31/08/21 Operation Dengizich, the second son, V2

[0405 Andrew]

Geoff, please do, it's one of the reasons the miz file gets circulated. I am always happy to change anything.

The manpads were marked on the miz. Could they be marked as a target in future? I know they are difficult to spot, but they were out in the open and can be picked up with the tgp. Another tactic is to fly in pairs, one stays back and watches for a launch? They will either expend their ammo, they have 3 missiles each or the area could be hit with an area weapon like a cbu. There were 5 shooters and 2 comms units.

I believe 1f also got hit by manpads. So maybe it was a little unfair, I genuinely thought I'd left a little headroom before you hit the cloud base, but I did want to make it a challenge.

[0405 Andrew]

Could this mission be run next week? I could make some tweaks, cloud base etc? Correct the Gazipasa trigger for 11f.

I will add new targets for 3f and and 41f as they were successful (they had no manpads).

[309 Geoff]

Andrew,
Clusters are possible against manpads, providing we have enough cloud base clearance to over fly.
They can be identified on the TGP, from say,4nm, but can be a challenge to lock up with a maverick.
I prefer to use laser rockets on manpads, only if I know their accurate location. However, you need to keep laser lock during travel, which can be impossible sometimes with trees, and contours.
I don't agree with the idea of destroying manpads, using 2 ships to identify them as a military technique. Imagine the board of enquiry after loosing a pilot and airframe. I was impressed with 41Sqn's solution last night. However I guess it was not a briefed technique before take off, and developed during the flight.
On the miz, the speed of the manpads were 8mph, giving us a search area of over 40 square mile, with 30mins to target.
We could use them as waypoints, but we would need to know the accurate, stationary location, so we could drop a GPS weapon from above the cloud. Our CDU was full of waypoints last night. Adding another seven would have been impractical.
You could buddy lase them with SAS dropped by a Huey.
Effectively last night, 97Sqn only had 3 pilots. My internet was lousy yesterday, with an upload speed of 0.2mb/s, and staff working in the area to rectify.
I would be happy for you to run it again next week. Selfishly, I would like you to run it again on the 14th, because I'm in Yorkshire all week.

[Flyco]

Couple of additional points.

The combination of low cloud, falling dusk, and the current state of the A-10’s TGP (the forums are full of complaints, not all of them entirely fair, but it certainly isn’t the magic glasses it use to be), was just a bit too much for us.

The max ht of the man pad is (I would have thought agl). Hence they could comfortably reach our max ht below cloud of around 12,500 ft agl.

The use of CBUs was very problematical. The Red forces were often less than 1 nm from the (totally quiescent) blue batteries. (why didn’t they fire?).

Mavericks are fine but require us to know where to look - from a range of 6-7 miles. They are also a bit of an overkill for a man pad, although their “fire and forget’ capability makes them safer than the APKWs.

The APKWs are ideal for this sort of a job. However, they do require a significant dive from around 5-6 nm to allow the head to ‘capture’ the target, and maintenance of heading towards the target for about 40-50 secs min (that’s at least 2-3 nm, even if you are below 200 kias). Thus as you turn away you are within (or very close to) the man-pad missile range. In those circumstances of terrain and limited airframes it is not practical to buddy-lase, and even if you did it would still put your very close to in-range.

Marking the man-pad and then climbing to above cloud to drop a GBU is feasible, but again very time consuming.

As it was, on my first attack I could not launch until around 5 nm, because my target was hidden behind a low hill. I was doing about 190 kias, and I started my turn-out a couple of seconds before my weapons struck - on target. At the same time I got a missile launch warning, and pulled up and turned as hard as I could. Even so the man pad hit me! At least I hit the target.

My second ‘death’ was more stupid. I was staying 3-6 nm to the east of the target area, looking for targets with enough room to turn on, lock on and fire, when a ‘grown-up’ SAM hit me from the bloody airfield about 8-10 nm east of me that I had totally overlooked.

An interesting, if frustrating, night. I am not complaining about the target set-up, the cloud-base or the gathering gloom - it is all fair and foreseeable. I am however looking for the Battery Commander of those Blue units that watched all that red transport trundle past them, with only a Tunguska to protect them.

[0405 Andrew]

Geoff, Alan,
Points taken. I think just a few tweaks, not to make it too easy but more doable would make this a fine mission.

[309 Geoff]

Andrew,
Sounds like a plan.
Do you have a completed tacview?
Mine didn't work last night. Its OK now after a clean install.

[0405 Andrew]

I shall send you one when I get home.

[Flyco]

The 'tweaks' that I would suggest to ease things from the A-10's point of view would be:

1. Start the convoys about 20-30 mins after the mission start, and stop them earlier - somewhere around abeam the red camp would seem a reasonable end-place for the convoys on the east, and the red infantry positions on the west. It is a little unrealistic for a very weakly protected convoy to go so far beyond the FEBA.

2. Have a 'friendly Greek Cypriot' identify and pass on the positions of the man-pads, either before take-off or via a suitable VHF-FM frequency as we approach the coast.

3. The final thing, and this applies to all ground attack missions, is for time to be given for proper map study. That, and, of course, a decent topo map - I find it very difficult to sus-out the relief with the current DCS range. For LL or even ML ground attack it is vital to know the hills and bumps before you start drawing up routes etc. I appreciate this is beyond the powers of the programmer, but the situation is not helped by late changes. In real life, there is a nav planning facility with lots of maps, photos, etc - in our case most of us (admittedly not me) have a 'day-job' and cannot spend an hour or two in last minute route prep.

It is basically a sound mission, it was just a combination of factors that built up in the A-10's case. With 80-90 vehicles and over 100 troops to knock out, not to mention the man-pads, the choice of APKWs was, I think, the only sensible one, for our 4-6 ac. APKWs are very useful, but the need to lase right up to impact, and their short-range, makes their use problematic - becoming suicidal when there are unknown man-pads around - they can also be time-consuming because of the need to trek back out 5-6 nm between each individual attack - that is about 5 mins per individual target vehicle (or 6-8 hours divided between the 4 A-10s). Certainly Mavs would have been quicker, but would have required four to five times as many aircraft.

As for the use of cluster weapons, they can be very effective, but I am dubious about approving their use without proper caution - particularly on nominal 'friendly' territory, occupied by many civilians. On this mission, in particular, the nearness of blue AFVs in the immediate vicinity of some of our targets would have inevitably led to blue-on-blue. I deliberately limited the use of CBUs to the group of 50+ infantry in the open and not in-contact, or clearly identified red convoys on otherwise deserted roads.

[309 Geoff]

Alan,
I agree with the above.
I'll buy the Greek Cypriot a beer if he can give me coordinates in MGRS format.

[0405 Andrew]

1. I'll take a look at the convoys
2. I'm not a Greek Cypriot but my brother is married to one. I'm sure that will do to collect the beer, the manpads didn't move, they had no way points, their mgrs position was clear to see on the intel map, when I get home I'll jot the mgrs down for you.
3. The intel map can be studied as much as you like, you can practice, fly over and test your waypoints. I think that's as good as we're going to get in DCS. Each mission I'm hope you have all weekend to do this if needed.