Stratos

Late 70's?

I'm getting ready the popcorn!

I think you contacted me trough DCS forums for the Su-7 installation. SF is another game, very different from DCS, in SF you can have tons of planes from different eras on tons of different maps. Avionics are on a much lower level, but you win in content and FPS. There's a huge Su-17 mod coming for SF2, check here for more info. https://combatace.com/forums/topic/81785-sukhois/?page=16

Found this in F-16.net The first author, is investigating about several things in order to create a wargame (boardgame I think), and he asks... Yes. Your game is set up in 1983. It was a different world 34 years ago. There was no GPS. No computers in the squadron. No targeting pods (as we know them today). We did absolutely zero training for a Middle East desert scenario. Aside from the F-15A and the few F-16s available, there were no look-down radars. The E-3A was brand new, and there was no JSTARS. There were no NVGs or FLIRs. Very few aircraft had a reliable INS. Our tactics were closer to World War II than what is common today. On the other hand, in Europe there were huge numbers of F-104s, G-91s, Mirage IIIs, A-7s, an incredible variety of F-4s, F-100s, A-10s, F-111s, Mirage F-1s, Buccaneers, Lightning's, Alpha Jets, F-5s, Tornados, F-15s, the new F-16s, Viggens, Yak-15s, MiG-19s, MiG-21s, MiG-23/27s, Su-17/22s, Su-25s....and that was just the fighters. At Torrejon I spent a year working in Wing Weapons and Radar Strike. (We were the mission planning cell, among other things.) We knew that on average it would be dark (night) half of the time, and we would have lousy weather half of the time. Combined, we only expected to have decent air-to-ground weather 25% of every 24 hour period, and we knew that a Warsaw Pact armored invasion would not stop for night or weather. Many of our bases in Central Europe were within 150NM of the potential FEBA, and we expected the bad guy tanks and artillery to get that far fairly quickly. We expected Spetznaz units with SA-7s to be operating in and around our airfields. We expected to be operating under chemical warfare attack. We expected and planned for something like a 10% loss rate per 24 hour period. A big concern was "holding back" enough aircraft to accomplish the inevitable nuclear tasking that would be ordered as we were overrun. It was a different world. How soon we forget. I understand that you are making a game, not a retrospective real world training device. Games are supposed to be entertaining. Nobody is going to enjoy your game if they end up in a nuclear holocaust as they get overrun. You can do whatever you want in your game. You can have F-18s shooting Harpoon missiles at alien spaceships, or F-14s dogfighting Japanese Zeros, as a couple of (fun and entertaining) movies did back then. If you want to have napalm or a Hades bombs (as another really trashy F-16 movie had), go for it. If you want to have pilots with X-ray vision that can see tanks from 25,000' and AGM-65s that fly 12NM, that's okay. It's a game! Original http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=52915&sid=da3095945d5fffe899676dd8ee6d96d0&start=15 Really interesting part about weapons employed and PK's F-4 and AGM-65 in USAFE: JB, sorry to disagree, but we did use the AGM-65A/B on the F-4 in USAFE. Attached (I think) is a photo of my F-4D at TJ in 1982. Note the LAU-88 and TGM-65 on the right inboard station. Our combat loadout was 6xAGM-65. WSOs: Agree with JB. I was fortunate to get to fly with Vietnam vet WSOs with several hundred combat missions "up north". Some of them were outstanding. I basically made sure that we didn't hit the ground. The WSO worked the (ancient) radar, the ALQ-119, the ALE-40, the radios, checked six, did the time-distance-heading on our low levels, and alternated between launching AIM-7s and the AGM-65. They were VERY good. On the other hand, there were some that (as JB says) were weight and ballast for the CG. F-16A (Block 15) and AGM-65: I looked in my logbooks and don't find any Maverick missions in the F-16A at TJ before I left. I don't recall why TJ would have given up that tasking. However, we did employ the AGM-65A/B at Kunsan AB in 1985, and I launched a live AGM-65B at Nellis AFB in 1986. "Standoff": A little history on the Maverick missile; The F-4 and F-105 were the primary USAF air-to-ground fighters in Vietnam. They were "red reticle" or "iron sight" or manual bombers. We were terribly inaccurate, especially in combat conditions. I don't recall the exact numbers (and they were classified anyway) but to kill a Soviet tank, you had to physically hit the topside with a MK82 to kill it, and you had to get within something like 8 feet with a MK84. I worked with JMEMs a lot, and recall that an F-4D dropping 12xMK82 on a single pass had something like a 10% PK on a Soviet main battle tank. The main concern for USAFE was trying to stop waves of thousands of Warsaw Pact tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap. The MK20 Rockeye was one attempt to solve the problem. While better than MK82 GP bombs, it still had a pretty low PK. Another solution was the AGM-65. As I recall the AGM-65 PK was around 50% once launched. Therefore, an F-4 carrying 6xAGM-65 had a good chance of taking out three tanks, whereas an F-4 armed with 12xMK82 had a 10% chance of taking out one tank. Clearly, the Maverick was a much better tank killer than a GP bomb. Note that there was no mention of "standoff" with the AGM-65. It was not a "standoff" weapon, but a precision guided anti-tank munition. A little reality check on the "standoff" concept: When attacking a runway, the enemy defenses (ZSU-23-4, SA-6, etc) are not parked on the center of your target runway. They surround the airfield within a radius of 3-5 miles. Similarly, if you attack a bridge, the defenses are not located on the middle span of the bridge, they're on the hilltops surrounding the bridge. When you attack a tank on a battlefield, it is surrounded by 30,000 troops within 10 miles carrying SA-7s and six bazillion guns. When you say that you are employing a "standoff" weapon against a target, that does not "stand you off" from all the defenses that you have to fly over to reach said target. As JB said, in USAFE in the early 1980s, you had to get right in amongst them to deliver your weapons. There was no "standoff" as it is envisioned today.

Things were different back then, and in theory it was made to keep the pilot out of bomber gunner range. Strahi, thanks a lot mate! Works now!

Hello! I searched without luck for this early french A-A missile, the AA-20 in our weapons packs. Anyone know If we ever got this missile for SF2? I know we cannot direct the missiles by ourselves, but maybe using it as a IR poor missile ala AIM4 Falcon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA.20

I tried the SF2: Israel vanilla map with no joy, (it stops just south of Homs, almost on Lebanon north border, leaving all the Syrian med coast out), and also tried to search for other maps here with no luck. But before giving up I will ask here. Do we have any map that cover the Syrian med coast and north of the country? Will be a cool map for Russian intervention and maybe Russo/Israel clashes. Thanks.

Thanks! What a mess TK did erasing the Snoopy FAC.

Not bizarre, germans experimented already with that in WW2 From Wikipedia article about the Ruhrstahl X-4 The missile was spin-stabilized at about 60 rpm,[3] or one rotation a second, so any asymmetrical thrust from the engine or inaccuracies in the control surfaces would be evened out. Signals to operate control surfaces on the tail were sent via two wires (a method chosen to avoid jamming),[4] which unwound from bobbins housed within long, bullet-shaped fairings, themselves mounted either on the roots of an opposing pair of the larger mid-body fins (there were four, swept 45°),[5] or on those same fins' opposing tips; these contained a total of about 5.5 km (3.4 mi; 3.0 nmi) of wire.[6] The wires were controlled by a joystick in the cockpit.[7] A gyroscope kept track of "up" so control inputs from the pilot's joystick in the launch aircraft could be translated into yaw and pitch as the missile spun. Flares attached to two of the midsection wings were used to keep the missile visible through the smoke of its motor. BTW Strahi, can't get this to appear on my french planes, is a IRM?

It was. Pilot must guide the missile all the time until the proximity fuse detonated the warhead.

Thanks mate! Will try it this evening!!

I had serious problems targeting the terrain. The target areas refuse to appear as selectable, terrain tiles are finished, but the targets are not on place. Sorry but I have no idea of how to resolve the issue and cannot finish the terrain.

I'm wondering how they searched for the targets, below the clouds, flying a very fast jet in the dense envinroment of Europe, (forests, buildings, canals and rivers...). Anyone have an idea? Do they have all the targets analyzed by recon? Sattelite? Wish we had some kind of pre strike recon capabilities in SF. About tanks, I think they mean a total kill, not maybe a mission damage, If that's true, our bombs are too powerful or the ground targets too weak.

Yeah, in my wet dreams :D

Exactly!

A Italian seaplane based campaign... With all those objects would be amazing!

I feel this mods are getting such an outstanding quality level that in some cases surpases commercial modules for DCS. My hat off for you guys!

I've seen your profiles, but not the real bird, really can't wait!

Wondering If they will try to savage the aircraft, 3000m is really deep.

How beautiful!! Man we will be getting such a nice mod!!

Pretty cool clouds! Good to see you back Beach!