Debrief: Retaliation - DCS: AJS37 Viggen (Beta)

Mission for today: show of force against Russian-backed forces from Abkhazia who shot heavy mortar rounds towards Zugdidi.

On station near Zugdidi, setting up weapons. The DCS Viggen has one of the most beautiful virtual cockpits in the series. It was not long ago that it didn't even have shadows.

Payload includes 16 M71 high drag bombs, ideal for this type of missions against dispersed soft targets.

M3, the target waypoint, some 13 km in front. The Viggen, low and fast. Gauges, demoted to irrelevant. I'm myself become just a passenger for a fraction of a second.

Running in. The CCIP symbology is brief but functional. A dot represents the likely first bomb impact, a circle represents the likely last impact. My targets are visible in the background by the road in the center.

The bombs fell slightly short. I see just two vehicles destroyed.

After RTB at full throttle (can't resist the urge to zoom through Georgia). Touchdown!

I felt kind of disappointed about my performance. I spent 16 bombs and destroyed two trucks and 12 militiamen. What happened? TacView pointed out my error in a few clicks.

TacView Advanced's 3D view offers a stylized view of the battlefield. The symbols are sometimes a bit blocky, but one can usually live with that. Or mod it. Note the yellow stream of AAA rounds aimed at my aircraft. None of those met their target.

In addition to that, TacView also features customizable graphs, which are useful to plot speeds and altitudes. At the time I released my bombs, I was flying at Mach 0.76. That's a bit short of the recommended Mach 0.8-0.9 and may explain why my bombs fell kind of short.

Just after release. Note how the bombs lag behind the Viggen.

An M71 bomb. High drag kindly provided by that bright chute.

And an additional 3D view, just to give you an idea about the dispersion of the M71 bombs.

Cheers,