Jets & Planes but no UAV's here.

[shahadi]

Interesting reports from the first Gulf War illustrating the tenacity of precision guided munitions:

"The reaction of Iraqi forces to direct precision air attacks indicated that the traditional powerful psychological impact of air attack had, at last, been matched by the equally powerful impact of actual destruction. Two quotes serve to highlight this, the first from an Iraqi battalion commander interrogated by a US Marine Corps intelligence specialist a month after the war ended:

Interrogator: How many of your soldiers were killed by the air war?

Iraqi Officer: To be honest, for the amount of ordnance that was dropped, not very many. Only one soldier was killed and two were wounded. The soldier that was killed did not die as a result of a direct hit, but because the vibrations of the bomb caused a bunker to cave in on top of him.

Interrogator: So, then you feel the aerial bombardment was ineffective?

Iraqi Officer: Oh no! Just the opposite! It was extremely effective! The planes hit only vehicles and equipment. Even my personal vehicle, a ‘Waz’ was hit. They hit everything! [emphasis in original text]

The second is from an Iraqi general reflecting morosely on the war:

During the Iran war, my tank was my friend because I could sleep in it and know I was safe ... During this war my tank became my enemy ... none of my troops would get near a tank at night because they just kept blowing up." (Hallion, Richard P, "PRECISION GUIDED MUNITIONS AND THE NEW ERA OF WARFARE",http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/docs/paper53.htm)

I get it our game is a game not a simulation. However, I would expect modern era aircraft with smart munitions to hit a designated target far in excess of 50%.

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[DRG]

Now on the list to investigate

Don

[Imp]

I get it our game is a game not a simulation. However, I would expect modern era aircraft with smart munitions to hit a designated target far in excess of 50%.

I agree they sometimes get distracted by a less valuable target on the approach line especially if it shoots at them so you need to think about the approach.
Problem with air is same as artillery though in that it comes in a few turns later so you need to predict where the target unit will be & hope for the best. Unlike artillery it will normally hit something but it may not be the target you were hoping for.

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I've been saying this for sometime now in this thread and elsewhere. THANK YOU for for giving these precision weapons another look. I well remember watching a B-1 flying low and level dropping bombs on a trench line on the evening news no one walked away from it. After that happened a few times, the mere act of dropping leaflets on or near trenched or other defensive positions saying surrender or you'll be bombed was enough to convince them to do just that. The video on the news reminded me of the Italian mass surrenders in Africa during WWII.

We cannot deny technologies continuing advancement. However once we get to "kill capable" laser weapons I think I'll just take a long holiday and play with what I have prior to that time. I know when the time comes down the road I'll be submitting aircraft with SNIPER, LITENING etc. targeting pods. We are making progress and NLOS has lead the way from the last patch.

We're getting there as Andy and Don are still managing to squeeze out and manipulate the software to give us the best game platform possible.

Regards,
Pat

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

Couldn't get this on my last in time. Some might find this interesting...
http://hdvideo18.com/video/one-bomb-...eo/CY9gojFu-_U
http://www.military.com/video/aircra.../2081600103001

In the first video open up the info section for the weapons data.

Nice straight and narrow. Makes me wonder if the bomb drop zone in the game is too long and should be shorter with a more "with a focused punch" if you will.

I had at one time early in this thread videos showing incoming test and actual bombing runs on targets using targeting pods. Those targets were locked on at distances out to 50Km+. That was 1st at best 2nd Gen pods. Those pods are now into their 5th or 6th Gen depending on manufacturer. Accuracy is no longer really an issue for the major players. Russia was slower than most and only really got into the "game" in the last few years.
Those post are in here, some saw them I believe and commented on them however, seems funny that those videos became "dead links" in less then a few weeks. I'm thinking they were not meant to be posted by I believe Lockheed Martin at the time. Maybe they might work now as the systems are more advanced.

Regards,
Pat

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I'm slow on the edits tonight-sorry!

The post on referred to concerning the Targeting Pods in located on
Page 6 Post 56 12/11/2011 on my computer. Those videos are indeed still dead (404 error code.) however the posts that follow indicate some watched those videos with comment. Also my above distances were incorrect and should read 25NM and 35NM for those targeting videos.

And now I see what they did, found new videos and some I recognize from that above mentioned Post, they've covered some of the data. However there's a very quick video of a boat in the water taken from 40NM out in the upper right corner.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/Sniper.html

Some more from the original videos the air base scene was from the distance noted in my 11 Dec. 2011 post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi9d8bstWsE

Another video...
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/201..._wipe_out.html

Data points...
http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets...niper-pod.aspx
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/...the-mark-0562/
http://www.lmnetcents.com/us/product...-delivery.html
http://www.lmnetcents.com/us/products/Sniper.html

Well have a great day I need some sleep!

Regards,
Pat

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I gave the wrong "scene" from the video I referred to in my last concerning the boat shot. I have "captured" the right "scene" below of possibly a small fence line protected production or storage facility. For scale note the white truck in the upper right center portion of the facility or vehicles just outside of it along the bottom length of it. The location of the distance mark in the snapshot is still in the upper right @ 40nm.



If your a "true baseball fan" in a couple of days you'll know where I'll be for the next week. Take Care!

Regards,
Pat

[Suhiir]

I can only speak reliably from my own experience (of course).

While "smart" weapons do tend to hit/kill their target more often in reality then they do in WinSPMBT I've also VERY frequently seen the same already dead tank with multiple hits. From 10,000 ft a tank is a tank on a TV monitor, a thermal hot spot is a thermal hot spot, there's no way to determine if its functional vice one already killed by someone else. This tends to explain some of the inflated "kill" reports made by pilots. In game this sort of thing cannot be directly simulated, but the reduced chance to hit/kill we have in WinSPMBT can be viewed as representing this.

It's also well known that dumb bombs are relatively ineffective vs armored targets unless they're delivered via dive bombing type attacks (ask anyone from a WW II Panzer Division that was attacked by the USAF ... tanks were rarely destroyed, the support vehicles however were decimated), and that sort of thing also isn't represented in the game (well ... sort of ... some aircraft are given a higher "Fire Control" rating). WinSPMBT represents aircraft as they are generally used by most of the worlds nations ... a single 10,000 foot pass where the pilot has perhaps a couple seconds to locate a tiny, to them, target; and a tank is a tank from that altitude, enemy or friendly. My personal "problem" is, being a Jarhead, I'm use to aircraft flown by semi-suicidal USMC/USN pilots at tree top heights directed by skilled aerial observers. Something WinSPMBT cannot represent.

While the incidence of friendly fire when targeting close to your own forces is much higher then I'd expect in reality this is probably due to the visibility code (this is my OPINION since I have no clue exactly what the game code looks like). An aircraft can see the units on it's own side, it may, or may not, see the enemy. So if it sees 20 friendly units in it's target area and 5 enemy it's going to hit a friendly one 80% of the time. Without a massive code rewrite there is probably nothing that can be done about this.

Don and Andy have, and continue to, work wonders with the game. But some things are pretty much beyond their control and others are subjective.

[shahadi]

In our game, the playability of fixed and rotate aircraft could use some tweaking. I offer the following observations while developing my latest scenario:

I designated a 82mm mortar to a Harrier, selected a 250 lb SDB for the mission. A turn later the Harrier targeted a fortified House 700m away from the designated target.

That should not happen. The Harrier should have fired on the mortar not the fortified house.

I had a Warthog approach over a Taliban squad, it expended it's stores on the squad and did not attack it's assigned target, a 82mm mortar. I would have the Warthog use cannon or guns on the Taliban squad (target of opportunity), but it should have attacked it's designated target too, completing it's mission with remaining rockets and bombs.

I switched from COIN to fighter bomber with similar results. I increased visibility from 22 to 70, similar result on the first sortie. On the second sortie the Harrier and Warthog knocked out their targets.

I would expect the Harrier or Warthog with vision settings at 40 to successfully fire on the designated target regardless of visibility at 22 or 70.

These observations I offer to assist in the understanding of what the game is doing and how player expectations may differ.

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[DRG]

if a "better" target is seen , the aircraft WILL attack it. Some of that issue CAN be modified with the direction of the attack