Classic.
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F-35B/C Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter)
- Thread starter jai5w4
- Start date
Classic.
Because of the offset pylons?
Canted Pylons for one....
But even without that, Fixed pylons with no active range source providing no data to the Pilot as to where his AIM Point should be. Add to that the flight profile you need to be in to fire rockets, the max range of your typical 2.75" FFAR, your biggest warheads being 17lbs, not being able to carry anything but RC fuze type HE warheads or smoke, etc etc... Look go back and look at me and Flash yelling at each other about Rockets and you'll get a pretty good idea of why there isnt a whole lot of reason for you to have them. It'd be a waste of a pylon if you could do it.
Shooting rockets is an art. The guys that were flying Hueys and Cobras in Vietnam could drop them in the bed of a moving pickup truck, and they were doing it with feel and a grease pencil mark on the windscreen. Ive got a fully active Helmet Mounted sight with constant laser ranging and articulating pylons and its hard enough to hit anything with them because of the inherent inaccuracy of the weapon and the fact that we dont shoot hundreds upon hundreds of them anymore.
You're really passionate about your rockets. I think that they found a "reason to have them" considering we carry them. I don't pretend to be an expert on your platform, but I would think that there is an advantage firing with a dive angle sight picture instead of firing from a low altitude shallow angle like a helo.
We usually do fire them from a dive. Rockets get more accurate with that bit of airspeed getting them out of the effected rotor wash. From a hover especially near the ground the downwash significantly alters the rockets thrust vector. If you hit something from an IGE Hover it was more luck than skill if your just shooting singles or pairs. You can do everything perfect and still watch the damn thing zoom off 300 meters off just because of thrust misalignment or wind further down range.
Point is you dont have a sight picture for them. You dont have an I beam sight for them. And unless you want to slow down to our airspeeds where you can shoot... correct... shoot... correct... shot... Your not going to do anything but fly over, dump the pod, and hope for the best. Marking with rockets is easy, wherever they land... correct off that. Hitting something with them is an entirely different story.
Roger that: 450 KIAS, 30, 45, or 60 degree dive, iron sight ... 2.75's (not too accurate) or Zuni's = < 50' CEP over 18 years ...
Did someone say: "it's 5 o'clock somewhere ... " ??
coolhandlukesd
n00b
Don't knock the grease pencil, and you don't need fancy shit to nail a target with a a rocket, you can do it by kentucky windage.
Not to get back on subject or anything, but with no HUD how is pilot going to line up the gun on the A? Just because your JHMCS is looking at what you want to shoot doesn't mean the gun is pointed there, meaning you couldn't move your head off center unless you wanted to lose your sight picture. Also would anyone foresee landing on the boat or anywhere for that matter to be a bit trippy with the HUD just floating around where ever you're looking, rather than a fixed position?
You get used to it... We dont have a HUD in the Apache, just the HMD. Its kinda weird at first because there is a bit of jitter as the sight tries to compensate for where your head is but you just learn the basic technique of putting the head tracker (part of your symbology) on the target and steering the sight to it.
Most helo "HUDs" are actually HMDs mounted to the end of one's NVGs. Admittedly most are very different than the Apache's, but that aspect is the same. You get used to it, and it's actually more appropriate for a helo which is manuevered along different axes than a fixed wing. It's still good to see my nose attitude, even if my head is pointed to the side doing a slide into a helo spot on ship, for example.
We've got that option to use the SDU but nobody does because you have to disconnect the actual HDU that we spent 99% of the time flying with to connect it to the Display Processor. That and since we have the NVS (FLIR PNVS & TADS), NVG isnt our primary night sight so nobody is comfortable giving up the NVS and all the associated symbology that comes with it for a pair of goggles with less advanced symbology and no way to go to NVS if they fail. But yes, way more similar than different.
Only trapped on the boat 10 times, but besides a few lineup glances at the 90-45, I was pretty much looking through the HUD and moving my eyeballs around to see lineup and meatball. No head movement at all in the groove.
