General Discussion (dev branch)

[dragon01 902]

5 hours ago, Vasily.B said:

I was trying to edit my post but i had 502 gateway errors. 
I tried also MI-28, MI-24 from RHS, goodluck with trying to hit anything at 200-300 meters. Dispersion is terrible, before that tweaking it was perfect. No need to increase it more.

You're not supposed to "hit" anything with it. You're supposed to spray rockets in the target's general direction and let explosions do the rest. A burst of seven or so rockets should knock out any softskins and infantry just fine, and do it in a large area. That's why I asked for ripple fire for larger pods, it's far more practical to employ them that way. A rocket pod is an area of effect weapon.

[Beagle 684]

35 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

You're not supposed to "hit" anything with it. You're supposed to spray rockets in the target's general direction and let explosions do the rest. A burst of seven or so rockets should knock out any softskins and infantry just fine, and do it in a large area. That's why I asked for ripple fire for larger pods, it's far more practical to employ them that way. A rocket pod is an area of effect weapon.

Free available data states otherwise. We are not talking about WW II fin stabilized aerial rockets.

The CRV7 70mm FFAR is knows to have a dispersion of 4 milliradians fired from an CF-18 Hornet. Thats half the dispersion of the 20mm Vulcan autocannon  and allows effective rages of up to 8000meters for a good aread effect.

Even if we do as is done in ArmA III and reduce the effective range, that would still need them to be usefull in an dispersed area effect at 3000 meters, in game.

 

An impact pattern of not more then 10mx10m at 4000m should be mandatory at least.

[dragon01 902]

Well, the video showing the S-5 rockets seems to suggest otherwise. As a matter of fact, we are talking about (folding) fin stabilized rockets not fundamentally different from WWII ones. You've got a solid motor and a bunch of fins at one end, warhead and a fuze on the other. All you can do it manufacture it all to greater tolerances, which costs money and can only get you so far.

 

Granted, S-5 is not exactly a paragon of accuracy, but it's quite clear that 4-3 milirad dispersion is exceptional for this kind of weapon. It would be appreciated if you could post a video of a rocket actually being used at 8km. In actual combat, the end result does tend to look like this (this doesn't show how far the launch aircraft was, unfortunately), which I about what I experienced in ArmA:

I found it difficult to find a video that clearly shows both the aircraft and the result in the same shot (there is some distance between them, after all), but this seems to show the Harrier going quite low.

From a helicopter, dispersion is definitely pretty serious, despite the hill not being all that far (there's no info on what rockets on what helicopter those were, but that's a western design):

 

[Tankbuster 1746]

An

1 hour ago, dragon01 said:

 

Granted, S-5 is not exactly a paragon of accuracy, but it's quite clear that 4-3 milirad dispersion is exceptional for this kind of weapon. It would be appreciated if you could post a video of a rocket actually being used at 8km. In actual combat, the end result does tend to look like this (this doesn't show how far the launch aircraft was, unfortunately), which I about what I experienced in ArmA:

1

An unguided rocket at 8KM? Isn't that a bit far?

[Beagle 684]

4 hours ago, dragon01 said:

Well, the video showing the S-5 rockets seems to suggest otherwise. As a matter of fact, we are talking about (folding) fin stabilized rockets not fundamentally different from WWII ones. You've got a solid motor and a bunch of fins at one end, warhead and a fuze on the other. All you can do it manufacture it all to greater tolerances, which costs money and can only get you so far.

 

Granted, S-5 is not exactly a paragon of accuracy, but it's quite clear that 4-3 milirad dispersion is exceptional for this kind of weapon. It would be appreciated if you could post a video of a rocket actually being used at 8km. In actual combat, the end result does tend to look like this (this doesn't show how far the launch aircraft was, unfortunately), which I about what I experienced in ArmA:

I found it difficult to find a video that clearly shows both the aircraft and the result in the same shot (there is some distance between them, after all), but this seems to show the Harrier going quite low.

From a helicopter, dispersion is definitely pretty serious, despite the hill not being all that far (there's no info on what rockets on what helicopter those were, but that's a western design):

 

See for yourself, you can find info about 70mm Hydra rockets. It's not a secret. range dteated is 10km effectiv range is 8km and my suggestes range is 4000m. Seems all reasonable. BTW why should a shoulder fired rocket (RGP_42) have a better accuracy? or what aboout rocket artillery ?? what magic makes it hit at all at ranges around 20km???  A weapon system that does not allow the delivery platform enough standoff range to stay out of ground fire (2000m) would be plain silly in the 21. Century. Of coouse the cost of CRV-Rockets is much higher than those of S-8 Rockets. And there are laser guided variants availabe on the same rocket base.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRV7

 

you can not really compare this to the crude way the often improvised rocket rails of WW2 where used and did perform. A lot of them where notoriously slow, unstable and simply lacked a good stabilisation.

[reyhard 2082]

4 hours ago, Beagle said:

or what aboout rocket artillery ?? what magic makes it hit at all at ranges around 20km??? 

Mass & their speed - in that CRV7 article you have specified why it's so accurate - main dispersion comes from right after the launch, when motor starts - artillery rounds ofc don't have that issue since they are fired at usually ~900m/s. Due to low mass S5 rockets had terrible accuracy and that was a main reason why Russian army no longer use them and switched to S8 & S13 instead. Still, there are plenty videos from Syria or recent military Russian military training where you can see how accurate (or not) are S8 rockets -

 

Don't forget that there are also such rocket systems as Grad which launches rockets with significant dispersion.

 

Anyway, ingame there DAR rockets, which are based - surprise - on DARs & Skyfires which shares ballistic characteristics of S8. You can google how accurate are DARs ;)

[dragon01 902]

5 hours ago, Beagle said:

or what aboout rocket artillery ?? what magic makes it hit at all at ranges around 20km??? 

Besides high speed and high mass, numbers and big warheads. Unguided rocket arty is well known to have worse accuracy than tube arty. Why do you think Grads are fired in salvos of 40? Their dispersion is quite big indeed. Other, larger rocket systems use less rockets per salvo, but make up for it with a big honkin' warhead, which only needs to land in the general vicinity of the target to level it. Combined with those rockets generally being big (which always helps with drag due to square-cube law, not to mention you can have a really big motor there), they can be used at much longer ranges than air launched ones.

[Strike_NOR 898]

What both @reyhard and @dragon01 and myself have pointed out earlier. Direct attack rockets are essentially area effect weapons. They disperse over a relatively wide cone of fire, which in turn leads to poor accuracy at distance, and better up close. Of course, using rockets is only a viable option if your rockets outperform their anti-air weaponry in the range aspect. You would basically not try to go with rockets against anything with guided weaponry (shilka, manpads etc). However, rockets are way cheaper than missiles, do a great deal of damage against a large area, and are multi-purpose.

 

This image clearly shows dispersion happening:

 

Aswell as here: The impacts are all over the place and the shot seem to be less than 1 km range.

 

To compensate for this poor accuracy, rocket pods tend to house many rockets. They are all released in a large salvo to maximize hit probability. So think of your rockets as a shotgun, designed to hit everything and anything in front of you, while the air to ground missiles are your "sniper rifle". A very expensive one-off weapon that is guaranteed to hit/kill.

 

Basically you do this:

 

1. Kill anti-air threats with expensive weaponry (guided missiles)
2. Kill everything else with airborne artillery (rocket pods).
3. Pick off straggles with gunruns

 

In conclusion: Aerial rockets are inaccurate, they disperse a lot and it was a warm and welcome change to the ArmA series to finally have this properly simulated.

[Vasily.B 529]

I can undesrand pretty much everything, but one thing is unclear for me - why they (Russians) have HEAT warheads? I was using them normally when i was empty of guided rockets for destroying/damaging armored vehicles. On stable branch (first iteration of dispersion) it works perfect - there is dispersion, but not as big as in devbranch (second iteration). These were very usefull specially when modded SACLOS missiles are usually missing their targets (AI control)

[Beagle 684]

Hello Fellows, I was locked out of the Forums after the update.

 

I spend that time searching for material on the manufacturer pages.

 

It is now clear to me that the statement "all FFARs have poor accuracy" is simply not true. Even the S-8 family has subvariants, some with short range and Cluster warheads as area effect weapons, some with range up to 6km and HEAT warheads.

 

http://www.armaco.bg/en/product/aviation-unguided-rockets-c28/80mm-unguided-rockets-p479

 

On the other side I found a nice descriptive training video of a MD-520 firing rockets in pairs at small targets. You can clearly see those rockets go in a straight line where they are aimed.

 

https://youtu.be/148PF_UZ5uo

 

Conclusion: the current dispersion is exegerated, for the sake of playability I would suggest to reduce it by half. I must be at least possible to hit a single house at 1000 meters without obliterating the whole settlement.

 

[da12thMonkey 1943]

9 minutes ago, Beagle said:

You can clearly see those rockets go in a straight line where they are aimed.

Really?

You can clearly see they are dispersing by several degrees in the wide shots:

[Beagle 684]

There will alsways be some dispersion The helicopter is moving in air there are often soem turbulences. Try using the advanced FM with windds.There will be dispersion all over the place by itself. You can not just add artificial dispersion of that magnitude.

 

The straigt line trajectory is there, just compare to the snake line of the S-8.

[dragon01 902]

Yes, exactly. That's why you don't trust manufacturer data. Turbulences are there, which also affect the rocket and are the source of the "artificial" dispersion. Also, it is possible to hold a helo quite steady in AFM and IRL, so this isn't that effect. Manufacturer date is always going to be the theoretical maximum, which is never reached in combat.

[Strike_NOR 898]

11 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

theoretical maximum

 

*Sales pitch* ;)

[dragon01 902]

Yeah, though if you're caught outright lying on a contract with the military, you're going to be in a lot more trouble than the usual false advertising lawsuits. :) They usually do stick to theoretical limits.

[dragon01 902]

Yeah, though if you're caught outright lying on a contract with the military, you're going to be in a lot more trouble than the usual false advertising lawsuits. :) They usually do stick to theoretical limits.

[Beagle 684]

29 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

Yeah, though if you're caught outright lying on a contract with the military, you're going to be in a lot more trouble than the usual false advertising lawsuits. :) They usually do stick to theoretical limits.

I have worked in the defense industrie (production line) for quite a while. The advertised data is made under "laboratory conditions" in a way to make the product look good. But thats the same way it is done in the automobile Industries. Its no illegal practice. When once in a decade some operators exceed the old given parameters a, new "effective value" is born and advertised.

 

But, there is a slight difference beetween a usable range of 500m or 8000m that is outside all reasonable deviations.

 

It rather seems to me this change is now made to let the Comingn Tanks DLC look better in an artificial way by hampering the Anti Tank capabilities of the light Helicopters.

[reyhard 2082]

4 hours ago, Beagle said:

Even the S-8 family has subvariants, some with short range and Cluster warheads as area effect weapons, some with range up to 6km and HEAT warheads

Hm, I don't see any combat variant with range up to 6km

 

It doesn't seems like pilot hit a target - you can also see some spiral movement of rocket.

 

Anyway, of course there are more & less accurate rockets but I've already answered you what we were basing our missiles and rockets on. Multiple sources states that FFAR are area effect weapons, not precise one, and their average engagement range is usually stated at 2-3km at max. From what I gathered, effective range of 8km is for illumination rounds, not for combat warheads like M151 or M229. You can also compare dispersion if you want with i.e. DCS - I doubt they have increased dispersion of their rocket launcher because of Tanks ;)

 

ps. in current stable build there is no rocket dispersion at all.

[Strike_NOR 898]

I wanted to test out some of the various rockets in-game to see what results I got:

 

SETUP:

Three rocket systems were tested with the following platforms:

 

Wipeout: Shrieker HE & DAR (twin pods)

Neophron: Tratnyr HE (single pod was used due to high ammo count)

 

HE was chosen to show impact craters (AP did not make visible craters).

 

Ranges: 2000m, 3000m & 5000m.

Dive angle: 45 degrees

 

Target: T-100 Varsuk

Radius indicators: Pop-up targets placed in circles at 10m, 20m, 30m and 50m.

 

ACCURACY:

All flights spawned at the same altitude and distance from target

The pylons closest to the fuselage centerline were chosen to increase accuracy.

Speed maintained as closely as possible to 450km/h

Simulation speed 50% (setacctime 0.5) to improve aiming.

Fully zoomed view, using a user-placed waypoint to engage beyond rendering distance.

 

CONSISTENCY:

Performed each attack 3 times to see that the dispersion results were similar enough to use as examples. They were.

(Three strikes with DAR at 2000m, three at 3000m, three at 5000m, then repeat for Shrieker and Tratnyr).

 

RESULTS:

 

Imgur link with description to each image:

https://imgur.com/a/v6Jcz

 

Of all three rocket systems, I personally "felt" that the Shrieker rockets were the most accurate, the Tratnyr second and the DARs were the least accurate.

However, it appears by testing that they are all relatively equal. The ideal attack range seems to be less than 3000m, but even at 5000m all but one hit was within 50m radius (this is WAY beyond practical distance in ArmA due to the tiny target size even on my 24'' monitor).

 

Destroying a heavily armed target like the T-100 simply will not happen. Not even below 2000m because of the way current vanilla rockets work (no HEAT). After playing a LOT of RHS with HEAT ammunition though, I can tell you that a single rocket in the right spot can knock down an MBT or even destroy it.

 

Out of all my attacks, I would say over 75% of the attacks resulted in at least one direct hit to the tank. Less than 50% resulted in more than 2 direct hits.

 

If BI implements effective HEAT or other anti-tank warheads to rockets, then the probability of dealing significant damage, even to MBT's is actually quite good.

 

In terms of soft targets, the effect is devastating (all pop-up targets were killed in every attack) and this kind of attack would most likely kill/immobilize anything within 50-100m, using an average of 20 rockets per strike.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

Rockets fulfill their purpose, even up to 5000m in ARMA 3. Getting all hits within 50m of your crosshair, when you are technically engaging "BVR" (beyond visual range) in the ArmA engine is pretty darn good if you ask me. Something is wrong if you expect hitting within 20m with all rockets at this range.

[Beagle 684]

45 minutes ago, reyhard said:

Hm, I don't see any combat variant with range up to 6km

 

It doesn't seems like pilot hit a target - you can also see some spiral movement of rocket.

 

Anyway, of course there are more & less accurate rockets but I've already answered you what we were basing our missiles and rockets on. Multiple sources states that FFAR are area effect weapons, not precise one, and their average engagement range is usually stated at 2-3km at max. From what I gathered, effective range of 8km is for illumination rounds, not for combat warheads like M151 or M229. You can also compare dispersion if you want with i.e. DCS - I doubt they have increased dispersion of their rocket launcher because of Tanks ;)

 

ps. in current stable build there is no rocket dispersion at all.

Im very well aware of what the Ka-50 in DCS can do with S-8KOM. Against MBTs the S-13 is to prefer. Unguided Rockets are a big thign in DCS since the I-251 "Shkval" System depicted can't track targets at night.

 

I'm on ArmA III Dev build and I have to confess I overreacted at first. I deactivated advanced FM and unplugged the Joystick. Without advanced FM and keyboard + mouse only control the rockets indeed perform well enough. But its hard to reproduce this in Advanced FM with wind and HOTAS+Pedals control. I think it was wind drift of the helicopter and a non perfect tail trim that made the dispersion a hundred meters at 1000m. THis brings up another problem again: Sensitivity curves.

 

Onve you got a sensitivity for input axis set to perform well for precision steering of a car, it will perform bad for Flight or won't perform at all for tracked.

 

The 6km figure comes from this websites: 

http://survincity.com/2013/02/jsc-npo-alloy-presented-a-new-product-the-unguided

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/s-8ofp-unguided-missile/

[oukej 2911]

Also one thing to keep in mind when looking at real life references about ammo precision is that the data is often given as either 1σ  or circular error probable. With that in mind (correct me if I'm wrong, please) e.g. 4 mrad will give you something like 10m extreme spread radius on 1000m.

[Beagle 684]

8 hours ago, oukej said:

Also one thing to keep in mind when looking at real life references about ammo precision is that the data is often given as either 1σ  or circular error probable. With that in mind (correct me if I'm wrong, please) e.g. 4 mrad will give you something like 10m extreme spread radius on 1000m.

I think it is more like 4 meters at 1000 meters. 4 millirad is roughly 0.023 degrees. Thats why I suggest that a tank sized target (9m) should be hit by 60% of rockets of a salvo at 2000meters. most rockets that miss would fly over or short of the target, not left or right.

Millirad is used because it so easy to use: 1 mrad / 1000 m = 100 cm

 

But as I said, given the rather short practical rendering range in ArmA III, any combat beyond 3000m is not really practical so effective ranges may only be to that range and dispersion might be higher to compensate for that....as long as it is not 10meters at 1000meters.

[oukej 2911]

8 hours ago, Beagle said:

I think it is more like 4 meters at 1000 meters.

Talking purely about measures yes. However considering the full dispersion it means that only some portion of the hits (50%, 80%? diameter or radius?) will probably fall within that circle. Meaning that the outermost hits can easily be spread much more.

[Strike_NOR 898]

Here's a good example video though. An AH-64 firing what appears to be training rockets from just under 900m range (according to cockpit audio). 

 

 

Note how one rocket hits dead center (seems to strike the roof or just behind the truck, it's really hard to tell), while the other one hits far left. The second volley at 600m is, well... off. Unfortunately pilot aiming pipper is not overlaying the gunners view.

 

This doesn't matter however when you are firing HE rockets, because the shrapnel and blast will deal with the target. Most A-10 training videos and tutorials (DCS) I have found state that the hydra rockets are best fired from less than 2 miles (nautical?!). Long range shots are only made for smoke or illumination rounds to mark a target area. I didn't know this until recently, but rockets can actually be launched in CCRP mode and even be lofted (ballistic arc). Accuracy is severely decreased, but the range to target as well, which means you can avoid SAM and AAA threats, but still successfully mark the target for fast-movers :)

[lex__1 422]

Thanks for fixing the observer with the camera