Tank column: which cluster, AD and BA?
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Hi guys,
i’m at 0200, Day 2 of what seems to be the first campaign i’m actually going to finish one day.
I’m playing as cadet to keep the fun/learning ratio pleasant enough.
It’s a BAI mission with a couple of columns of T72’s and T55’s to kill.
At the moment i’m using Mk20’s in CCIP with a AD of 1 sec and a BA of 2000ft when i fly along the length of the column and ripple 4-5 Rockeye’s on one strafe.
It seems though that most of them miss or don’t kill the targets.
(I’m not using CCRP and ripple count 4 since i feel that it won’t really work with moving targets.)What bombs would you use (maybe CBU52’s or 87CEM?) and what Burst Altitude do you set them on?
87’s seem to wreak havoc at ADA sites, getting 8-10 kills on one drop.
Having read the tactical ref though, it seems the Mk20’s are best for Tanks.
Or maybe i’m just spoiled playing as cadet and shouldn’t expect more than 8-10 kills when loading up with 12 Rockeye’s…(ok, that too is a bit unrealistic)Thanks for your help.
sambucca -
I would give JSOWs a try. First I used them for an Airfield attack and got a blank stare on my face what they were doing with the engineer battallion on it. Though, I don’t know how efficient they are against hard targets like tanks. I’m not the CAS/BAI type, my preference are OCA and strategic strikes.
EDIT: I also experienced, that MK-20 are a bit weak now. Maybe my settings are not perfect. CBU-87 with 1 second / 1500ft seem to work better. But it also depends on your dive angle how big the “footprint” will be.
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Just one stat. During Operation Desert Srom the kill ratio of CBUs was about 1:1. Just check how many CBUs were used. Thousands, close or above 10k. The total vehicle kill in ODS was about 10k. This means tanks, APCs, IFVs, artillery, AAA, etc, but against static target were used some CBU.
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Just one stat. During Operation Desert Srom the kill ration of CBUs was about 1:1.
YEP!!!;)
It’s hard to tell people that CBU’s are not Weapons of Mass Destruction. They believe because they see range training videos of them killing multiple targets on a pass that they should kill everything in sight like a column of tanks. The training range has these targets closely bunched together whereas in RL or in Falcon the ground units are not sitting only a few feet away from each other, they’re more like a few hundred feet apart and a lot of the time they’ll be fleeing even though they stay in a line or column.
Killing 10 targets even in Falcon, especially armored vehicles is extremely unrealistic, even with CBU’s.
You should feel lucking if you are carrying 8 CBU’s and get 10 kills.
We’ll leave cptmtge out of the conversation, PLEASE!!!:lol:
RAM22
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Guided submunitions will of course produce better results against columns than seen in ODS.
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@RAM22
IMHO BMS4 made a big step forward to CBU modeling. Agains armors vey dense CBU pattern is required to achieve kill. Agains SAMs and other soft targets 4 CBU can achieve still remarkable destruction. If you wish to hund tanks you have to consider which is beter. AGM-65 or CBU. The decision would be more harder if natural inaccuracy of AG missiles - especially older types - are modeled.
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Out of interest: would a GBU-10 dropped between 2 tanks standing 10-20m apart disable / destroy them?
Both BMS and in reality. -
In RL? PEN or not PEN version? They are able destroy optics, machine gun, and likely damage the track. Destroying? Good question.
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PEN is penetrating version? In that case it would not be prefered I guess. Mainly my idea was target of opportunity. Drop the weapon on 1 tank to be certain of it’s destruction, or swat 2 flies with 1.
I assume GBU-10 and 12 can also be set to airburst in real, as they are basically the mk’s with guidance kits, no? -
@Mud:
Out of interest: would a GBU-10 dropped between 2 tanks standing 10-20m apart disable / destroy them?
Both BMS and in reality.Depends on the tank, but I do not think it would destroy it. I think a GBU-12 direct hit would be better. What did most of the aircraft carried during Libyan attacks? GBU-10, 12, 31 or 38?
@Mud:
PEN is penetrating version? In that case it would not be prefered I guess. Mainly my idea was target of opportunity. Drop the weapon on 1 tank to be certain of it’s destruction, or swat 2 flies with 1.
I assume GBU-10 and 12 can also be set to airburst in real, as they are basically the mk’s with guidance kits, no?LGB, AFAIK, can’t be set to air burst. Air burst fuzes need to be installed on the nose, LGB kit will get on the way
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cbu52/72 = against infantry/anti-material, it’s essentially napalm with some pellets BA 1000
CBU 87 = against everything, most effective against light armored and unarmored vehicles, not as effective as 97 against tanks, I always use these in SEAD role, BA 1500-2000
CBU 94 = power plants, it’s a graphite bomb, you will rarely/never use it in BMS
CBU 97 = for tanks, but it also has a secondary effect against “general purpose” targets. The general purpose effect is not as good as 87. BA 2000-3000 -
Fullscreen: http://c.pictureupload.us/61bc5d27f185be444da44a3ae9d6c8c2.jpg
Furter tip:
If you have a known (spotted) convoy as target and lets say you have 8 clusterbombs loaded, a good way to find out what spacing you need is also to find out the total lenght
of that particular convoy by bringing it up in the recon screen.
Place the convoy horizontally in the recon-screen till the most left and the most right vehicle touches the recon screen-edges.
Now you have a value on the left buttom –> slantrange, which tells you the total length of that convoy.
Lets say our convoy is 6000feet long and we have 8 clusterbombs…make the math: 6000feet / 8 = 750 feet spacing / RP 8. to cover the whole convoy in one path. -
Well, you could do that but… These weapons don’t have a 750 foot diameter coverage when they hit. Check the Tacref–many at most have a 400 foot total coverage or so. From my own experience, depending on the munition, at most I can squeeze 275 feet or so usable coverage out of a bomb and that’s with a high BA.
So, sure, you can cover a 6000 ft convoy but you’re probably not going to take a lot of them out if you do so. I argue you’re better off going in with CCIP and shrinking the spacing down to 200-275 feet (sometimes less depending on the munition) and drop 4 per ripple or 2 per ripple.
Play around with them on KOTAR–you’ll see that the 87’s have a much larger swath than the 97’s where the 97’s explode in a semi-star pattern. BA to a point stops mattering as well from what I’ve seen.
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A convoy is mostly spaced in groups of three, that changes the hitchances, but you are right.
In a 2ship attack one would take the north and the other the south end ie with less spacing in order to achieve most damage.
CCIP i dont do often as it requires visial range target sight altitute, which i try to avoid (an airdefense weapon has “better eyes” than i do, and big-zoom-stalker-FOV is a big taboo in my philosphy, but thats just me).
Most of my CCRP-runs are about 10k-15k feet alt, in other words i dont see what im bombing, yet i can nail it right on, simply by marking the front and the end vehicle of the convoy from “save” distance and then choosing my attack profile and my entry aligned with the convoy.One tacview i still had saved demonstrating the above: www.as-private.com/ACMI/clusterfukckingdeluxe.acmi
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@Mr_Blastman:
Well, you could do that but… These weapons don’t have a 750 foot diameter coverage when they hit. Check the Tacref–many at most have a 400 foot total coverage or so. From my own experience, depending on the munition, at most I can squeeze 275 feet or so usable coverage out of a bomb and that’s with a high BA.
So, sure, you can cover a 6000 ft convoy but you’re probably not going to take a lot of them out if you do so. I argue you’re better off going in with CCIP and shrinking the spacing down to 200-275 feet (sometimes less depending on the munition) and drop 4 per ripple or 2 per ripple.
Play around with them on KOTAR–you’ll see that the 87’s have a much larger swath than the 97’s where the 97’s explode in a semi-star pattern. BA to a point stops mattering as well from what I’ve seen.
The grafic reprensentation should bot be confused with the bomb damage assigned to the targets. Both effects are independent on each other.
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The grafic reprensentation should bot be confused with the bomb damage assigned to the targets. Both effects are independent on each other.
Well they shouldn’t be, at least, for CBU’s. i.e. you shouldn’t destroy stuff outside the cluster mass. Iron bombs are different though. You miss with a MK-82 on a tank, even if the tank is in the explosion or on the edge, it prolly won’t be destroyed.
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If it is modelled correctly the weapon of choice for tanks should be the CBU 97.;)
The CBU 97 or CBU 105 in its wind corrected version is:- " an unpowered, top attack, wide area, cluster munition, designed to achieve multiple kills per aircraft pass against enemy armor and support vehicles. After release, the TMD opens and dispenses the ten submunitions which are parachute stabilized. Each of the 10 BLU-108/B submunitions contains four armor-penetrating projectiles with infrared sensors to detect armored targets. At a preset altitude sensed by a radar altimeter, a rocket motor fires to spin the submunition and initiate an ascent. The submunition then releases its four projectiles, which are lofted over the target area. The projectile’s sensor detects a vehicle’s infrared signature, and an explosively formed penetrator fires at the heat source. If no target is detected after a period of time, the projectiles automatically detonate, after a preset time interval, causing damage to material and personnel.
Should look like this:-
Or here, much clearer view of the “skeets”:-
I have never had the kind of success, with this weapon, in any Falcon version, that I expected from what was on the “tin”;)
Plink em with 500Lb LGB’s, worked in Iraq!
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F4AF had a good PK with CBU97s I used to get good kills with them, DCS A-10C models them quite well since unlike F4 they model each skeet etc. I’ve used them on BMS at 3000ft BA they seem to nail a few vehicles.
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The CBU-97 (105) is the “magic bullet” type of weapon and the best for a tank column. Every time one is dropped a town in the midwest has to do without a library. Second is probably the CBU-87 CEM or maybe the old Rockeye. CEMs aren’t really “T-72 killers” they have a mix of hard target and soft target capability submunitions but the hard penetration isn’t overwhelming against MBTs. It’s good but not AGM-65 good.
AD is not a weapon effectiveness setting, just a safety feature. Lofting a CBU-58 you wouldn’t want it to arm before it had reached its peak height. The radio prox fuzes aren’t too picky what they detect. BA/spin is your density control. For a tank column you want DENSE (assuming -87/-100s). Most AF manuals specify a certain minimum overlap in CBU patterns, 60% if I recall. If your patterns are 500x500’ with 60% overlap then you’re going to need 300’ spacing for example.
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Since the CBU-97 contains BLU-97/B bomblets, I would strongly suggest the AGM-154A with same submunitions. You can fire it from outside the “danger zone” and they are somewhat weapons of mass destruction in BMS, because even the bomblets are guided. On my last planned-CAS mission I wiped out 27 vehicles with 4 JSOWS, although it is less effective against MBTs.