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Lately I've been working on an environment package, which combines various mods (cellinsky's widesky, Stary's SARCASM, ShrikeHawk's Cloudscape v3, etc.) into one. The idea is to produce a realistic sky, with better colours, lens flare effects and numerous clouds. The Overcast and Inclement weather have always lacked 3d clouds, now they are present as it always should have been. I tweaked Night and High Altitude colours as well, among other little things. The authors of the various mods I've been tweaking are going to be properly credited, of course! I am still not 100% convinced about some details, but I plan to release it early 2019, together with my SF1 GUI mod I showed at another thread. Enough talking, here's some WIP shots; Clear weather Scattered weather Broken weather Overcast weather Inclement weather Night colours Space colours

Still plodding on with this....... It took just over 2 seconds to unload 58 rockets...... Yes I know the pylons were never used operationally.........but IT'S A GAME and you dont have to use them..... Pit.....probably about as good as I'm going to do...

The last day of the year 2018.. This year I joined CombatACE and enjoyed lots of great mods here by the modding mastersssss.. Mandatory: Out of Edwards, go testing the AGM-130, that is one hell of a standoff weapon guys Happy New Year!

VooDoo New Year...

not missing in my SF2.... not missing in yours...in 2019. Stay tuned. Happy 2019.

PRV-10 is height-finding radar - so not big use in sf2 series game...only as eye candy thing. Recently I've made PRV-10 / PRV-11 as part of P-12 / P-15 early warning radar complex.

Hello everybody, So, this is the end of 2018. It was a very interesting year for us, it brought many new, but long-awaited changes and improvements to the project. Almost 500 points were listed in the update changelists in total and there were more minor, unlisted ones which are impossible to count. All this combined upped the quality of the sim to a new level. And right now we continue the development of our three Early Access projects: Battle of Bodenplatte, Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka and Flying Circus Volume 1. For the main project, Bodenplatte, we're working on several new aircraft at once. Having completed the implementation of the air compressibility and significant improvements to the damage model (they are already in the public version of the sim), our Lead Engineer is creating the physical model of the jet engine for Me 262. Of course, this work opens up the possibility to widen our aircraft pool in the future. Our partner Ugra Media makes the new WWI aircraft for Flying Circus - Fokker D.VII, Fokker D.VIIF and Sopwith Dolphin. They'll start the work on the Arras area map (1918) soon. The new tanks for Tank Crew that are being made by our partner Digital Forms are more than half complete already: M4A2, T-34 mod. 1943, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G and PzKpfw III Ausf.M. Meanwhile, we're making the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient ourselves. Soon we'll be able to tell you more about the tank commander and tank platoon commander functionality which will be the backbone of Tank Crew gameplay. 3D models of Soviet and German crewmembers are ready and will be added to the sim as soon as their animations are complete. The scenarios for two, German and Soviet, tank campaigns are ready, so soon we'll start to make the missions themselves. The detailed buildings tech that includes higher detailed 3D models and the physics of their destruction is nearly finished and we had a bit of time to make this short video for you: To complete this Dev Diary, we'd like to show you some screenshots. First, here is the finished Fw 190 D-9 cockpit. Also, the community enthusiast Martin =ICDP= Catney upped default and official P-47 skins to 4K quality: Our team wishes you Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. We wish you happiness and fulfillment of all your dreams in 2019! You can discuss the news in this thread

CVW5 commences exercises around the South China Sea region... They are joined by regional allies... Malaysian FA-18Ds Flying low they carry out simulated anti-shipping strikes against the carrier battle group and then drop even lower to mimic the missiles themselves and give the ships' air defence crews a workout E-2Cs out of Singapore control the red forces Malaysian MiG 29s join the action And their Hornets also fly blue side sorties Singapore sends F-16A, C and D fighters to the exercises Australian FA-18Fs are also invited And fly joint missions with the air wing To be continued.....

The EAW Launchpad wishes all it's members and friends a healthy and fun 2019 and expressess it's special gratitude to the Combat Ace forum and moderators for kindly allowing me to do what I've always liked doing, which has been improving EAW to the best of my abillity. VonBeerhofen

Hey, guys! I think I may be able to resume modding soon. I had a lot of real world stuff to take care of, but it looks like the worst of it is done. I scanned your recent posts and I'm really impressed with all the work you guys have done! It will take me a while to reinstall FE2 and find my backups discs with my model files. Maybe Eugene2 can pick up some of the graphics load? What do you guys think needs to be done first? I have not given FE2 a thought for months, so I am not sure where we stand.

View File DC-130A US Navy Director Hercules. SF2. 2018. This is extra pack of special version of C-130 Hercules used by US Navy DC-130A. Basic modding skills are required to run this mod. (copy/paste, mod folder structure etc.) also pledged allegiance to the Queen and Country - required. Install: Copy paste specific folders into a correct destination. Fake pilot is required to run this mod. Pack contains all required models and it is based on Dels great new C-130 Pack + update available here on Combat Ace. http://combatace.com/files/file/16427-c-130-hercules-superpack/ update here: http://combatace.com/files/file/16480-c-130-hercules-superpack-add-on-1/ All skins are based on my new templates in 3072x3072 Credits: Original model + pit model: Dels C-130 fake pilot mods, BQM-drones, DC-130 pylons, Skins and decals: yakarov Ive made all decals for all versions covering years of use in USAF service based on available reference materials. So all serial numbers are historically correct. National and squadron markings as always in my case are painted on skins. As weapons BAQM-34 - is EOGR missile - can be anything it will not work as drone anyway). Pylons are set as TLR - to accommodate EOGR -but somehow there is an option to load one drone - do not use it. as it will appear somewhere in the middle of aircraft. Note: In this pack (unlike original Dels C-130) JATO is activated by vector thrust control (similar as in latest Tu-22 pack) If you have SEA version of DC-130A - probably you will need to rename pylons: DC-130_PylonInn DC-130_PylonInnBW DC-130_PylonOut to avoid conflicts with pylons of SEA versions - which have different colors. report bugs. Jarek Hereda. Submitter yakarov79 Submitted 12/30/2018 Category C-130  

Merry Christmas all The Red Nomex Aviator On the night before Christmas my ship was at sea, A big flat-top "bird farm" from the land of the free. Cruising the ocean at "the tip of the spear", So everyone home could sleep sound with no fear. Flight ops had ended hours ago, The day crew had turned in and gone down below. Night crew was doin' their maintenance checks, The aircrews and pilots were gettin' some rest. The cooks in the galley were fixin' Mid-rat's, The Air Boss and Cap'n could finally relax. CIC called up said something's inbound, Prob'ly the mail plane, a C-2 Greyhound. Stand clear of the foul-line, one to recover, "Angel" is airborne, to starboard he'll hover. Spotters see only one red blinkin' light, No markers on wing-tips, now somethin' ain't right. All eyes are watching but no one believes, What comes o'er the round-down, bold as you please. Nine deer and a sleigh, no tail-hook or tires, How does Paddles grade a trap with no wire? A red Nomex flight-suit, of course gloves that match, And S. Claus printed on his aviator patch. Why, it's old Santa Claus wearin' goggles and leather, With bags full of Christmas cards, presents and letters. Don't stand there gawkin', froze in your tracks, Give him a hand with unloadin' those sacks. The bags are all carried to the mail room below, And after a pre-flight, Santa's ready to go. The cat-crew is wondering now which hold-back pin? Santa just laughs then he's airborne again. We didn't hear jingling bells from his sleigh, Ol' Santa was whistling Anchors Aweigh. Off the angle-deck, over wave-caps of white, Even without afterburners he's soon out of sight. We all stood there doubting what we had just seen, But the deer left a present, smelly and green. Over the side with all the deer turds, Don't want them things fod'in one of our birds. Tho' that night happened many long years ago, Santa still travels to our ships on the foam.

Being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud - not an entirely inappropriate condition, for a player of WW1 air combat sims - all the recent modding activity for the Italian front hasn't yet lured me away from my Biggles-based but still dominant affection for the Western Front (all quiet or not). My Jasta 4 Cambrai campaign came to a nasty end when I collided with a comrade attacking the same enemy; first time that has happened in a while. So for a change of pace, I started off an Armchair Aces campaign with KEK Douai in August 1915, flying the Fokker E.I. I'm staying alive and racking up a surprising number of kills, including several on a single sortie. This is all the more surprising because the E.I is a truly awful fighting aeroplane. Rate of climb is nearly non-existent, while turn rate and radius are nearly as bad, with a tendency to judder on the point of a stall at the drop of a hat and to fall into a wild spin if you don't ease back or push the nose down when duly warned. Recovery is do-able but only after a lot of height is lost, so tight turns at low level are right out. Still, the varied and smaller-scale air fights are a lot of fun and modded FE2 brings all its inherent virtues to the party, including the ability to 'warp' and avoid transit flights, the rarity of uneventful, contact-free missions, the reliability of flak in indicating enemies, and the unequalled variety of aircraft types. Here are some scenes from recent missions. Illustrating the continued superiority of FE's pilot animations over all comers, I look down soon after take-off, despairing at why the earth is taking so very long to drop away below me. After finally managing to get above a few hundred meters and reach my patrol area, a more agile French-made and flown Morane 'Bullet' goes down, after I eventually managed to put enough rounds into him. Bringing on your flight-mates is a strong point of FE/FE2, so I am happy to keep watch above, as a comrade knocks down a Vickers two-seater. Not to be left out, on a later flight, I knock down a BE myself... ...and on another mission, I too clobber another hapless Vickers... Sadly, no pics were taken of Nieuport 10s doing what they do best, namely, bursting into flames after a few hits. I think I will edit the campaign files for that period as I am seeing too many of these (the British didn't use them apart from the RNAS near the coast, not where I'm flying, and a handful briefly loaned to the RFC 'for special duties'). And we must by now have shot down an entirely disproportionate number of the forty-nine Morane Bullets produced. The Morane Type L 'Parasol' would probably be a decent substitute for one or both, and I have seen none of these so far. Anyhow, for the sake of historical accuracy, I'm resisting any temptation to put more than two or three Fokkers into the air at once. Thankfully, the equally small enemy flights make this no particular risk, although we have lost one pilot due I think to a mid-air collision. Despite the pretty hopeless performance of our machines, we are usually well able to beat up one enemy flight before moving on to the next. So life with Kampfeinsitzerkommando Douai is pretty sweet...at the moment. And I'm reminded why I still reckon modded First Eagles/FE2 is at least as good, if not better, than any other WW1 air combat sim.

Ha Ha, Caporetto works in FE1. Brilliant!

Thanks, and Happy New Year everyone.

yes...

Just to update you all, I am almost finished with the models and I should have them completed soon. I am just looking for some more photos to complete the collection..

View File HC-130P Combat Shadow. SF2.2018 This is extra pack of special rescue - refueling version of C-130 Hercules used by USAF - HC-130P Basic modding skills are required to run this mod. (copy/paste, mod folder structure etc.) also pledged allegiance to the Queen and Country - required. Install: Copy paste specific folders into a correct destination. Fake pilot is required to run this mod. Pack contains all required models and it is based on Dels great new C-130 Pack + update available here on Combat Ace. http://combatace.com/files/file/16427-c-130-hercules-superpack/ update here: http://combatace.com/files/file/16480-c-130-hercules-superpack-add-on-1/ All skins are based on my new templates in 3072x3072 Credits: Original model + pit model: Dels C-130 fake pilot mods, Cargo 1800gal fule tank: yakarov Pack contains: HC-130P Combat Shadow versions for early with Fulton recovery system and late with that system removed. Ive made all decals for all versions covering years of use in USAF service based on available reference materials. So all serial numbers are historicaly correct. National and squadron markings as always in my case are painted on skins. Refueling drogue is deployed at speed near 120kts. (to simulate refueling helicopters too.) If you have SEA version of HC-130P - probably you will need to rename fake pilot for '66 version to have correct colors of fake pilot mods. Note: In this pack (unlike original Dels C-130) JATO is activated by vector thrust control. report bugs. Jarek Hereda. Submitter yakarov79 Submitted 12/30/2018 Category C-130  

wonderful SAML S.2

Winter 50% Off Sale. Last Few Days! DCS World 2018 and Beyond Epic video Lasting until just January 7th at 0600 GMT, save 50% on most DCS World modules! This applies to aircraft, maps, and campaigns. The only exceptions include: DCS: F/A-18C Hornet at 25% off DCS: Persian Gulf Map at 25% off UH-1H Argo Campaign at 20% off DCS: SA342 Gazelle at 15% off Note: the sale only applies to released products. Get these deals in DCS e-shop Take advantage of these great savings while they last! Pre-Order DCS: Christen Eagle II! It is our pleasure to announce that DCS: Christen Eagle II by Magnitude 3 LLC is now available for pre-order on the DCS e-Shop for $23.99. A release of a feature-complete module is scheduled for January 23rd, 2019. Launch Trailer Purchase from DCS e-shop The Christen Eagle II touches on many aspects not previously explored in DCS World. It aims to capture the unique experience of flying an aerobatic biplane capable of maneuvers previously not possible. The Christen Eagle II is an-easy-to fly airframe with a constant-speed propeller, and it includes inverted fuel and oil systems that allow the pilot to concentrate on the flight maneuvers. The Christen Eagle II offers something to every virtual pilot, regardless if they are a veteran or a newcomer, combat pilot or an aerobatic artist! DCS: Christen Eagle II features: Highly-detailed and fully functional dual cockpit Highly-detailed external model with fully animated control surfaces and other systems State-of-the-art internal and external textures Exhaustive set of external liveries Advanced flight model based on technical documentation and real Christen Eagle II pilot experiences Complete aircraft system and subsystem modeling, which includes the Lycoming AEIO-360 engine, electrical, fuel and flight control systems Fully functional KY-197 Radio Authentic sound sets (canopy, cockpit items, engine) A couple of instant missions and tutorials to get you started Cooperative multiplayer – fly with a friend in the same aircraft, either as an instructor, student or a passenger Complete aircraft flight manual Modern Air Combat (MAC) Update Since the announcement of MAC, we have been listening to customer feedback and we have been busy expanding the product to maximize your enjoyment. In addition to the 14 aircraft and four maps, we’ve been engaged with the following features that will bring the product to the next level flight game entertainment: A redesigned Mission Generator that allows you to easily create exciting missions based on a selected mission type. This will provide a much more focused and fun gameplay experience that is designed around action and fun An entirely new interface. MAC will feature a very modern, intuitive and beautiful interface that will feel at home in 2018! Taking advantage of the new Dedicated Server system, MAC will allow you to earn accomplishments and points that you can then use to purchase DCS World products. The new system has a detailed point-earning system that is also tied to leader boards and record scores Enhanced assists to help new players will come with MAC like auto-trim, navigation and target marker locations, and unified control inputs All of this will result in a much better product, but it has extended our development time. We look forward to bringing you MAC in the 2019! DCS: BAE Hawk Update We regret to inform you that VEAO is no longer a developer for DCS World. As such, they have also ceased support of their Hawk. Although we offered to support their product, they declined making the files available to do so. Given this unfortunate situation, we will fully refund all Hawk customers that purchased the module starting from 1 October 2018. If you wish a full refund, please enter a support request here. For those that purchased the Hawk prior to 1 October 2018, will continue to make DCS World 2.5.3 available, such that you can still fly the Hawk. To avoid such issues in the future, all future 3rd party agreements are now required to make the game files available in case they are no longer able to support their product. DCS World Updates Due to the holidays and our staff taking some much-needed time off, our next DCS World update will be 16 January 2019. Happy New Year! The Eagle Dynamics Team

Farman Shorthorn with better gunner (armed observer)

Finally successful with tweaks to get FE2 running in BootCamp on the Mac with no stuttering...will post relevant directions later under the relevant Mac thread once I tinker some more with this...all settings at high/unlimited, and the d3d10_43 dll dropped into the FE2 main (not user) folder...with advanced shaders on in the options.ini file....currently I'm incorporating shader (fx) calls into the relevant effects, particle, and environsys files, also have to turn shadows on in all the relevant inis...lots of work. FPS are between 200 and 300. Von S

I have noticed a distinct lack of meteors is this thread. Lets fix that.

pontoon on suez

Thanks to Baffmiester..........she flies.

For virtual pilots the question of when to ditch your drop tanks is an easy one, that’s right when you feel like it! Of course but when it comes to real world use it has never been that straight forward. So how have they been used in combat over the years? Older viewers may remember the Yankee Air Pirate team actually disabling tank jettison in some of their missions for Wings Over Vietnam to stop players dropping them ha. Quite frankly no one gave a toss about these rather mundane items until the F-35 showed up it seems when all of a sudden they became a massive burden on older generation jets with arguments going to the point of stating they couldn’t even be jettisoned! So now for a rather exciting history of some drop tank usage in combat. A bit of background Drop tank usage became common in WWII, and most will know about P-51s and P-38s on Escort over Germany with drop tanks which were jettisoned when the German fighters showed up. The need for this was to extend the range of the aircraft. [doh really] P-51 flight with drop tanks (Historylink101.com) So, couldn’t they just put more fuel internally? You may notice that tanks used in WWII were relatively small……..piston engines didn’t need that much fuel compared to jet engines. But, by the late 1950s drop tanks had become much larger because the Jet engines were getting more powerful and thus needing much more fuel. More Jet fuel means more weight and fuel is very heavy and takes up space, so if someone is designing a fighter with a set of performance requirements they often had to keep internal fuel to a minimum and put the fuel to meet the range requirement externally in drop tanks. The idea being that the pilot flies to the combat zone on drop tanks but has to jettison the tanks when performance was required. Into the Korean War era Jettisoning tanks was not always as smooth as in flight sims. May 20 1951 James Jabara was part of a 4 FIW fighter Sweep over Sinuju. As soon as MiG-15s were sighted the order came to drop tanks and Jabara punched them but only the left (Port) tank dropped. Stuck with one tank he was supposed to return to base but disregarded orders and managed to get one confirmed kill (by both sides) and damage a second despite the asymmetric control problems he must have been having. F-86 v MiG-15 over Korea (Troy White) F-105 and Vietnam era In this era dropping tanks was common but again didn’t always go without drama. “We never did figure out why they had to drop them right on top of us, and I can assure you that a 20 foot long fuel tank in the face can ruin your entire day.” (J Broughton) So wrote Jack Broughton in 1969 regarding his F-4 escorts, and in Vietnam, flights sometimes even dropped tanks just to go into the combat area clean. This also applied to some Thud drivers as well it appears although Broughton states he preferred to hang on to the tanks if he could for ResCAP. Basically in a ResCAP [Rescue CAP ] situation if the F-105 gets low on fuel they would leave the combat area to Air to Air Refuel, but it needed the tanks to get back to the combat area again for any useful period of time. If they knew they wouldn’t have to refuel again during ResCAP (e.g. getting dark) dropping the empty tanks was done anyway to increase endurance [due to the reduction in Drag and weight]. F-4s had to drop their centerline tanks at least to be able to fire AIM-7s, and ideally ensure they were flying at a speed and attitude / AoA [Angle of Attack] where the tanks didn’t hit the aircraft after jettison and ruin the pilots day! In 1973 Paul Howson fired two AIM-7E-2 Sparrows and both hit the centerline tank although luckily they didn’t penetrate it. Although he thought he had jettisoned the tanks earlier the centerline tank was still attached due to a failure. F-105D Thuds with a KC-135A (USAF) “It is hard to figure out how we can go to the Moon, yet we can’t build a fool proof system that will allow you to let go of a big blob of a tank when you want to.” (J Broughton) Picking up SAM activity the flight of Thuds dropped the tanks, but the curse of the hung drop tank affected one of the flight. The drop tanks now being bigger was a bigger problem because that one aircraft with a hung tank now needs to use a lot more fuel to keep up with the flight, or the rest of the flight needs to fly slower through the danger area! On one mission Jack discovered a failure on the 650 Gal tank that meant he couldn’t transfer fuel from the A-A tanker (KC-135) so opted to jettison it when empty on the way there. Again, getting rid of the tank when empty increased endurance enough for the mission by reducing overall drag and weight. Meanwhile over Israel Typically, Israeli pilots jettisoned the drop tanks when they were vectored towards any suspected enemy aircraft. During the Yom Kippur War this got to 50 drop tanks jettisoned per day, and they were jettisoning them even if the contact they were vectored to was false or friendly. To avoid such waste the policy was changed so they would only drop them once they had visually acquired their targets! On the 14th April 1969, Rouven Rozen had a bit of a pilot fail when he forgot to jettison the centerline tank on his Mirage IIICJ and ended up with a MiG on his tail after some rather sub-par maneuvering. Luckily the MiG pilot wasn’t so hot and he managed to pull him into a scissors and turn things around by getting behind the MiG. In another instance Iftach Spector was flying towards contacts they were vectored to on their radar which turned out to be Drop tanks that had been jettisoned by MiGs falling from the sky. IDF Mirage IIICJs (dailykos.com) The 4th Generation arrives When the F-15/16 came along they had the same design concept as the previous generation F-4s which was fly to the target on external fuel and jettison them for combat however there was one major change. The drop tanks were manufactured to a higher quality and could be used at 9G when empty. Most of the F-4 drop tanks in Nam were ferry tanks and were not really stressed for combat as such but made good canoes. This change no doubt drove up the complexity and cost of the tanks and provided more incentive for the air force to not just jettison them for the hell of it. Some of those drop tanks were converted into canoes by enterprising Vietnamese farmers (Aviationist.com) Into the Storm Now for some examples from more recent conflicts, typically they are jettisoned in emergency situations which includes any A-A engagement, flame out or SAM being fired at you. Desert Storm had its fair share of A-A and A-G action, here Jerry Oney in an F-15E taking a big risk: "Well there we were, a couple of the USAF’s finest, flying the mighty Strike Eagle at around 2000ft below a mostly scattered cloud deck in a two-mile trail at 500kts conducting a road recce for some scuds. Even then I was thinking “this isn’t the greatest idea in the history of the earth”. I was soon proved correct as we flew past this Iraqi airfield and saw the smoke trail of an SA-7, or maybe an SA-9, heading past us and towards lead. The next bit of action seemed compressed into about two seconds or less – lead broke hard into the missile in an attempt to defeat it, I watched the thing overshoot and detonate about 500ft above lead, Bill [the pilot] manoeuvred hard to avoid lead as we now had a face full of F-15E heading towards us. Damn an Eagle can turn. I felt all our ordnance come off the airplane as Bill calmly punched the jettison button as part of our attempt to avoid hitting lead and get our weight down in anticipation of another shot coming our way." F-15Cs with drop tanks (USAF) Cesar Rodriguez flying an F-15C describes one engagement with a MiG: "…so the western AWACs called on GUARD, Pop up contacts, 330 degrees for 13 miles. At 13 miles I had no option but to engage without any SA [Situational Awareness] , so I directed an in-plane turn to 330 degrees, jettisoned wing tanks and put my radar into the location of the target….." Here is another account from Rhory Dreager and Rodriguez of a different engagement in an F-15C: "We do not want to get into any turning merges if we did not have to, so we get our MiG-23 EID [Electronic ID] and AWACS clearances out of the way well before we could shoot. The MiGs were flying at 500ft, and we were flying a cut off intercept on them. At about 40 miles, AWACs told us that one of the MiGs had returned home, so we now had a radar picture of a three-aircraft “Vic” – one guy out in front and the other two guys flying behind and either side. Rodriguez added that RC-135 Rivet Joint also confirmed the EID on the MiG-23s. Dreager ordered a jettison of wing tanks to allow better maneuverability and greater speed with which to increase their WEZ." 17 Jan 1993 F-16C pilot Craig Stevenson was on a no-fly zone patrol with an F-4G over Northern Iraq when a MiG-23 started darting to the no-fly zone. As soon as AWACs had identified the MiG as hostile and called “commit” Craig jettisoned his nearly full fuel tanks but held onto his bombs. “At .95 mach I was well above the selective jettison design limitation for the fuel tanks, and the aircraft was quick to let me know. The jettison was so violent I remember looking back at my horizontal stabilizers to make sure they hadn't been damaged by the fuel tanks.” Air Force Magazine Note that even aircraft that use drop tanks do not always have to use them in combat, especially where A-A tankers are available. In Desert Storm F-16s of the 363rd FW(P) Forward deployed to King Khalid Military City AB in Saudi Arabia with A-10s meaning they could deploy with 4 x MK-84s as standard load-out with no drop tanks: USAF F-16s at KKMC during the Storm - foreground is Block 25D #84-1257 of 17TFS (USAF) Fighters without drop tanks Just to be awkward there have been a few fighters designed post Korean war that have not had the option of using Drop Tanks, these include the F-8 Crusader (non J), Su-27 Flanker, and the F-35 Lightning II. F-8 Crusader (worldwars.net) This means that when fully fueled on take off they have a much higher relative internal fuel load-out and weight because they are carrying the fuel that others carried in drop tanks. So, until the Su-27/F-35 get their fuel down to about 60% say their relative performance is significantly reduced in terms of subsonic climb, acceleration and overall turn performance. However, the lack of drag from large drop tanks will mean they can have better acceleration and higher practical speed through the transonic and supersonic regions of flight when only carrying light to no external stores. These jets also include fuel dump mechanisms that allow them to dump fuel for emergency situations such as an emergency landing. With this approach you also need a very high thrust engine to overcome the extra fuselage size, weight and drag that was put there to hold the extra fuel in the first place. Su-27 intercepts a Swedish ELINT aircaft (Swedish AF) Are drop tanks really the best way of doing things? Valid arguments against include that they take up pylon space, can cause problems if they fail, and impose performance limitations on an aircraft. Also some of the fuel in the drop tank is needed just to offset the extra weight and drag. Logistics of Drop Tanks can be an issue in terms of maintenance and getting enough to a squadron. Did any squadron ever run out of drop tanks post Korean War? [Answers on a post card because I am not aware of any on the Western side]. Cost is another thing that is brought up, it is however much cheaper to jettison the tanks rather than lose the entire aircraft and pilot. Any plus points? Rather good at extending range [duh] You can jettison them, unlike CFTs and bigger airframes. Erm….sometimes can be used to land on if they are empty and the gear fails [or you forget to lower it]: F-16C Block 25 lands on tank at Luke AFB June 17 2004 (F-16.net) The Future Seems the arguments are mute because with F-22, J-20 and Su-57 using drop tanks, and talk of some being developed for F-35 they are not going anywhere in my lifetime. Chegndu J-20 February 2017 (Elephant) Sources Thud Ridge (J.M.Broughton, 1969) Crecy Publishing James Jabara (Sherman S 2001) online Acepilots.com http://acepilots.com/korea_jabara.html Israeli Mirage and Nesher Aces (Alomi. S, 2004) Osprey Publishing F-15E Strike Eagle Units in Combat 1990-2005 (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing F-15C Eagle Units in Combat (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing USAF F-4 Phantom II MiG Killers 1972 -73 (P.Davies, 2005) Osprey Publishing Sukhoi Su-27 (Gordon.Y, 2007) Midland Publishing Title Photo credit USAF