Any good tutorials on using cluster bombs?
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What are you attacking? And how are they spaced out on the ground?
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You also need to figure in ground altitude when setting your burst altitude. If the TGP shows the target at 2,000ft AGL, it’s usually a safe bet to set your burst altitude so something like 4,000 AGL or so (depending on the type of weapon employed).
Cheers, Uwe
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Well I’m trying, and it’s tougher cuz I have night atm in the campaign but I’ve just managed to wipe out 12 vehicles with a single CEM bomb. Holy shit.
What I mean guys is how you yourself employ CBUs, what exactly is your procedure of approach and attack and perhaps bomb settings - perfectly if in a video form somewhere.
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You also need to figure in ground altitude when setting your burst altitude. If the TGP shows the target at 2,000ft AGL, it’s usually a safe bet to set your burst altitude so something like 4,000 AGL or so (depending on the type of weapon employed).
Cheers, Uwe
2,000 ft AGL? Isn’t that a flying target? Or 2,000 ft AMSL?
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I’ve been dropping alot of CBU lately on our server. CBU-87 mostly, but I do try to match the weapon to the target. CBU-52/58 against softer targets, -87 against mixed battalions like Motor Rifles or Mech, and -97 or Rockeyes against armor. CEM is my favorite though. It’s sort of the weapon equivalent of the Viper itself. Not the best against anything, but the best against everything.
This is a complicated subject, since there are many factors to consider – target type, stationary/moving, threat environment, weather/visibility – and probably most important – how they are deployed.
But in general this is my approach. I recon the map looking for the most profitable targets. These are full strength battalions deployed in column. Now, F4 has an issue with sometimes placing multiple battalions on top of each other, so that when you recon the target you might see three or four battalions all deployed together. Of course this is exploiting the campaign engine, but they’re there, after all.
Further, I look for these battalions that are stationary. Click status and see if they have a ETA. If ‘None’, they are stationary. If I am selecting this as my target, I continue to use recon to both select my strike heading and to set a precision steerpoint. Rotate the recon screen to find the heading that matches the deployment axis. Stationary battalions are almost always oriented 90/270 or 000/180. I ripple all of my CBU if on a column, so I select what I determine to be the center enemy unit and set as the precision steerpoint. BMS ripple deliveries place this point at the center of the string, so some bombs will fall short of it and some long. If your target is underway, then select a unit near the head of the column (will need to be done in-mission once acquired) so that the column will drive under your bombs as they fall.
Drag the strike heading flight path to match the deployment axis you found in recon. You can click briefing to double check you’ve got it right. I like to set my IP to 20 miles on every ground attack mission I do. It gives me time to turn on the heading, switch modes/sensors, acquire the target, designate and get lined up.
On the ramp/during taxi/enroute I set my bombs up. I use a 6-minute taxi time so there is usually plenty of time to do this on the ground. There is no single formula here, But as a general rule of thumb with CBU-87 I will set it to ripple all (four usually, sometimes eight) with 555-777 feet spacing and a BA of 3000 feet. I set the loft angle to 25 and fuse to nose, arm delay 1.00. In addition, rippling more bombs with longer spacing puts your jet at more risk since you need to fly your delivery profile for longer.
I use three main methods of delivery CCIP, CCRP and lofting. CCIP is the most dangerous, and I usually opt for one of the others. CCIP tends to bring you down in to the IR SAM envelope, and just about every full-strength enemy battalion is going to have IR SAMs. The added accuracy of CCIP is not needed with CBU.
CCRP works great and I will use this if I don’t expect the enemy can touch me at my attack altitude, usually around 17,000 feet. Just fly over, select your precision steerpoint while lined up and pickle. Kills.
Lofting is my new favorite thing. Lofting CBU from high altitude is accurate (no wind effect on the long fall time) and safe and cozy. I love dropping CBU this way. Look at it this way. When you drop CCIP you will be looking over your shoulder to see your bombs (and incoming SAM trails) from 9,000 feet. Lofting them you are doing the same (sans trails) from 22,000 feet. One is very much safer.
So the bottom line for me is to do the recon work, find the profitable targets and set myself up for success. That’s the key. Good target, matched heading and a precision steerpoint. The actual attack is nothing special. It is the recon work that destroys multiple targets. Of course if you are attacking scattered, wedge-deployed units this doesn’t work.
A few screens from various attacks flown on the server last week.
Here is a 25-degree lofted attack started at 15,000 feet against a battalion of rocket artillery in KTO Iron Fortress. Hard to see from such a safe location
Good fires, 28 kills
Here is the view you want to see just before you drop your bombs. Perfectly aligned along the deployment axis of the target. I always use steerpoint 99 and just calling up the steerpoint you will be centered on your target. As long as you have set up your flight path properly, all you need to do is fly your cues and pickle. This attack was 55 kills.
The target was obscured by solid overcast, so I swung out from over it to have a look through the sniper pod. Good fires
I point out the kills not to say how awesome I am, but to highlight the ease with which these attacks occurred, and how profitable they were. I mean, I am lofting CBU from high altitude for cryin’ out loud, not a whole lot of skill required there. The key is what I did before I left the ground.
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I’ve been dropping alot of CBU lately on our server.
No wonder I couldn’t log on…you blew it up! :rofl:
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Haha, I think I actually did once. We’ll have the server back up in a week or so. It’s running ARMA right now.
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Haha, I think I actually did once. We’ll have the server back up in a week or so. It’s running ARMA right now.
awesome!
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Hey Wildcat, as long as I don’t drop any more CBU on the server, it should be. Stay tuned.
A follow up to the ‘stacked’ battalions that can generate high kill scores and help win your campaign, there are at least three of these in KTO Iron Fortress very close to the front lines that are easy to hit. I can give more detail if anyone needs it, but there are stacked rocket artillery and stacked self-propelled artillery north of Kunsan. Another group of stacked SPA is north of Taegu. Each hit will kill units of 3-5 battalions at the same time.
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2,000 ft AGL? Isn’t that a flying target? Or 2,000 ft AMSL?
AMSL of course (the value that’s indicated by the TGP). Sorry for the mix-up & thanks for the correction!
Uwe
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Well thus far I’ve managed to score 21 kills with CEMs including some T72. Was going after an infantry battalion which moved away, but spotted a nice moving line on the radar. CCRP failed to release bombs for whatever reason when I pickled so immediately rolled in with CCIP in an almost face to the ground dive with it being pitch black and only the diamond for help. Then as I was recovering turned around and saw huge wall of explosions going one after the other. Shot 2 MiG19 as a bonus and got the distinguished flying cross. Awesome.
In no small part thanks to Dbond’s tips, especially ripple separation which I was setting at 400ft before
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That’s awesome man, congrats on the decoration. Ideally, the spacing you set would provide a tiny overlap between each footprint, which is in turn a function of burst altitude, and to some extent, weapon type. The 600-700 foot range seems to be a good one to achieve this with BAs at 3000 feet AGL. I can never quite tell, so much fire, smoke and destruction. But it seems to give an acceptable coverage of the target. With four CBU you’re covering about a half mile of the column, and at 3000 feet you still have high lethality of the weapon.
As for the failed CCRP drop, I would guess it’s flight path corrections, or you are consenting too early. You need to be rock steady. Next time try waiting until the countdown to release is 3 seconds and then consent. Should fix that issue for you. I had the same problem. Your story about a failed CCRP drop and then sudden CCIP attack was me for a long time. But I took too many missiles up the pipe doing this. I would cruise over at 18,000 feet or whatever, fail my CCRP drop, then roll inverted in a panic and pull to 30 or 45 degress and transition to CCIP. But by the time I got my bombs off I was screaming through 12,000 feet and by the time I recovered I was at 9,000, and that’s a really dangerous place to be.
Give lofting a try too, it works really well in BMS and keeps you out of the IR SAM envelope, but so does CCRP I suppose. Lofting gives you some standoff anyway.
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The CEMs seem a little overpowered against heavy armor. I’ve heard desired bomblet densities which result in pairs of cans being dropped with HOF like 900’ or less. If 4 cans are dropped the overlap is 60% or more. If you do the arithmetic of a T-series tank footprint in square meters times 202 (or 404 or 808) bomblets and what size circle has this area, it’s not a very big radius at all. In fact let’s do it.
A T-72 is 25 m^2. If you want to put one bomblet per that area times 404 (pair drop) it’s 10,000 m^2. The radius of that area is 57m. The setting in a chart I have is you want a 500’ HOF (‘B’ setting) with spin 500 RPM (0-2500 RPM available). That’s super dense and a pair and just hoping for a 1 bomblet per tank area density.
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You also need to figure in ground altitude when setting your burst altitude. If the TGP shows the target at 2,000ft AGL, it’s usually a safe bet to set your burst altitude so something like 4,000 AGL or so (depending on the type of weapon employed).
Cheers, Uwe
The MSL elevation of the target does not matter. The burst altitude is set for AGL only.
Each bomb has a small doppler radar proximity fuse. 4000 ft BA seems extremely high.
Literally off the chart:So if you want the cluster bomb to deploy at 2000 ft AGL, punch in 2000.
FMU-140/B DISPENSER PROXIMITY FUZE
The FMU-140/B (fig. 1-13) has an optional arm
and fire (timer) mode. It is used with the Rockeye II and
Gator weapons. The FMU-140/B is a self-powered
doppler radar device acting as a radar altimeter. Arming
times and functioning altitudes are variable and are
preflight selectable on the fuze faceplate, located on the
side of the fuze. In the proximity mode, if the
preselected altitude is reached before the fuze has had
time to arm, or the dispenser is released below the
pre-selected altitude, the fuze will have the potential to
function anytime after arming. If the fuze has not
functioned by the time it reaches an altitude of 300 ±25
feet, it will function at that time.
Page 1-16 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/navy/nrtc/14313_ch1.pdf -
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That’s a really cool chart, thanks. But is that how it is in the sim? You cannot set spacing longer than 999 right? With a 2000 foot diameter footprint at 3000 BA, this spacing would see each bomb overlap the previous by half. Seems the footprints are smaller. I’ll test it.
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Really? 3000 feet is pretty high. Looks plausible to me:
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Thanks for the CCRP tip but I have two more questions. First is I’ve read that when doing CCRP you should put the radar crosshair into the middle of the column - but I seem to miss too many vehicles in the head of the column that way - so is that true?
And a second one - can release height screw with CCRP? When releasing at 18k I drop 2-3 CBUs and the rest does not go and I have to do another, way less effective pass because everyone is dodging in panic down below. But releasing at 13k seems to drop all 8 reliably