermeasures using manual release. I don’t like golden BB’s!
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What do you mean, Dee-Jay?
… That it is not made to drop bombs all along a 9000’ runway on the axis (which is also tactically not good).
This is how durandals should be used. Flying right down the axis of the runway would be heavily defended against and would not work IRL. BTW, what’s the drag factor on those 12 BLU’s?
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This is why:
- BLU107 are no longer used.
- In the past when BLU107 (and BAP100) was used, attack doctrine was to be not aligned with runway axis and to perform the pass with 20° - 60° offset with several aircratfs and different DMPIs.
My advises.
- Drop bombs in PAIR. with a small interval (around 50ft - 100ft max)
- Do not attack on RWY axis but under 20 to 40°.
- Better aim intersection of RWY and taxiway.
- Altitude should be enough to allow chute deployment and rocket ignition. (Around 1500ft AAL)
- Remember to set a compatible arming delay and fuze.
- Concentrate on one section per a/c.
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See the Icarus pictures just don’t make sense to me. The bombing pattern is showing all the way back to the ends of the runway but at a pickle spot right in the middle of the runway you have already PAST the initial bombing impact points. How are the bombs flying BACKWARDS to make patterns like that?
Try setting up PROF 1 and 2 as 500’, RP 1 and RP 9 respectively and watch the CCIP pipper jump up and down as you swap between the profiles when flying in Durandal release territory. The pipper should jump 2000’ ahead (shorter PBIL) for RP 9 compared to RP 1 because it’s showing center stick.
Also maybe post #3 is invisible to other users but I swear I covered the “how to do it like real” well enough.
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I’ve seen this pic before! Aside from the axis being defended, what other reason for dropping like this?
Probably to saw across the entire width of the runway and to hit taxi entry points like in the picture. Say you bombed down the axis of the runway but those tough soviet planes could still use the edges… Just speculating.
I’ve also been told f-16’s would not go on combat missions without 2x wing bags. 12 BLU’s would cause an extreme amount of drag -
Yes, I was just doing test runs to show what is possible in BMS, not whether it is correct or even realistic. I have no idea what is realistic, my only knowledge of what is realistic is what Stubbies tells me.;)
Meh. You shouldn’t be basing all of your knowledge of tactical use of an aircraft on a retired maintainer. Especially when we have some real combat drivers in the neighborhood. By no means am I the oracle of all things tactical.
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True, but there’s just more fun screaming over the runway at 500-600knots at 500ft compared to dropping GBUs from 20,000ft
True enough. As long as there aren’t strategically placed MANPADs it was always fun to be jinking around after the run dropping chaff/flare and looking over your shoulder to see your handiwork.
Icarus, thanks for the pics and confirming that it can still be done “the old way” with just a little more altitude. Might be a bit odd having to fly over an enemy airbase at 1,000-1,500ft… feels too exposed. But then again it could be remedied by a little more speed, I guess.
Yeah me I would feel like I was way too far above the runway for such an attack.
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Try setting up PROF 1 and 2 as 500’, RP 1 and RP 9 respectively and watch the CCIP pipper jump up and down as you swap between the profiles when flying in Durandal release territory. The pipper should jump 2000’ ahead (shorter PBIL) for RP 9 compared to RP 1 because it’s showing center stick.
Yup I thought of this late last night and it makes perfect sense. Always love learning something new to put into the tool box.
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Three aircraft attacking a runway at 20-40 degree offset would probably be closer to RL runway attacks, but I doubt Falcon would consider this a successful mission? If a runway had 5 sections and we only managed to destroy 2 or 3 sections due to this attack method, would it be successful? I’d love to be able to mix RL procedures with successful Falcon missions.
Probably to saw across the entire width of the runway and to hit taxi entry points like in the picture. Say you bombed down the axis of the runway but those tough soviet planes could still use the edges… Just speculating.
That sounds plausible. Is there any official word about why runway attacks are done with the offset, aside from the already-mentioned air defense concentration along the runway axis?
True enough. As long as there aren’t strategically placed MANPADs it was always fun to be jinking around after the run dropping chaff/flare and looking over your shoulder to see your handiwork.
Even MANPADs could be rendered useless I’ve had enough practice to see a few instances wherein an IR missile was fired at me and I never even knew about it. ACMI would always show that it was my countermeasures that saved the day.
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Three aircraft attacking a runway at 20-40 degree offset would probably be closer to RL runway attacks, but I doubt Falcon would consider this a successful mission? If a runway had 5 sections and we only managed to destroy 2 or 3 sections due to this attack method, would it be successful? I’d love to be able to mix RL procedures with successful Falcon missions.
The bigger key to this would be pre-flight in setting up a precision steerpoint to the piece of runway you have been assigned to. Just to verify you hit that specific piece so that BMS considers it killed. I would think that doing that and getting kills on 2 of 5 or 3 of 5 should be enough to register a successful mission.
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I can get a successful mission just taking out one or two runway segments with JDAMs, so only getting a couple with Durandals should result in success as well…
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That sounds plausible. Is there any official word about why runway attacks are done with the offset, aside from the already-mentioned air defense concentration along the runway axis?…
Runways aren’t the only piece of long, flat concrete at an airport. Durandals were big crater makers, designed to penetrate into the concrete and explode upwards for maximum damage. You don’t need to go all the way down the runway to make it unusable. You just need to make sure there isn’t enough space between giant craters. 2-3 aircraft abreast each other would be sufficient in most cases. Offset (IE Not 90 degrees), and stagger the interval on each aircraft to have the highest probability of cratering each runway and taxiway in different positions, increasing the likelihood that surfaces of different width and length all get rendered unusable.
Sidenote: It is possible in BMS to depart from a taxiway…
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Runways aren’t the only piece of long, flat concrete at an airport. Durandals were big crater makers, designed to penetrate into the concrete and explode upwards for maximum damage. You don’t need to go all the way down the runway to make it unusable. You just need to make sure there isn’t enough space between giant craters. 2-3 aircraft abreast each other would be sufficient in most cases. Offset (IE Not 90 degrees), and stagger the interval on each aircraft to have the highest probability of cratering each runway and taxiway in different positions, increasing the likelihood that surfaces of different width and length all get rendered unusable.
Sidenote: It is possible in BMS to depart from a taxiway…
And Harrison Ford can tell you it’s possible to land on one too.
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A lot of runways in Falcon are 5-segment (7 with the very end caps?) I think with the valuable ones being center and next to center. If you had a wingman target an offcenter and yourself span between the center and other offcenter that would be the 3 priority runway segments with a two ship. That takes out a lot of airbase points and should take a 100% operational and make it 0 for a little while. It would be kind of cool to make the runway segments a little more durable to require more than one hit.
As for satisfying the mission success/fail or going for a particular pilot rating… I don’t bother. I know what success looks like and whatever the strict game grading criteria are at best rigid and inflexible. If I’m the backup strike and primary strike nails it I don’t get upset at a mission fail because fail is the ideal outcome. It’s a bit of a challenge to re-calibrate yourself that way.
One could imagine a theoretical scenario where the furrow seeding technique would be used in real life, low or no threat anti-runway attack in the face of an advancing enemy to take out an about-to-be-lost field but no one feels like sticking around and demoing it from the ground.
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A lot of runways in Falcon are 5-segment (7 with the very end caps?) I think with the valuable ones being center and next to center. If you had a wingman target an offcenter and yourself span between the center and other offcenter that would be the 3 priority runway segments with a two ship. That takes out a lot of airbase points and should take a 100% operational and make it 0 for a little while. It would be kind of cool to make the runway segments a little more durable to require more than one hit.
As for satisfying the mission success/fail or going for a particular pilot rating… I don’t bother. I know what success looks like and whatever the strict game grading criteria are at best rigid and inflexible. If I’m the backup strike and primary strike nails it I don’t get upset at a mission fail because fail is the ideal outcome. It’s a bit of a challenge to re-calibrate yourself that way.
One could imagine a theoretical scenario where the furrow seeding technique would be used in real life, low or no threat anti-runway attack in the face of an advancing enemy to take out an about-to-be-lost field but no one feels like sticking around and demoing it from the ground.
I thought it was 2 Durandals per segment to get a destroyed instead of damaged, not one. Damaged will still get you to 0%, but IIRC they will be repaired much quicker. This was definitely the case at some point in the past, not sure if it has been adjusted. I’ve always run the “Axis” attack down the pipe in BMS dropping in pairs, manually via CCIP at Threshold, Middle, Departure Numbers to get Destroyed and 0% operational.
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As I understand it all the parts of an airbase contribute operational points, maybe 200, and if the destroyed elements drop the number below the 0-operational capability threshold (e.g. 100) then it shows 0% operational capability. The repairs still have to work on the elements themselves so it might take hours and days to repair back up to 0% if the base is super destroyed. Or if the base is just barely at 0% only a little work will start to show progress.
I don’t know if a similar treatment is given to the elements themselves, destroyed being a range of health and not all destroyeds being equal at zero. I doubt it though.