Questions About Fire Control

[brian79]

This question has little or nothing to do witht he game. Does anybody know the best way to find out exactly how these late 60's and early 70's aircraft actually delivered weapons? I would like to know more about how DIANE and LORAN worked (could the A-6 aquire targets through jungle foliage, for instance?) Also what versions of the A-4 and A-7 had CCIP capability or not (and if so, how good it was). Also information on exactly how accurate radar, through-the-clouds bombing was on aircraft that had the capabilitity (like the Thunderstick converted F-105).

 

The AIRtime books cover some of this stuff, but not much, and the squadron/signal books are a joke on these topics as far as i can tell. Not much experience witht eh Osprey series, but they seem to be more narrative-oriented.

 

At this point I am almost desperate enough to start emailing old pilots to ask them these questions in person.

 

Any thoughts?

[Southernap]

DIANE in the A-6A referred to the intergration of multiple number of systems to provided a very stable aircraft blind bombing system, or Digital Intergrated Attack Navigation Equipment.

Intergrated into the computers were two different radars, one was the APQ-92 search radar, APQ-112 track radar, along with the APN-141 Radar Altimeter, APN-153 doppler navigation system, and finally ASN-31 internal navigation system. All of these fed data along with some air-data sensors into a series of 8 computers that would plan where the aircraft was and where the target was and if the system was tight enough and the B/N had put the computer in control all the pilot had to do was fly the steering cues and push the comit trigger and the computer would take over when to release the bombs. However, there were a number of inital problems with parts of the DIANE system when introduced.

 

That being said I have pictures of how to do a computer attack from the NATOPs of an A-6A on to a target and it is very complex. It is approximately 15 pages long with about 40-50 switches that had to be moved during the start or in the middle of the attack. This seems to go against the idea of that Third Wire has for these games which is a game that one could start up and be flying in less then 5 minutes even in the hard setting. I have found that I can sort of simulate that by still using the targeting box visually flying to that target and screwing around with speed, bomb load, and altitude I have figured out how far out from the target I need to drop bombs to achieve a hit. This is basic trig and I have cheated and have a pre-written fourmla on a reem of note pads.

[spook27]

It seems to me that the Thirdwire A-6 cockpit needs a TV display with an integrated CCIP.

 

ie: the CCIP would display through the Radar Display in TV Mode, even with dumb bombs selected. This would simulate the look and function of the DIANE very well within the capabilities of the sim. With excellent functionality now available for the F/A18, F16, A10 and many other superb mods, it would be good to see the Intruder brought up to spec too.