I took a peek into the Hornet Early Access Guide and found this:
DUD Bomb Cue. If a canister weapon is selected and the bomb would impact before it would be armed, the Dud Bomb Cue is displayed.
Something must be broken here, as the MK-84 has never been a canister type bomb from what I can tell …
DUD cue means different things for different weapons. In the case of a GP bomb like the Mk-80 series and their guided derivatives this means that you’re altitude and descent rate are such that if you dropped the bomb now, you would be unable to escape the frag pattern with a standard escape maneuver (4G pull to the horizon). In such a case that would mean you have a >0 chance of blowing yourself up, and because the Navy thinks getting you and the jet back home safely is a more important concept then killing the target, the F/A-18 will automatically safe the fusing of the weapon in such a scenario (I.E it will be a DUD).
Now, the DUD cue should be dynamic. A Mk-82 Hi Drag has different frag parameters than a slick -82, which is smaller than an -83 or 84. My understanding is it’s a canned value at the moment, and doesn’t change per bomb, and is something they are working on.
Thanks for the explanation, sadly there is not much about it in the official guide.
Interesting…I wonder if this means they are going to go a similar direction as the Harrier in terms of alignment options and using the data cable when on the ship.
I think they could release with the older FLIR, but I think they want it to be the test bed for the new renderer, so it will wait on that. I think its in work currently, so not as bad as it could sound.
Does this mean that there will be INS drift?
Happy new year everyone!
A little good-news update to pass along regarding the targeting pod for the Hornet. As many of you are aware, USMC Hornets fly with the AN/AAQ-28 Litening targeting pod when deployed from airfields. This is the same TGP used for our A-10C. As such, we now plan to first introduce the Litening pod to the Hornet prior to the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR pod. This will allow a more complete selection of targeting pod options (can also be used for other countries like Spain of course), but also allow us to introduce a targeting pod into the project sooner than we had originally expected.
Thanks!
Excellent! Why the change/addition, though? Also, will we be able to employ it on the cheek station or will we be restricted to the centerline and inboard pylons?
Good decision. It is there, it is used in real life, so why not use it.
Yes, 100% to all the available mounting options!
I’ll be happy to see the Litening on the loadout selection screen, and begin marking my own targets finally!
Having that early will give some good practice time before the ATFLIR is ready.
So what pod is better, ATFLIR or Litening? Resolution, hand-off capabilities, etc?
They’re more or less equivalent judging from a relatively recent assessment by the USMC, irl the litening is not carrier capable, maybe it is over-Gd more easily or hates salt water or something…
I did some reading yesterday, ATFLIR is supposed to have more magnification to suit the higher altitudes of the Hornet.
I ended up looking at all the pods - ATFLIR, Litening and Sniper. Litening is apparently a bit easy to work with, and more reliable, but doesn’t have the range.
One of the pods (I’ll try to find the article again) had issue with using sort of ram air like power source which would be susceptible to salt water intake on a carrier. I think it was the Litening. Again, I’ll find the article again and edit this post as needed. The others were powered from the carrying plane, so no issue.
That’d be LITENING as it has an inlet (see pictures above). Seems kind of moot though considering that the LITENING is used by Harriers and they operate from amphib carriers.
For our purposes, the ATFLIR will probably work better in the strike role, while LITENING will be better for CAS.
Hornet Mini-Update
It seems a lot of you had fun with the “Valley Run” mission, but it’s not much of a challenge. Let’s try something a bit more skill-based? Attached is a “River Run” challenge mission that requires you to make it through all the gates in less than 345 seconds. Unlike the Valley Run, you can’t just firewall the throttles, you’ll have to manage airspeed to stay as fast as possible, while slow enough to make some of the turns.
Have fun and good luck!
Follow the link to find the mission:
https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3744076&postcount=105
Fixed that for you.
So they won’t use it when carrier based?
Nope, LITENING is for land based USMC squadrons only. On the boat they use/share ATFLIR with USN squadrons.
Ah! That makes sense in the way only the odd USMC/USN relationship can, lol
It’s sort of like when you have two identical lightbulbs but they both have different part numbers and if you replace the rear cabin lamp of a Bradley with the wrong one, you get in trouble.
