“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.
I’ve always found that once you start to get close to whatever the ADA envelope is, "pass and haul… "(we all know the rest). That’s where you intervolometer comes in handy to space out all that lovely ordinance. Now if it the threat was solely small arms you can pretty much bomb with impunity so long as you stay high, so as many reattack passes as needed.
Bare in mind that a Mk-82 most likely isn’t going to do much more than ■■■■ off the crew of anything more modern than an early T-72. It’s either going to fuze early and the blast effect will reflect off the armor, or it’s going to fuze late, by which point the casing will have shattered and it won’t detonate.
To bull through armor you need a shape charge (Maverick, CBU), or something fairly heavy (Mk-83 and up). Both of these options assume you can actually hit the tank, which is a problem that DCS quite frankly understates.
One thing I’m curious, is at what distance can you effect a mobility or firepower kill with dumb bombs. 200 lbs of Comp B (as an average for all the various ways you can fill a Mk 82), still blows a decent size crater (nominally 30’ by 15’ deep). That’s plenty big for a tracked vehicle to throw a track, slide in an be unrecoverable, roll, etc, let alone the crew casualties from sliding/falling/rolling. An area DCS doesn’t address at all.
Also with something modern like the PFB-82 (the pre-fragmented casing version), throwing something like 17,000 high speed steel fragments, there’s a pretty good chance of wrecking the commo and optics (and the crews externally stored rucksacks) . Even the plain old cast steel casing throws around 3,000 fragments (which are larger and heavier) to wreck things not under heavy plate. Again an area DCS doesn’t address.
I’ll wait for the professional weapons wonk to show up and decide if he wants to add his $0.02. All I can say for sure is the Mk-82 is not considered a viable tool to K-kill modern heavy armor.
In the game, with something like a GBU12, we can get scary accurate with them. It’s pretty much a “point laser at point, bomb hits point” weapon. That translates into a lot of direct hits. For reference, here’s a GBU-12 dropped from a F-35 with an inert warhead:
Note that the commentary indicates they call the hit within the kill zone. A hair optimistic, but by the same token if 500lbs of explosive goes off that close to the tank, there’s likely to be something wrong with it or the crew afterward. As the game doesn’t (yet) simulate secondary damage from impacts like that, it simply pops the tank dead. IMO that’s fair, though that point of view isn’t exactly shared by a lot of folks.
Now, for a live warhead, we have this video of a GBU-31, though I’m not sure if it’s with a penetrating warhead or a straight up Mk84 warhead:
For DCS, throwing GBUs out the window and going into standard bombs, it gets a bit harder to score hits close enough without a lot of practice, and that’s with stationary targets. It can be done, but it’s really not ideal, especially if you have access to specific anti-tank weaponry. My preference will always be to bring a TGP along and GBU-12s if I have to kill a lot of tanks (Harrier), but barring that Mk83s can get the job done (as shown in my video earlier). I don’t generally like the Rockeye for that as the subs don’t do a whole lot to the heavy tanks, though they’re great for lighter armor.
If you’re using Mk80s to wallop tanks, release from as sharp a dive with the most speed you can muster from the lowest release altitude. Treat them like a shotgun, not a precision weapon. Don’t use the high drag versions for this, they don’t work worth a damn for precision. Drop in pairs of two for best results. You can drop Mk84s singly, just watch out for asymmetry if you do so.
The giggle factor is up to 11. Today I was laughing in my Oculus as trucks burned on the ground. Im getting aggressive and I am flying the Hornet to the edge. Even managed a direct hit on a tank with a Mk83. THANKS FRANZE. I may have doubted the super high antics, but it worked!!! I had plenty of time to put the thing on the thing then the latter went PING!
Now I need to try it while the shoot back… Its not the same, is it?
Interesting article discussing the technical operation of the MK-82:
Honestly, I doubt it would do much damage even if it landed right next to a battle tank, the shockwave isn’t going to propagate really well through it and throwing a track seems unlikely. Tanks really are resilient and designed to take a punch.
Although it looks like it would cause havoc if dropped on a motor pool, 17 000 metal fragments flying at high speed in a relative build up area will happily destroy drivetrain components on unarmored units.
Just means your minimum altitude for release is a bit higher, depending on the threat. Against a mixed convoy with APCs and whatnot, you can get pretty low, say drop at 3,000ft and immediately pull up afterward (have a button bound to the G limiter override, too). If an AAA threat, then 10,000ft is as low as I’d go, with 8,000ft really pushing it. Short range SAMs? No lower than 14,000ft, and I’d still pop a few flares out while pulling up, too. Would probably pick clusters to take those out first, then either have another jet take out the armor or RTB and grab the big ones.
Keep in mind that most of the weight of the bomb is in the shell casing, not the explosive. Set right next to a tank and blow it up? Yeah, it probably won’t do much. Drop it from 15,000ft at 250-300kts? Kinda different there. Remember that France was tossing concrete bombs at Libyan tanks a few years ago, so if you can pin the bomb right onto the tank it’s likely to leave a dent or two. That’s why @near_blind mentioned the two probabilities with typical Mk80 series warheads: either it blows up too early or it hits and shatters and might not blow up at all or do so with reduced effectiveness.
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that not all tanks are created equal, and not all tanks are going to be T-80UDs, T-90s, or M1A2s. Most are going to be T-55, T-72, M60s, etc. which aren’t quite as solid as more recent tanks, nor with the same protection philosophies in mind.
Where I was thinking throwing a track, is the crater that MK82 is going to carve. A 30’ by 15’ deep hole, is a plenty big enough hole for that too become an issue, let alone, the tank sliding/rolling and being unrecoverable (at least in a tactical time frame). A MK84 will dig a crater almost 50’ deep (ground type dependant of course). My main line of thought was in regards to rendering the vehicle at least a mobility kill on a non-direct hit.
I finally got a chance to load up on CBU-97s and give it a try.
First off, the effects are pretty outstanding. Definitely a different animal than your standard cluster bomb. The skeets show like a high speed laser rain bringing ruin to whatever is beneath it.
I see what you are saying about the luck factor though. I managed to kill 16 Tiger IIs with one… damn… bomb. Not exactly 40 dead, but holy ■■■■!
Sadly, no. Which is unfortunate because it is one of my all time favorite weapons for the Hog, and, assuming the DCS Viper will be able to use it, it will probably be the sole reason I actually get the DCS Viper.
