Use of air power
 

Hello everyone from a noob to the forum.

I've been playing an USA vs Iraq scenarion and noticed what i'd call unusual behaviour from my A-10s. I'm hoping whether someone can tell me if it's just a game querk or whether I'm just doing something wrong (probably the latter).

My A-10's are loaded with 4xcluster bombs and 4x500lb's. I'll target a hex as normal and the A10 will do it's run. When it reaches the target it then proceeds to drop the cluster bombs in a line as expected but then it continues on to drop the 4x500lb so the total bombing run is 8 hexes long!

If I want to hit a target with the iron bombs do i really have to place my target 4+ hexes to the side of my actual target? And do I have to use my cluster ammo as well?

Help please!

Thanks in advance.

Re: Use of air power
 

Thats really all you can do. I'm pretty sure all aircraft simply drop their dumb ordinance one or two at a time, in a line, in order.

Re: Use of air power
 

I usually disable the weapons I wish not to use upon assigning the attack run.

For example, I am assigning an F-16 loaded with mavericks to attack a T72, so I disable its cannon, since I know it will have no effect on the target and would just be wasting its ammo.

So if you want your A-10 to attack only with CBU's you need to disable all other weapons.

Re: Use of air power
 

If you go into the unit info screen before selecting aircraft for a strike, you should be able to "turn off" any ordnance you want.

I also would have thought that only if there were more iron bombs than CBUs it would've continued bombing. It has at least been my experience that aircraft fire one shot per weapon slot in each hex (that is if there all four weapon slots are bombs, then it should drop four bombs in each hex, until all bombs in all slots are exhausted). If there are more bombs in one slot than others it would then continue to drop until they were all expended or the aircraft reached the edge of the map.

I feel like this has come up before recently, but after the most recent patch.

Re: Use of air power
 

Lots of advice! Thanks everyone.

Just fired up the same scenario and tried experimenting. Things learnt are:

Switching off weapons helps.

If the strike plane spots a valid target for it's mavericks it will do a stand off attack and miss out the bombing run altogether! Still as long as it kills something I don't mind, though in the last experiment it one A10 used 2 mavericks to kill 2 men in a Strela team (an effective use of resources?)

Looks like I'll just have to put more thought into what I want, where and when. Switching off weapons will allow me to do that.

Thanks again!

Re: Use of air power
 

Oh and it does use all 4 iron bombs at once.

Ta.

Re: Use of air power
 

killing AAA/SAM might be good if you plan subsequent strikes, and are you sure that your A/C had bombs/rockets or ammo? If it does it will proceed the run

Re: Use of air power
 

Not if it has stand off weapons. It always uses them first, then will use deadfall weapons on later runs

Edit: Unless you disable them, obviously

Re: Use of air power
 

From what you've said my understanding is that it basically simulates a pilot approaching the combat zone, seeing a nice tasty tank and lighting it up at the maximum range it can and then 'going around' to come back to the combat zone and picking up a fresh target. And so on until the long range stuff is used up at which point it will come in close i.e. completely onto the map.

I'm in a PBEM USA vs Russia 2010 at the mo and my aircraft are currently turn a lot of his vehicles to scrap! Thanks for the tips! :happy: