I got spoiled by the GBU-39
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Tasked with a DEAD in the Balkans, loaded with 8 GBU-39s. “Piece of Cake” I thought. Pickled them about 20 miles from the target, and headed home knowing that those little guys almost never miss. Almost.
As I cruised on back to base, I decided to watch the carnage with the weapon view. I watched in horror as EVERY SINGLE ONE slammed into the side of a mountain. Looked at the debrief…aaaaand so did my wingie’s. 100% miss for both of us.
Note to self: Check elevation maps when mission planning. :eek:
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Yep, and what was your altitude?
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20K. The site was tucked right behind the mountain. Which doesn’t make much sense from their perspective, either, I guess. So I guess I failed to destroy a rather ineffectual SAM site.
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hiding in the shadow of a mountain might actually increase their lethality, actually. deadliest SAM shots from directly under you, after all.
this is especially in balkans, where high mountains are very plentiful. i recon everything i’m striking to making sure there isn’t a wannabe everest sitting directly in the path of my weapons. now you’ll do the same, i bet :^)
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Yeah, not making that mistake again. Stupid mountains.
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I was flying in a 3 ship that got murdered by an HQ and SAM battalion on the far side of a mountain range. We were NOE terrain-masking for an OCA strike and went up over the second-to-last ridge in trail formation and were dropped 1-2-3. Frustrating, but also something that would only happen in Falcon.
Here I am right before eating 1 of 3 SAMs. -
Tasked with a DEAD in the Balkans, loaded with 8 GBU-39s. “Piece of Cake” I thought. Pickled them about 20 miles from the target, and headed home knowing that those little guys almost never miss. Almost.
As I cruised on back to base, I decided to watch the carnage with the weapon view. I watched in horror as EVERY SINGLE ONE slammed into the side of a mountain. Looked at the debrief…aaaaand so did my wingie’s. 100% miss for both of us.
Note to self: Check elevation maps when mission planning. :eek:
[emoji2] [emoji3] [emoji2] [emoji1]
Sent from my F3213 using Tapatalk
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I was flying in a 3 ship that got murdered by an HQ and SAM battalion on the far side of a mountain range. We were NOE terrain-masking for an OCA strike and went up over the second-to-last ridge in trail formation and were dropped 1-2-3. Frustrating, but also something that would only happen in Falcon.
Here I am right before eating 1 of 3 SAMs.Hey my friend, since you brought it up, may as well help you debrief it. While having a relatively small engagement area, pound for pound within its WEZ the SA-15 is one of THE most lethal threats in the world. Being capable of 30G maneuvers and 12G at motor burn out, it is extremely difficult to defeat kinetically. So at best if you see it, the you might just get out alive…. even then you are probably going to get it.
It is a TELAR system, which means the missiles, fire control radar and acquisition radar are all carried on the same vehicle making it a highly mobile and dangerous threat. They can fire on the move.
Point is your ACMI tells all, you were not actually doing nap of the earth flight, more like contour or even simply low level flight., which is the key to the airframe loss on this flight. There is a major difference between the 3 types of very low level flight.
NOE - as low as vegetation will allow, so basically over the tree tops. Very challenging to fly, requires constant cross check (NEAR/FAR ROCKS, CHECK SIX).
Contour - following the general terrain pattern, so some ridges and hills will conceal you, but is not NOE.
Low level flying - low level typically flown with straight legs (think 1500 ft or so and below but not contour or NOE).
Even still, the SA-15 is capable of engaging targets between 30-150 ft AGL depending on your source data, so even with NOE (again per your ACMI you weren’t actually doing NOE) your threat level was still very high. So the reason all 3 were shot down was simply you were all flying through the heart of the SA-15s WEZ and made an easy target. If this was in the real world, it actually could of ended very similar to your flight, so it’s not something that only happens in Falcon, end of the day you flew right through the WEZ of the SAM with direct LOS on your aircraft, there was no terrain masking here.
You’d truly need to be flying actual NOE (smelling the tops of the pine trees low) to even have a chance at very low altitudes against this threat, or better yet, just simply ingress over the top at 15,000 and above (max E alt SA-15) and you’re all set.
Hopefully this clears up for you why it happened and how to prevent it as you go on down the road.
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Tasked with a DEAD in the Balkans, loaded with 8 GBU-39s. “Piece of Cake” I thought. Pickled them about 20 miles from the target, and headed home knowing that those little guys almost never miss. Almost.
As I cruised on back to base, I decided to watch the carnage with the weapon view. I watched in horror as EVERY SINGLE ONE slammed into the side of a mountain. Looked at the debrief…aaaaand so did my wingie’s. 100% miss for both of us.
Note to self: Check elevation maps when mission planning. :eek:
Pickled from 20 miles? I could never deliver a JDAM from that distance and specially at that 20k altitude.-
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The GBU-39 can do it. When there isn’t a bloody mountain in the way. I was well within parameters, even at 20K…I was maybe a bit higher actually due to a Strela in the area I think.
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…this is where you loft one.
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I think it can be programmed to drop at a 90 deg angle after a shallow approach. Release distance will acommodate for that, pickle time is slightly later. But since you didn’t know there were obstacles there is no need to change the default settings anyway, lol. Yeah, reconnaissance is a mighty sword.
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I think it can be programmed to drop at a 90 deg angle after a shallow approach. Release distance will acommodate for that, pickle time is slightly later. But since you didn’t know there were obstacles there is no need to change the default settings anyway, lol. Yeah, reconnaissance is a mighty sword.
NI afaik, only ROB is. but i need to check the manual.
ok so just checked the manual, impact angle and impact velocity are not implemented.
so what you are referring to is visible in the sms but do not do anything in the sim, visual gimmick for now onlyimpact azimuth does work and ROB range on bearing also works, i suggest you read up on it in the manual, it’s quite an interesting read
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Thank you for the helpful debrief Redshift. When we crested the hill and found the undiscovered SA15s and friends it was pretty much over. What I meant by “something that could happen only in Falcon” is that no other game or sim I know of allows you so much freedom to plan and such a dynamic environment to work with to allow for this no-win situation to occur. Certainly nobody would script a mission in DCS that would lead to a situation like this.
-Rabbit
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…I certainly hope they would…sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. That’s RL.
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Wow.
Wiki specifications for the later generations of the Tor (9K3xx/et cetera).
Kill probabilities for later versions are quoted as:
0.92-0.95 against aircraft
0.80-0.96 against helicopters
0.60-0.90 against cruise missiles (with an effective range of around 5 km/3 miles)
0.70-0.90 against precision munitions (LGBs, glide bombs, etc.)
0.90 against UAVsA new 9M338 missile has been developed by Almaz Antey offering improved range and precision. Its smaller size also enables the modified Tor-M2 to be equipped with 16 missiles as opposed to the original 8.
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Yup. So just fly smart, and steer clear of what will kill ya…
