Calling Mrmudd...a-10 Question

[Beta 0]

Hey MrMUDD!

 

I was just reading your replies over in the beaming thread, and I was wondering if you have any hints for A-10 drivers going against the mobile SAMS like the Roland ADS and Tunguska 2C6M!

 

Thanks in advance - check's in the mail, etc... :P

 

Here's how my A-10 usually looks after I go SAM hunting:

 

 

:o

Edited October 24, 2003 by Beta

[Guest MrMudd]

Regardless of any aircraft you fly Surface threats are a major concern.

 

I am not an A10 Driver. but i think you will understand my "mindset" on how to correctly operate in a Surface to air threat enviroment.

 

having been a Weasel Driver in both the F4G and the F16CJ. It all comes down to makeing the conditions difficult for the Air Defenses to be Effective.

 

My recomendations are the following:

 

Threat knowledge:

 

Sytems-ordnance-Mobility-tracking.

 

Team Work.:

Team work goes a long way in decieving, negateing and engageing a threat. by utiliseing Wingman to "Attract the sam" and using tactics to engage goes a long way in a succesfull outcome. however you never sacrifice your assets. the idea is to "mutually Support" each other.

 

The airmanship methods and proceduress go a long way in this. Roles and responsebility of a Flight lead and wingman. Flight Formations. Visual Scan procedures, and Correct systems interpetation.

 

number 2

ballistic Weapons Advantage.

 

This is the most important part. haveing the ability to engage a threat outside of its Detection or its offesnive zone.

 

If you watch my 5 part video series on the a10 training mission. On the ingress to the target i begin my "System Scan"of the target area. roughly 25nm away

 

The maverik Ir and Eo have a great advantage in allowing you to visually scout the flight path in front of you and and give you the relevent feedback to "understand the battlefield, Deconflict the friendlies-civilians-bad guys. and to remove your threats before you are in their engagement zone.

 

THE RWR detection sets goes a long way with its symbology and radial feedback to help you decipher its location by manuevering your aircraft outside of its engagement zone to fix its position. I think you will find this is actually a very fun activity. First detecting the spike, then flying around it and visualising its little hole in the Mud. Once you have good gouge on it you can then use your mavericks to search that area and hopefully take it out before it becomes a threat factor.

 

number 4

best use of terrain

 

Radar cant see through a terrain feature above its elevation. this comes in handy as a benefit by masking your approach to the target degradeing a Sam or Radar guided AAA from engageing you. this is also beneficial when you dont have the long arm engagement systems to kill the threat,

 

A good tactic would be to Coordinate with other assets and keep the "Emitter" Entertained, while sending your wingman in to backdoor and cook the turkey.

 

This is why it is very important when you are over a target area to not fly formation ordnance releases and to fly differnt approach course while keeping the lookout for your wingman as he hits the target area, looking for gunfire, aaa, sam smoke etc. and then being in a position, that if it does take place and your wingman is defensive you can take out the threat very quickly.

 

There is no rush. the a10 has plenty of playtime over a target area. This is one of the reasons they are so effective With plenty of fuel and a good loiter ability you have the time to investigate the battlefield and devise tactics to kill the threat.

 

Then you look at multirole fighters for example like the F16-F18-Av8- etc and they are "I came- i saw- I bingo" they dont have much time to properly evaluate the threat. This is why the AGM-88 harm is becoming so widespread in their use.

 

For the type of missions they fly "logistical strikes-precision etc" Most times they got no choice but to fly through the mess, release the ordnance and get the hell outta dodge.

 

A10 pilots are a whole differnt breed of animal. their whole nature on the battlefield is that of a predetor. The aircraft is designed to get down low to a personal level with the enemy and to seriously destroy his assaulting mobility.

 

In this area the ZSU and manpads are your greatest threat. The A10 has one serious draw back. Its RCS is enormous and lights up like one big corner reflector. the engines put out a large amount of heat, and they are slow. Slow meaning they play in the 150-350 Speed range and spending most of that with ordnance around 200+ or minus. This is not a good postion to be in at low level over the battlefield.

 

However the Aircraft is highly manueverable, and once you see the threat you have a weapon to bear and remove it very quickly. the Gau-8 30mm on the nose is designed for that very purpose.

 

The F16 on the other hand needs to stay up high, use lantirn or radar to find the target, and to deploy an offensive capability. Comeing down the chuite at 450 Knots from 20 k and releasing at 10k, manually is not easy. a PK of 50 Feet is sometimes the difference between a hit and a miss. So there are systems to better assist the pilot For example A2g radar and differnt delivery methods to help automate the aiming and releases.

 

the F16 is a better Supporter up high to an A10 Crew down low working the battlefield, and best utilised as a supporting asset, to be coordinated and vectored in to targets.

 

 

Now we discuss defense tactics.

 

This is the real Mother f***er of the situation. You never, ever want to be defensive, no matter how good you think you are. It is just not good enough.

 

Modern tactical fighter aircraft have an high G loading manueverability advantage. The Surface to air missiles on the other hand do not. The good thing is that their is no way in hell a mach 3 missile is going to out turn a 7-9 G sustained turn Fighter in the Corner. But the problem is the timeing issue to force an Overshoot turning that tracking threat into a Spoiler. First of all you need to see it to even beable to time the over shoot manuever.

 

The bad side of this is you still have an emitter out their guiding Sams waiting to be launched. once you have dodged the first your ability to dodge the follow ons are going to be that much more difficult once you have bleed off all your manuever energy. this is the time your very life is in the hands of your wingmans ability to save your tail feathers.

 

heres a little real world story for ya. I had a radar Sam track me low level over bosnia and fire on me as i was egressing the area dropping some Retard Drag Bombs. The bad news was i was at 500 knots, and it was rapidly approaching, I am now also at 10,000feet, and know for certain its coming straight up my six o clock position. My wingman saw it as he was dragging behinf me 8 miles and seen its liftoff adn i had RWR Launch track and lock tones in my headset and rwr display.

 

I knew i couldnt outrun it, so i had to force the Sam to overshoot, and to decieve the Radar emmitter that was tracking me. I had no choice but to dump speed to 300 knots and hit the deck. and get that missile on my Abeam "wingtip" forceing it to travel further and manuever i n the Circle. as luck would have it i had a mountain top to my left 10 o clock 2 miles a way and made it their in time that the sam lost track, and apparently the emmiter got jammed by the High Voltage powerlines. The sam ended up hitting those powere lines Blacking out parts of city. It wasnt very funny at the time and i had the shakes all the way and well after the Debrief. Eventually we cracked jokes about it latter Denying the enemy their Mtv and safety in the battle area. But the truth is i really really hate sams. and every military aviator will tell you the same thing. killing it is your priority long before conducting your briefed mission.

 

now back to sam hardware system basics

 

The more modern systems dont neccesarily have to connect your aircraft to destroy or imobilise your flight. More up to date systems have Proximity Destructability. meaning they dont need to "Collide" but simply explode deploying fragmentary and explosive warheads in your flight path.

 

Now in the modern high tech battlefield of the 90's and millenium on. their is a new threat Infra red tracking SAMS. a System you cannot detect. this is where having your head outside of the feedbag and scanning the valley floor below is so important. they will passively, find you and kill you.

 

We can also reflect on the number one and highly prelevent Surface threat. Portable Flak Shell AA. Eyeball guided and highly prevelent. their is no warning to their use. just and after the fact of it explodeing around your flight path. not a very cool situation in per say an f16 that doesnt ingest debree very well. or the a10 for that matter. nobvody wants to fly through that stuff.

 

now we need to talk manpads. or stingers. man protable ir heat guided highly manueverable anti aircraft systems.

 

my policy is to "Flare the s**t out of the battlefield" On both the ingress and egress of the target area flying eradic manuevers and getting my heat signature pointed away from the target or threat are as wuickly as possible.

 

This is pretty much a basic brief on the dynamics of operateing in a Surface threat enviroment.

 

Later on I will follow on with a more "guidebook" approach to A2g adn Sead warfare. But that will have to wait as i dont have much time to work on that at the moment.

 

Their are a few A10 Drivers outthere that visit this site, that may wish to comment on the topic. But the reality is that their is no one tactic that will be a method of perfection. the things i discussed above is what is going to help you the most...

 

Stay on the offensive, and sniff the battlefield, and coordinateing ordnance with other members of your flight.

 

If your defensive, you dicked up somewhere in a big way.

 

Join a Virtual Squad and Work together on devisieng tactics to defeat these threats.

 

learn the sims behavior and personality, and turn it against itself.

 

Clear as Mudd?

[BirdDogg 0]

Yeah, what he said :)

[Beta 0]

Excellent info as usual! I'm just learning the modern battlefield environment, so I have a LOT to learn compared to the relatively tame WW2-type environment I'm used to flying.

 

This particular situation I'm facing is incredibly tough considering it has Shilkas, Tunguskas AND Rolands in a valley...with KA-50s flying escort!

 

Don't know if you've tried this particular mission, since you probably don't fly the demo. It's Bone's Kamenka Mission 4.

 

I've been trying to utilize my wingman - but he tends to git crazy and go in balls to the wall on the KA-50s and gits shot down! :(

 

I've been using the terrain to my advantage as much as possible. I just need a LOT more practice evading these missiles.

 

Thanks for the lesson! :D

Edited October 24, 2003 by Beta

[Guest MrMudd]

This is where. you need to say" Whats the rush"

 

You need to selectively pluck and peck at the defenses. the A10 has plenty of fuel to hang around for a few hours.

 

So bait em, and pull punches.

 

My advice would be to Kill the Helos, For 2 reasons. in real life they have a radio and secondly they are prepared to fight you and take away your terrain mask ability, and their highly mobile. Which means they can continualy play the chess game and redeploy in their weak sectors.

 

Secondly the Sams need to be taken care of. then you can move in closer to the Shilka AAA guns

 

I havnt played the mission as i have the latest beta builds and have some commitments to that as well as "Journalistic" and media related stuff for it.

 

 

But the good thing about these fan based mods is you guys get time to apply yourself and learn the loamc battlefield and get trained up for it's release.

 

 

Warfighting is a fun Art of Strategic thinking

[Beta 0]

HAHA - Lesson learned already with regard to the helos. One flight, I thought I was clear of threats on the other side of the hills, BLAMMO git nailed by a KA-50 that followed us over the ridgeline!

 

I'm digging out my Falcon 4 manual to study up on modern weapon systems! ;)

[PRecog 0]

Very interesting MrMudd. Thanks for all your lengthy replys of late. coming from a WWII combat sim background I need all the info i can get.

 

As for the KAmenka SAM mission... after getting a serious butt-kicking ive finally und a way, although probably not ideal, to complete the mission successfully. Heres briefly what i do:

 

After take-off climb to around 15000ft. From this height you can safely boom, let off a Maverick and zoom climb back up so that you are outside the engagement zone of the SAMs. Next, from this height its pretty easy to take out the Helo's with relative impunity Once the SAM's Helo's are taken out its just like a normal Kamenka mission.

 

I'd prefer to come in low and do a suprise attack but i havent had too much sucess with this attack yet. The above method will work in the meantime.

[Beta 0]

15K??? What are you smokin'? This is a HAWG we're driving not some F-16! ;)

 

I'm trying to keep my max alt at 1500 AGL if at all possible, and it's a bitch.

 

I can't wait until we have the full version to play with and have different levels of cover - Hogs down low, F-16 or whatever mid, and whatever else above that! Like I said, I'm just learning this modern warfare so I have a lot of schooling in store, that's fer sure...

Edited October 25, 2003 by Beta

[PRecog 0]

15K??? What are you smokin'? This is a HAWG we're driving not some F-16

 

lol Beta ... i havent been smoking anything and either has my A-10 using these tactics!

 

Like i said not ideal but sometimes you have to adapt tactics to suit the conditions. This works without endagering yourself or your wingman.

 

Im still struggling to complete the mission with myself and wingman intact by coming in low and terrain masking. I'll have to give it another go at low level.

 

Anyone else had success at low level?

[Tiny Giant 0]

MrMudd does an amazing job at explaining some of these things to everyone around here. I was hoping to be able to add to his answers about defeating the Roland and ManPADS specifically.

 

The Roland is an amazing system and extremely simple to operate. During OIF there were many rumors that the Iraqi military was putting civilians into the system with no training and forcing them to operate. In fact, it's so easy to use that I got into a working Roland (once upon a time) with no instruction and was able to achieve a simulated optical kill on an A-10 flying around on the range. No radar emissions and he never knew I was there.

 

However, the A-10s were able to kill us many times over (simulated, obviously). Here's what they did. As MrMudd said, the best thing they could've done was to use teamwork. We were able to take out entire flights with a single unit (Rolands will most likely operate with more than one, though) until they came in with a minimum of three aircraft from different directions. The sneak attack from behind hills was the worst for us. Two A-10s would manuever just out of tac effective range and we would concentrate on them as they were head-faking an attack on us. After our attention was focused on them, the third would pop over a hill and get an IR Mav off on us. Great tactic and it worked almost every time.

 

Another way to go after the Roland is from high altitude. Rolands cannot look straight up (even their optics can't). Because of this, there is a funnel where you can attack them from the top. The biggest problem with this is that most Rolands operate in unison with several others. Therefore, one Roland's "blind spot" is in another Roland's engagement envelope.

 

As far as getting out of the envelope, dive. Dive, dive, dive. The A-10s on the range that day couldn't get away from us until they leveled out about 100' AGL. I'm glad I wasn't flying that day, we had many minutes of gun camera footage to show them in the debrief. Kill, kill, kill. It's very easy with the Roland system.

 

Remember, the slew rate of a Roland is well over 90°/sec and they can switch instantaneously between radar and optical tracking, even after the missile has been launched. This makes the employment of chaff not as useful as it could've been otherwise. I'm not sure if LO-MAC models this (it would be difficult to), but residual chaff from previous employments created a huge problem for all radar weapons systems, including the Roland. This is definitely an advantage for the A-10 with its huge radar cross-section.

 

ManPADS. A ManPAD System can be easy to defeat if you know it's there. Therein lies the problem. The pilot that gets shot down will never see the ManPAD System that does it. However, his wingman may. Very few of the older ManPAD Systems have any kind of IRCCM logic built into them. What this means is that any flare put out by the A-10 before the missile leaves the launcher will deny acquisition and after the missile leaves the launcher will decoy the missile. However, there are some mare advanced missile on the market these days (SA-18, SA-13) that do have IRCCM logic and are much more difficult to defeat.

 

Here are some basics. There are very few IR missiles today that can get a successful lock on to anything when looking within about 30° of the sun. What does this mean? Attack from the sun and depart into the sun if you can. Additionally, ground clutter and clouds will have an extremely detrimental effect on the acquisition of a target. For flare usage, your position and movement in relation to the missile system is also on note. If have a high crossing rate, the flares will not be in the FOV of the system as long. If you are heading directly toward a system, the same principal applies because your apparent motion is that of a climb. When you are flying directly away from the system, you apparent motion is a dive. Therefore the flares will stay in the FOV of the threat system longer and provide you more protection. However, realize that flying directly away from the system exposes the most IR energy to it.

 

Bottom Line, there is no "right" answer to defeating a threat. Do a little research and figure out how it works. The way to defeat will most likely be apparent.

 

Hope this helps a little. Not trying to step on your toes MrMudd.

[PRecog 0]

Great read Tiny ... It will be interesting whether some of these tactics you talk about will be applicable to LOMAC.

[Tiny Giant 0]

PRecog, Happy to Help. I've just begun leaving my A-10 Warthog Discussion "hole."

[Beta 0]

Wow! Excellent intel Tiny Giant!

 

I love this forum, but now I owe you some beers as well as MrMudd! :P

 

I hope you like Guinness!

[Guest MrMudd]

Hope this helps a little. Not trying to step on your toes MrMudd.

 

No Toes to Squish Buddy, Teamwork and Tactical analysis is what makes us better. And hopefully grow to be old Gummers. I revel in learning differnt perspectives and employments. My loyalty is to the men that fly the mission. Not the squadron colors B)

 

 

Wow! Excellent intel Tiny Giant!

 

I love this forum, but now I owe you some beers as well as MrMudd!

 

I hope you like Guinness! 

 

The thicker the pond Water the Better.

 

Guiness Pub Drought and Guiness Extra Stout are two of my favorites.

[Beta 0]

The thicker the pond Water the Better.

 

Guiness Pub Drought and Guiness Extra Stout are two of my favorites.

I love the Guinness Draught Cans, poured into a pint glass... ;)

Edited October 29, 2003 by Beta

[Guest MrMudd]

The shaker pint cans aint bad at all, I always tend to have several of those spent shell caseings laying around

[zzzspace 2]

What a cool thread. :D