Aircraft weapons

[kevineduguay1]

DRG,

There are pick out there on the net you just have to look. One of the sites I looked at had a pic of a Serbian M-84 that was destroyed by the GAU-8. No big holes just the turret blown off with a US GI standing on it. It had that funny burnt looking color of the M47 Patton that you mentioned. I saw that one too but never mentioned it because as you mentioned this does not compare to a modern MBT.

On another note I did some tests last night and by giving the GAU-8 sabot ammunition (9 Pen) and a weapons range of 130 and a sabot range of 130 it performed much better but was no uber weapon. About 1 in 3 or 4 passes were leathal to Iraqi T-72s. I also gave the gun a HE Pen of 2 and kept the 27 He kill value. This kept it effective against unarmored vehicles. Have not tested against infantry yet.
Another idea I tried was to give the A-10 was a AP value of 7 to match the number of tubes. This had little effect when loaded with only HE ammo but seemed to be to much with Sabot. So I put the AP value back to 1. More experiments to come.

[DRG]

What is the point of giving it a range of 130 when the game only fires aircraft weapons from 4 or 5 hexes away? You must have noticed that while running your tests. Give it 255 is you want it won't make the least bit of difference.

Changing the AP value to 7 won't work because that # of guns code for class 11 weapons is broken ( has been right back to SP2 ) but has been fixed for the next patch and, as I said, that "trick" won't work for Helo weapons.

Don

[DRG]

kevineduguay1 said:
One of the sites I looked at had a pic of a Serbian M-84 that was destroyed by the GAU-8

That's great Kevin... how about sharing the URL ?
Don

[kevineduguay1]

DRG,

I know that most all air gun attacks start a 250 to 300 meters in the game.
The longer range figures are to enhance the effects of the sabot rounds at close range. And it worked. Some of the reports read as follows, Pen 14, Arm 6 etc. a Pen of 14 was the highes I think and worked down to a low of 2 to 4 Pen.
I even had mobility kills. I'm going to try this with a sabot pen of 7 and see how effective that is.

Here is another tidbit I found,

"Stolfi, Dr. R., Dr. J. Clemens, and R. McEachin, Combat Damage Assessment Team A-10/GAU-8 Low Angle Firings Versus Individual Soviet Tanks, February-March 1978, Volume 1, Air Force/56780/February 2, 1979.

In this test an A-10 aircraft attacked two combat-loaded individual Soviet T-62 tanks in five missions totaling seven passes; technicians rehabilitated the two vehicles after each pass. The aircraft were seldom higher than 200 feet in altitude; firings were initiated between 2768 and 4402 feet and terminated at ranges of 1587 to 3055 feet at dive angles of 1.8 to 4.4°. The bursts ranged from 120 to 165 rounds.

Altogether 93 DU rounds struck the tanks during the seven passes, including no impacts on one pass. The ratio of impacts to rounds fired was 0.10. Of the 93 impacts, 17 penetrated the armored envelopes for a ratio of perforations to impacts of 0.18. The report noted many of the side or rear impacts that did not penetrate the armor nonetheless extensively damaged the tanks' exterior suspension components, whereas all the rounds that hit the tanks' front caused minimal damage. These results reinforced the strategy of attacking tanks from the side or rear to optimize damage potential."

[DRG]

Yes, strangly enough that is part of a quote I was about to post.....


How effective are DU shells anyway? Browsing through various literature about the Persian Gulf War one will encounter wonderful fairytales of British Challenger tanks penetrating Iraqi tanks with DU rounds at over five kilometers away and American Abrams tanks destroying two T-72s with one DU round at a distance of nearly 3 kilometers. One will also read stories of A-10s destroying scores of Iraqi tanks in one pass with their 30-mm DU shells. During the operation "Allied Force" against Yugoslavia stories of Serbian tanks being destroyed left and right attracted media attention just as well. After destroying hundreds of Serbian tanks in their own minds, NATO commanders were finally forced to admit the unimpressive reality.

Colorful folklore aside, in 1978 the US Army and the Air Force conducted a test in which an A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft engaged a pair of stationary Soviet-made T-62 tanks. The overall effectiveness of A-10s and their DU rounds did not exceed 2 percent:

"In this test an A-10 aircraft attacked two combat-loaded individual Soviet T-62 tanks in five missions totaling seven passes; technicians rehabilitated the two vehicles after each pass. The aircraft were seldom higher than 200 feet in altitude; firings were initiated between 2768 and 4402 feet and terminated at ranges of 1587 to 3055 feet at dive angles of 1.8 to 4.4 degrees. The bursts ranged from 120 to 165 rounds.

Altogether 93 DU rounds struck the tanks during the seven passes, including no impacts in one pass. The ratio of impacts to rounds fired was 0.10. Of the 93 impacts, 17 penetrated the armored envelopes for a ratio of penetrations to impacts of 0.18. The report noted many of the side or rear impacts that did not penetrate the armor nonetheless extensively damaged the tanks' exterior suspension components, whereas all the rounds that hit the tanks' front caused minimal damage. The results reinforced the strategy of attacking tanks from the side or rear to optimize damage potential." 12

The result of this exercise was fully confirmed during the operation "Allied Force" despite the upgrades of the A-10 and its weaponry. For tens of kilograms of DU introduced into the environment an A-10 has a slight chance of making a hole in a tank, which may or may not destroy it.

[kevineduguay1]

http://www.military.cz/usa/air/in_se...u8/gau8_en.htm

This one is an Iraqi T-72. It may be the same photo I was talking about. Still looking.

[Marek_Tucan]

My guess is that the cause of the final state of that T-72 is M-Rick, not GAU.

[kevineduguay1]

More stuff,

"This report describes firings of the A-10/GAU-8 weapon system against individual combat loaded Soviet main battle tanks. The pilots making the firing passes attacked at low altitude and corresponding low dive angles simulating movement through a hostile air defense system. Ammunition used in the attacks comprised 30mm armor piercing incendiary rounds, which proved to be effective damage agents against substantial areas of the Soviet T-62 tanks used as targets. The pilots in six successful firing passes (one additional pass resulted in a miss) scored 95 impacts on target, which included 17 perforations through the armored envelope. The six tanks which were impacted received damage physically assessed as ranging from catastrophic in the case of two combat vehicles to negligible in the case of one tank attacked directly from the front. (Author)"

" Meant to be 30 Years Ago": That's the view of Air National Guard Lt. Col. Donald Henry of the "new" A-10C, which he helped bring to fruition as Air Combat Command's ANG A-10 program element monitor and which he flew in combat in Afghanistan. "The A-10C is the heaviest modernization program the A-10 has ever gone through," he said and added, "This is what the A-10 was meant to be 30 years ago." The new avionics, fully integrated targeting pods, and smart weapons, such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition, have produced an "effects-based upgrade" that enhances pilot situational awareness, said Henry. During one close air support mission, Henry said that the C model Hog enabled him to drop a JDAM "right in the middle of the target." He added: "I could see exactly where the friendlies were, where the enemies were. It would have taken much longer to verify their location, to roll in with dumb bombs. The JDAM made it extremely easy and precise." USAF has set 2011 as the date by which it will have all Hogs upgraded to C models and has issued a contract for new wing sets to prolong service life. Now, if USAF could just get new Hog engines. (Langley report by SSgt. Thomas Doscher)"

I think I miss named the photo.

[kevineduguay1]

The pick posted by DRG of a Soviet type tank hit by a Maverik showed substantial hull damage. You could realy see where it hit.
The little photo I posted looks more like a ammo cook off that could be caused by a lucky 30mm DU pen.

[kevineduguay1]

Shouldn,t the P-51 Mustang in the OOBs that are armed with 50cal MGs have a AP rating of 6 instead of 4? The Mustangs that carried 4 guns were armed with 20mm guns.