Attack Helicopter - No way to guide ATGM manually?

[igneous01 19]

It's been a while since I last played Arma - before the Helicopters DLC at least. It's great to see the improvements made in the flight model with things like VRS and Overspeeding the rotors.

 

But one thing I am dumbfounded by is the lack of being able to manually guide a Scalpel ATGM on a target. I understand that it requires another weapon lasing (or IR lock) but it's really unfortunate the gunner can't manually guide the missile.

 

It would be nice to be able to do popup attacks on AA targets at a distance where you still have enough time to maneuver back into cover, but without a way to manually guide it in that makes all modern helicopter tactics unusable.

 

Now I know most people will say that AA will always have the advantage in range, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to kill an AA unit.

 

For example, in DCS Black Shark, the SA-8 OSA has an effective range of 10km, with the Ka-50 effective range for the Vikhr ATGM at about 7.2 - 7.5 km - even though the SA-8 has nearly 3km more range than the Ka-50, with proper positioning the Ka-50 can popup behind a mountain, fire off a missile, and destroy the SA-8 at about the same time the SA-8 has fired it's missile (now because the SA-8 is destroyed the missile goes ballistic because the radar is no longer actively tracking, but that's another story). All AAA weapons like the Shilka are outranged by the KA-50 because it's maximum AAA range is 4km.

 

So it's not unrealistic for an attack helicopter to face against AAA or light Radar SAM platform. Obviously heavy duty SAMs like the BUK and S-300 will always win against an Attack Helo, but for lighter SAM threats (such as what's portrayed in Arma) can totally be handled by an attack pilot with enough skill.

 

This is a bit off topic - but the possibility of adding in HARM (Homing Anti-Radiation Missiles) missiles would be great - some models of attack helicopters have been known to carry light to medium range HARMs in a SEAD role.

[scavenjer 112]

You realise that you can actually use SACLOS mode with pretty much any helicopter borne ATGM right?