DCS: A-10C Warthog - Death Came Through the Clouds - Debrief of a Close Air Support Mission - Part 3

I've just spotted the Marines in the ground and I am getting ready to be talked on my target. The air support operations center (ASOC) is monitoring my radio exchange closely and that is good because they will have to clear me hot when I find the target (Note: ASOC is mentioned here just for fun and are not featured in the sim). There is no official joint tactical air controller in the ground ... yet somebody has to clear my shots. War has its bureaucracy too.

The Marine describes the village as a built up area, sized 2 x 1 km, with the squad located in its eastern extreme. The insurgents have a truck-mounted AAA gun south of their position and would be visible when approached from the east.

As I approach the town from the northeast, I start turning southeast, keeping the village on my right and avoiding getting to close to it. A moderate left bank is great for keeping the targeting pod on my right wing clear of visual obstructions (airframe, wingtips, the fins of the Sidewinder missiles).

Below the cloud deck. The village I am observing with the targeting pod is NOT the one seen near the water bodies in the background but one located a bit farther.

The tactical awareness display (TAD) is a great asset to keep your head in the battle. The position of the US Marines squad is the yellow "6" mark (actually a waypoint I manually entered when they gave me their coordinates). The rings are 20 miles each.

Finding targets with the pod is not easy when the enemy is located within the clutter of built up areas. The FLIR imaging helps but let's not forget that I am observing from 8 miles away. I play around with the gain of the imaging system and it improves the picture. I find the target some 2 minutes later ... it is my lucky day.

Target acquired. I mark it with the laser so it becomes a mark point in the navigation system and its position can be stored and used by the inertially-guided JDAMs.

The ASOC wants out of the radio conversation (I am sure they are busy routing flights to other fights) and clears me hot..

I put the target on my rearand I fly away from it in a shallow climb. After gaining altitude I am going to turn into the target and drop the JDAM through the clouds.

A close up of the tactical awareness display as I fly away from it. "A" is the mark of the target. The wedding cake symbol indicates that markpoint A is now the "sensor point of interest" SPI. The diamond is the position where the targeting pod is looking at. The ring is 10 miles.

I have done my area ingress checklist some minutes before, but it I like to double check my weapons selection. The stores management system shows I have selected the GBU-31 on station 5.

Altitude comes at a high price for a bomb-loaded A-10 and he pays in time and airspeed. I am now above the clouds, at 6,000 feet and 248 KIAS. I can't imagine doing this in a conventional battle zone infested with radar guided missiles.

I now turn into the target. The pod has gone blind, but it is still pointing to the target. 15 nm to go!

The HUD is in the continuously computed release point (CCRP) mode. The triangles inside the ring are the minimum and maximum release distance cues. The vertical line is a guide to fly the bird within an acceptable bombs release flight path. The diamond/square/tadpole combo graphic is the position of the target.

I check and re-check that I have selected mark "A" and not any other navigation point. A distracted pilot can forget about this and have the pod aimed at and the bombs delivered to a navigation point. Believe me, when waypoints/marks/steerpoints start to get close to each other and you are dodging AAA fire, you will never notice the difference. Needless to say that in this case we can't even see who is who below.

My waypoint 6 is the US Marines' position. Have to make sure that waypoint 6 is not selected.

With no JTAC to clear me hot I rely on the authorization given by the ASOC a few minutes earlier. I contact the Marines to report the impending strike.

I pickle and wait for the computer to do its thing. Release!

It feels surreal ... The bomb drops towards the clouds deck in search for its target. I can't avoid to marvel at the technology behind all this.

Bomb away.

My altitude at the point of release is 8,000 ft.

The JDAM gliding towards its target.

Final seconds before utter destruction.

The JDAM falls a few meters off the insurgent truck ...

But the destruction radius of the bomb makes it up for the lack of accuracy.

The Marines can now disengage and move out to a safe place.

I will be posting some notes about this scenario.

Cheers,

DCS: A-10C Warthog - Death Came Through the Clouds - Debrief of a Close Air Support Mission - Part 1

I am in a holding pattern, on call for close air support to the troops below. The insurgency is well and alive, and the 4th US Marines is having a hard day of fighting. My wingman had to return to base because he was hit in the last mission. With enough loiter time for a couple of hours and a hog still loaded of weapons, I decide to stay. It is lonely and quiet up here. With no enemy radar-guided launchers in the whole theater of operations, the tactical air situation is low threat. But the insurgents are known to have IR guided SAMs, so it is advisable to keep distance, altitude or both from suspected insurgent positions.

One joint tactical air controller (JTAC) interrupts my wait. Oddly, his not calling in for support for the company he is fighting with, but to brief me about a Marines squad in need of a hand. He heard about this Marines squad on the battalion radio network and passes me a frequency. This Marines squad has no JTAC.

I tune in to find out what's going on, and the first I hear is gunfire and yelling on a hot mic. Pretty intense. I patiently wait for a break on the hot mic and it comes after a loud thump. I offer firepower from above and all I get is a "get the hell out of this network!". This is not the type of misunderstanding you want when you are under fire, Marine!

Eventually, the Marine on the other end comes to his senses and we both rejoice. There is nobody with air controller experience down there. I will have to get talked to my target.

The Marine squad was on patrol when it came under heavy fire from a village. Their AAV threw a track and its main guns jammed. The Marines can't withdraw and are pinned down by a truck-mounted ZSU-23 anti aircraft gun.

I ask the Marine where they are and he throws me a place name. I don't recognize that name and the maps I have loaded in the navigation system are not that detailed. The Marine gives me his coordinates from a hand held GPS.

Manually entering coordinates in the control display unit (CDU). These coordinates will become waypoint 6, which I manually name FOX.

This is the tactical awareness display (TAD) shown in the right multifunction display (MFD). Waypoint 6, the Marines squad position,  is now active and labelled yellow. The white "wedding cake" symbol inside the waypoint is the sensor point of interest (SPI) where I can point my targeting pod. The Marines are some 40 nm southwest of my position.

HUD view: note the waypoint information on the lower right corner ("6/Fox" for waypoint 6 or Fox).

Somewhere down, the Marines wait for help!

Stay tunned, more is coming!

Cheers,

DCS: A-10C Warthog - Dropping Bombs

I'm feeling particularly courageous these days and decided that I should start a serious and methodical learning regime on the A-10's ordnance usage.

The DCS series pilot's manuals have not worked out very well for me. They are very detailed, but I just can't learn from them.

So I am reading forums checking YouTube videos and cross-referencing with the manual. Not so methodical, but well at least to figure out what I don't know. Wait! That is an easy one: I know nothing! :)

 I'm totally hooked with this simulator. I love flying it, I love the avionics, the targeting system ... I feel all geeked up with all the systems and button presses.

Yesterday I erased my old controllers profile. I'm using a CH Products HOTAS/Rudder Pedals combo and I mapped these controllers more or less in line with the real A-10 HOTAS. The stick was easy as it is very similar to the real one, at least button-wise. The CH Throttle not so charming, but oh well ... The idea is that if the realA-10  HOTAS is mapped that way, it must be very close to the optimal.

So, let me post here a video from a guy nicknamed ExcessiveHeadSpace. Absolutely great videos on DCS A-10. Make sure to visit his videos at YouTube and leave some feedback. He deserves a big thank you!



Cheers,

DCS: A-10C Warthog - 210 KIAS, A Speed to Remember

Volume 3 of the Multi-Command Instruction 11-A/OA10 says the following in Chapter 6 (air-to-surface weapons employment):

If airspeed decreases below 210 KIAS in a pop-up attack, abort the maneuver. Base this airspeed on typical training weights and configurations. At heavy gross weight, adjust abort speed upward to provide sufficient G and turning room to recover from an adverse flight condition.

We all know that flying too slow during an attack run is a recipe for disaster, but why 210 KIAS?

I don't know if you have noticed the yellow tick mark in your airspeed indicator of your virtual A-10C, it's at 210 KIAS ...

210 KIAS is not a stall speed. I have been able to fly the A-10 at speeds well below that if I trim the aircraft accordingly.

Let's take a look at the sustained turn rate performance chart of the A-10. This chart is actually is for the A-10A.

To extract information from these type of charts is a bit convoluted, so bear with me for a little while.

Let's say we are flying at 250 KIAS. To know how many Gs we can pull in a sustained turn we start in the x-axis of the graph of the left (I marked this example as A1) and we go up until intersecting the barometric/pressure altitude (sea level, SL in this case) and then we trace a horizontal line from that intersection until we reach the line that corresponds with the weight of the aircraft (35,000 pounds in this example). From that point we trace a vertical line towards the x-axis of the graph in the right. We can have a sustained turn at approximately 3.1 Gs at sea level when we our bird weights 35,000 pounds and we start the turn at 250 KIAs.

Let's suppose that because of bad turning or other unfortunate circumstances of the mission, we lost 25 KIAs and we now start a second turn at 225 KIAS. From the curve above (follow the A2 traced path), we know that we would be able to pull 2.9 Gs at this second turn. Not a catastrophic loss of turning capability overall.

Now, let's imagine that we start a turn at 200 KIAS. Following the trace labeled B1 in the plot above, we predict being able to pull around 2.75 Gs. In the same way as above, by means of bad turning or something else we loose 25 KIAS and go down to 175 KIAS, our second sustained turn will be pulling only 2.1 Gs (trace B2 above)..

In summary:

• Pilot A starts a first turn at 275 KIAS and will be able to pull 3.1 Gs in a sustained turn (trace A1). Some time later pilot A starts a second turn at 250 KIAS and will be able to pull 2.9 Gs in a sustained turn (trace A2). Between the two turns, pilot A lost 25 KIAS that translated in the loss of 0.2 Gs for the next sustained turn.
• Pilot B starts a first turn at 200 KIAS and will be able to pull 2.75 Gs in a sustained turn (trace B1). Some time later pilot B starts a second turn at 175 KIAS and will be able to pull 2.1 Gs in a sustained turn (trace B2). Between the two turns, pilot B lost 25 KIAS that translated in the loss of 0.65 Gs for the next sustained turn.

If you are good with graphs you will notice that the curve in the left panel has a breaking point around 200 KIAS. Any two points that have an x value of less than 200 KIAS project onto the graph in the right as segments bigger than any two points that have x values higher than 200 KIAS. That is unless you go above 250-275 KIAS, but that's food for a next meal. :)

Bored you enough? Let me make it up to you with some simulator hands on.

I start with a custom mission in which the aircraft is loaded to a gross weight near 35,000 pounds.

The combat payload is the one in the screenshot I showed above at the start of this entry.

I dived to near the ground, controlled my airspeed to around 250 KIAS and started making some turns. I closely watched out the G load indicator, hanging on the left side of the HUD. Trim was to neutral and the throttle totally opened.

Just as the sustained turn performance curve predicted, if I keep my Gs not higher than 3 Gs, I can make some spiffy turns without loosing too much airspeed (lost around 20 knots after a 360 degrees turn). The only issue I had is getting a hold of the rudder to avoid loosing altitude.

I am delighted to be able to make better turns for my combat maneuvers. I now realize that before I was pulling the stick too much and my Gs too high. At 4Gs the aircraft becomes uncontrollable after just a couple of seconds.

Now, it is unlikely that I will evade a missile with a turn of just 3Gs. All of the above is for sustained turns and not for instantaneous turns. But as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, at least in my hands a 4 Gs turn lasts for just two seconds. Any ideas?

Cheers,

DCS: A-10C Warthog - Three Betas Down, Many More to Go

Beta 3 for DCS A-10C has been released. Better framerates here and there, avionics/weapons fixes and fog, lots of fog.

If you never beta tested a game, let me sum it up for you: not that fun, not for everybody.

The first beta version you download makes you feel you are living the dream. A game you like ... And you are playing it before the crowd. You get that shiny avatar with the words "beta tester" on it and you use it in discussion forums like a badge vested for your savviness, awesomeness, luck or whatever. Your forum posts are read and dissected to the last word in search for new bits and pieces about the game .You are admired, popular, even needed. And if you are the quiet type who don't post anything in any forum, you feel like you got your efforts compensated by a free copy of the game, even when is far from finished.

The office looks as good as always, the view out of the window ... very foggy

Around the third or so beta download, it all starts to wear off. - Gee! I have to play this scenario again? By the sixth beta download you are so busted that you are just clicking around to find out the bug that will save your reputation among the other beta testers. - Damn! I'd rather be playing that other game I just bought ... With the game getting less buggy at every download, you start having problems finding anything of substance. You search in vain for spelling errors in the briefings, for insignificant graphical glitches, for that miracle finding that will earn you two days away from the game.

By the ninth beta download, you have completely gave up and left everything up to those other guys who apparently don't have a life other that this game and report more than ten bugs per beta. - I played ... It didn't crash ... Good job guys fixing that stability problem that I reported before! Yup, those two crashes you got while running  at the same time the beta and that other game you bought.

By the time of release, the very sight of the splash screen of the game gives you a headache and carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms. - Send my free copy to this address ... and let me have my life in peace!

Flying around Russia, weaponless.

Joking aside, beta testing is and will always be a labor of love. But one can't negate it has a toll on your enjoyment of the game you test.

In the case of DCS A-10C, we are not required to report bugs. But I am wondering how spent we are going to be when the sim is officially released.

Tactical signaling with smoke or there is always somebody grilling something in these Caucasus towns?

We are now at version 3 of the DCS A-10C beta and it looks like there is a lot of work to be done. Is there a need to release every single beta version to the pre-order customers?

Cheers,