Interesting proposalā¦
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I would swap my Mudhen for a Pig anyday!
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Swing wing wins every time.
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Until itās time to turn a wrench.
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Just read/watched the lot.
The article references Lazerpigās videos pretty early on in his denouncement of the A-10.
I watched them.
Indeed, and as he claims, someone doesnāt understand mathā¦
ā¦I think itās him.
It is funny though. Had the Cold War gone hot, I think the (unquestionably brave) A-10 boys would have had a tough time of it and wouldnāt have become the Permissive Threatās Tinder favorite with three dozen hard points and 3 hours of gas.
The āfragile but agileā F-111 though, ripping up valleys at 100ft and dinging Soviet helmets with their UHF antennas, might have become the heroes of the Fulda Gap.
In other words, weād have DCS: Ardvaark before we had DCS: Warthogā¦
ā¦though you might have had to sign up on āSteamskiā to buy it. 
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Interesting, to me, that Iāve been pondering something similar a lot lately. More about MANPADS though; if the DCS MANPADS are any indication (Iāve no clue) itās suicide below about 12k AGL.
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Next week they will be comparing Chalk and Cheese.
We never spent even the bare minimum to maintain NATO requirements for the flexible response strategy from 68ā¦you may have only had about 4 days of ammo.
MANPADs SA-7, FIM-43, and blowpipe seemed to be relatively crap in combat in the 70/80s and even more so against countermeasures. They improved a tad in the 1980s like the Stinger but even so IRCCM was pretty primitive.
DCS has usually had a limited set of modern MANPADsā¦used to mess around on the cold war server and the MiG-19 I was in often took a FIM-92C from circa 1988 in the face.
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F-111ās would have been held back until it was time to go ripping up valleys at 100ft with a pair of SRAMās in the bay on a one way tripā¦ cue:
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Indeed! But you do have to sort of put it in some historical context. As @MigBuster suggests, MANPADs in the heyday of the F-111 were significantly less capable than the most modern variants.
In earlier days, dipping into the MANPAD envelope was considered an acceptable risk, mitigated by maneuver, running expendables programs, and not doing something stupidā¦like reattacking someone who youāve already cheesed off by bombing once.
These are things that are probably not practiced well in DCS. I know I donāt spend a lot of time programming an expendable string that runs through my entire target attack; nor do I adhere religiously to the, āOne pass, haul XXXā rule.
Beyond that, and I have no idea how accurate these things are modeled in sim, you still need to be detected and tracked for a MANPAD to hit you. And if youāve ever been at an airshow when a jet flying just behind its shockwave screams over followed by a bowel loosening tear, you know how easy it can be to āsneakā up on even a diligent target on anything but flat open ground.
The limitation for the attacking aircraft was historically always finding the target without being found. As I wrote elsewhere, post-GPS this is mostly a matter of āputting the thing on the thingā, where the real bottleneck is getting quality target coordinates.
Pre-GPS, even a good INS was going to only get you near the target. Good INS management, proper terrain association, and perhaps a visual acquisition were going to be the only way that you had a snowballās chance in Hell of hitting what you were hunting.
Bear in mind as well that a good deal of old school high threat air doctrine was probably of the āBomb suspected truck parkā ala Flight of the Intruder sort, where a string of bombs was going to be liberally applied to where a target was supposed to be, with little time to ensure that there was anything there to bomb.
This was the era of the F-111. It was fast, it could go far, and my understanding is that it had systems really optimized for terrain following and all weather low level attacks.
I think the Tornado was probably also in this category.
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Who, me?
Does it count if you forget to move the Master Arm switch to the, ahem, correct position?
Iāll put this into the ānice jobā bucket for the ED AI programmer: adhering to this policy does appear to make a difference. Second pass, āno Buenoā
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As an Australian and an aviation enthusiast, I am obliged to worship the F-111.
I also have two friends who have worked on the aircraft and mission support. One was a RAAF RADTEC who I have known since Primary (Elementary) School and spent the best part of a 20 year career fixing the Radar and radios. The other is an Imagery Analyst instructor who early in his career, hand drew predicted radar trace overlays on clear acetate sheets for the Nav to use and compare with the actual radar trace - I have seen examples and they are eerily accurate. Neither has ever said that such adoration is misplaced.
In their opinion. The Pigā¦
It was the undisputed King of low level bombing. Apparently the only thing faster at sea level was nothing! Even the early radar was good enough with a pop-up to acquire the offset and then toss bombing to put 24 x 500Lbs of kickarse into an area the size of a football pitch.
The cockpit canāt be too hard to model?
And who wouldnāt want side-by-side seating to make it easy to high five your MP buddy?
It would also make the best Recce aircraft in DCS and do double duty as a bomb truck:
Speaking of bombsā¦
Please, please, please somebody make a F-111 module for DCS. Donāt let my dreams die like this:
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Listen to the Aussie.
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With regard to MANPADS, it is also worth to point out that night aircraft have a high degree of surviveability against optically aimed air defences. In Desert Storm, F-111 flew 99.6% of their sorties at night.
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Fantastic point!
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F-111 would be an excellent module in DCS. Your points about multicrew in side-by-side are really good too. Same would apply to the A-6! 
Might make learning the module more fun too, less needing to be a Jedi and mind read what the other guy is looking at.
If we have F-111, could we have a mod that rekins it into an A-5 Vigalante?
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