The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of)
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@Kavelenko are the JSOWs only getting 2 truck kills per bomb now? I knew they were nerfed, but not quite that nerfed/bugged as CBU-97/105 and performing a little better better especially with targeting softer vehicles and adjusting attack axis effecting coverage (although maybe that’s bugged some) as discussed in this thread but I can’t find the kill numbers now.
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@Snake122 I haven’t tested JSOWs in 4.37. I stopped using them against armor in 4.36 when I discovered they were nerfed, I use them on A-A defense mainly but we never run low in our campaigns now.
I adapted to flying Campaigns without them which is a pity; they were a lot of fun.
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Finally got around to testing the CBU-105 in U2. I didn’t expect it to be fixed looking at the change logs, but it is definitely still an issue.
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@Snake122 what I saw when I read this post on my laptop:
woohoo!
what I saw when I looked again, on larger screen
definitely still an issue
doh!
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@airtex2019 sorry for burying the lede!
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@Snake122 said in The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of):
Finally got around to testing the CBU-105 in U2. I didn’t expect it to be fixed looking at the change logs, but it is definitely still an issue.
Agree…
but we need more explaination from Dev if the BA has influence or not on covered area…
I read that the BA (Burst Altitude) is calculated from sea level according Badboy…
while I see in the BMS doc " Burst altitudes are in feet Above Ground Level (AGL)"
linkFrom my feedback, no real impact on number of destroyed/damaged targets…
It seems to affect all cluster bombs in my knowledge…more, the effiency of CBUs remain very poor as if damages could not be caused without direct impact…making all these ammunitions de facto usable for its intended using.
from my point of view, I’d like the documentation to be much more explicit and to focus on what’s functional in the game…from this point of view, I find that the documentation is a notch below what was done by Reddog in the past: it was much clear …overall, that’s my feeling.
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@suhkoi69 said in The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of):
but we need more explaination from Dev if the BA has influence or not on covered area…
it does
I read that the BA (Burst Altitude) is calculated from sea level according Badboy…
while I see in the BMS doc " Burst altitudes are in feet Above Ground Level (AGL)"AGL is correct
It seems to affect all cluster bombs in my knowledge…more, the effiency of CBUs remain very poor
public references are welcome
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@suhkoi69 That’s a great find, very interesting !
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@suhkoi69 said in The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of):
@Tumbler31 https://ffi-publikasjoner.archive.knowledgearc.net/bitstream/handle/20.500.12242/2069/07-02345.pdf
Thanks, according to page 65 a cbu97/105 covers 80000m2, being a circle with 160 radius filled with 40 skeets. Around 2 to 4 hits are needed for a kill (page 53).
So 10 to 20 kills in that circle but the distribution is not uniform over the circle. So that requires some reduction as well.
I didn’t check the spacing of the vehicles in BMS, but I hope there aren’t 20 in combat formation in such a small space.
td;lr, with combat formation of vehicles, I would assume limited kills by a CBU 97/105
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@Tumbler31 I measured it out in this post, the problem is that it is not a radius , it’s an oval(yes though with some holes in it). My previous research should 460mx150m area and I believe we should be seeing more kills on the line columns especially that were within area, especially if attacked parallel on the axis of foward travel that causes the elongation, but even then regardless when the smaller side of the effective radius should result in more kills with neighboring vehicles, not to the level of old JSOW or DCS CBU-97/105, but slightly more effective. IMO, the 3-3-3 line columns should result in all three damaged almost all of the time and occasionally one of the next vehicle in the next group, or both of the 2 in 2-2-2 lines with occasional hits on the neighboring 2.
Right now the GBU-12 is just as effective as a single 500lb warhead, which honestly seems like a little too effective if two modern tanks are in 2-2-2 column, that seems a little too effective, I don’t think the splash damage of one direct hit T-80 especially is going to take out a neighboring one, but I’m not sure. Right now, if I can lase the target, a GBU-12 will kill just as many tanks as a CBU-97/105.
@Snake122 said in The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of):
@Seifer no it doesn’t but I right clicked two trucks I dropped on in an ACMI and got their coordinates and found that according to Google earth they are 141.98 m apart in the 3 close together before larger interval spacing.
Also that larger interval of the D-30 next to these trucks is 125.71 m apart from the next closest and destroyed truck, with then what seems to be then back to the 42m spacing between those three D-30s, 126m meters to the next 3 so on throughout the column and probably same spacing the 3-3-3-3… stationary line column in BMS seems to have. I haven’t checked the 2-2-2-2… line column yet.
Since I was targeted on the center truck of the three (I have an ACMI if you need it), that means that both the other trucks are within a 50m radius, well with the published CBU-105 area of 460 m × 150 m (but any weapon specs are always have a grain of salt with them). But debatably the D-30 next to the trucks were possibly too far away at 168m from the center truck depending on drop axis if this data is accurate.
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@Tumbler31 in this document, we can notice 3main effects produced by cluster bomblets: direct impact & fragmentation & blast.
concerning direct impact, the goal of weapon is to destroy mainly armored vehicule but strongly dependant to the direct hit probabilty
for the others effects, the soft & semi soft target and people are aimed with high kill probability in the covered area …
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In reality the SUU-64/65/66 canister dispenser associated with the CBU- 87, 89, 97, 103, 104, 105 weapons dispenses according to its burst fuze device which is almost always a radio proximity device but older strictly-time based fuze devices also exist. The USAF appears to use the FZU-39 while the USN tends to use the FMU-140. Both are roughly equivalent with the -140 having the option for an optional timed release and is more complex. This means it’s “AGL” although if you dropped it next to a sheer cliff it would trigger based on terrain presence in any direction. The FZU-39 has a barometric sense to prevent triggering until going downward which prevents premature triggering during low altitude tossing such as over hills. Even the WCMD type weapons have no communication with the proximity distance setting. There is no way to change the sensor in flight and aircraft data entry is for informational purposes only. WCMD deliveries that involve spin (CBU-103) can be changed over 1760 interface. All WCMD canisters fly without spinning and those that use spin to disperse begin to spin shortly before. The remaining types (CBU-105) use inflatable gas bags to dispense and never spin in any phase of flight.
The submunitions themselves are pretty simple. The CEM class of weapons consist of several CEBs (BLU-97) which are combined effect bomblets. The effects are: HEAT, frag, and incendiary. The HEAT penetration of the BLU-97 is substantial equal or better than the Mk 118 of the Rockeye II. They were definitely a threat to MBTs of the era of their development. All of these HEAT (and the SFW) are hit-to-kill. The secondary (tertiary) effects of the CEB/RE/SFW are pretty weak. They aren’t area weapons in the sense that they do their primary damage to an area. Their primary effects are extremely concentrated and secondary effects can be treated as a uniformly distributed “damage cloud”.
The problem, as I understand it, with BMS handling SFW is that it doesn’t simulate the guided(ish) nature of the weapon. If BMS treated the SFW as a simple hit-to-kill munition then at the number of SFWs in a weapon and the expected coverage area then actual hits on vehicles would be impossibly rare. There are only 40 SFWs in a CBU-97/105 and are only effective because they trigger based on detecting that they are pointed at something worth attacking. Instead BMS seems to model the 40 SFWs as a sort of equivalent unguided damage potential against a wide area. This is an imperfect simulation because in order to be properly destructive against a reasonable target array it is much, much too powerful against a concentrated or numerous target area. In the same way a Mark 84 will destroy all the trucks within a certain radius no matter if that is two trucks or two hundred, the damage isn’t “kill limited”. It will happily destroy as many or as few targets that are present within the blast radius. SFWs absolutely do not work this way in reality. A destroyed target effectively removes an SFW’s worth of destructive potential. Forty SFWs can at most destroy 40 armored targets. Drop 40 SFWs over 40 targets and you might get 40 destroyed vehicles but deployed over 400 targets cannot destroy 400. The Mark 84 bomb type thinking doesn’t apply.
Ideally the whole mechanization of the SFW chain would be modeled in detail a la DCS but short of that there’s really a no-win situation in how to model the thing as a simple cluster bomb. Without the “canceling” of a target damaging a target somehow not damaging a different target how can you make destruction that won’t go insane when the targets are densely packed?
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for (int i=0; i < 40; i++) { List<Target> targets = SelectVehiclesInCone(. . .); Target unluckySob = targets[RNG.Next(40)]; bomblet[i].Zap(unluckySob); }
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@airtex2019 Yup, throw in a random probability factor in there and that’d work great. This is well expressed in pseudo code.
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@Tumbler31 said in The CBU 97/105 Effectiveness (lack there of):
td;lr, with combat formation of vehicles, I would assume limited kills by a CBU 97/105
Yes, but something this small needs a guidance
5ha-1/80000m2On even (not) evenly spread battalion, it will hit 90%, just fewer targets.
And, can’t exactly assume it will destroy (even disable) main battle tank eg. T-90., but, APC’s and older tanks are penetrated OK.