Tank column: which cluster, AD and BA?
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@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.
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Good info here…I’ll give both JSOW and 97’s a go next time, 97’s with a BA of 3000…see what happens…
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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.
CBU-87/103 use the BLU-97. CBU-97 have all been converted to CBU-105 because of the suicidal delivery parameters the -97 required.
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I figured CBU-97s were not used anymore. I mean a 900,000$ bomb and you don’t want to put a 25K WCMD kit on it? Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
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Talking about the cluster bombs… i checked their data files.
some questions:
is damage diameter linear to burst altitude and limited by MaxDamageDiameter parameter?
i.e.
damage diameter = min(MaxDamageDiameter, BA * damageDiameterBurstAltMultiplier) ?what does LethalAlt mean? does that mean the damage is maximized when the BA is at LethalAlt and will decay linearly to 0 when BA reaches inefficientAlt ? what damage will it be when BA is lower than LethalAlt? still maximum or decay to 0 ?
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I figured CBU-97s were not used anymore. I mean a 900,000$ bomb and you don’t want to put a 25K WCMD kit on it? Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
360,000$
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Unit cost isn’t that big of a clue as to what the bomb is worth. They take the entire project cost and divide by the number of bombs produced. If they made tens of thousands of them the cost would come down quite a bit. They still are “golden bullets.”
Conventional CBUs used in modern conflict 60,000
SFWs used… 6It’s good for a giggle but like the JSOW or DCS SFW it’s good to keep a perspective on things. Nerdgasming at it like my previous squadron did (ugh, everyone had 2-4 SFWs) was so distasteful.
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I prefer agm65s against tanks,CBUs against mechanized infantry(BMPs,IFVs)…About 1:1 CBU kill ratio during gulf war, in Vipers in the storm I remember f16s where tasked destroying what they tought was tank depot with more than 200 vehichles.Anyway it turned out that Iraqis moved the vehichles so they dropped 64 cbu87 and scored 0 kills.I belive it is not isolated case…Also A10s fired 5000 mavericks, so number of vehichles destroyed by CBUs is not that big.CBU97 during test apparently destroyed 10 BMPs every time, so carring 8 of them in perfect conditions could result in 80 destroyed BMPs.Point is,in case of ww3 CBUs would become area weapons used to destroy as much targets as possible, and during desert storm strategy was to make Iraqis surrender, not to kill all of them as they were no match for Coalition soldiers.
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so, yesterday i did 2 flights, one with 8 87’s and one with 8 97’s…
87’s: 16 kills incl. t55
97’s: 19 kills incl. t72so it’s clear for me now…my rockeye days are over and i’m sticking to either 87’s or 97’s when attacking columns…
edit: just got lucky (and an Air Medal )… 7 of 8 87’s hit targets: 38 kills!! :blowpar: