I love how easy the Viggen is to land, a proper joy! I think most people make the unfortunate mistake of fighting the automation that has been ingrained in it’s design. Once you realize that everything has been put in to make it a lot easier for you then it’s quite a breeze to fly
Another interesting scenario would have been a Soviet advance through Lapland to outflank NATO in North Norway. In this case I think the Viggen would have been preoccupied with bridge busting, including ferries, pontoon bridges, tank bridges and temporary military bridges.
It’s basically a standard USN carrier pattern. In the groove you want to fly 15.5° AOA for a short-landing (highest AOA just before the stick-shaker sets in).
Yeah, the strategy was to more or less abandon Lapland and mine it as Swedish forces withdrew to the south. That would mean destruction of roads and bridges and then saturate the battlefield with mines and sting the enemy with attacks from ranger units.
We called that the Battle for NATO’s Northern Flank and it would have been a swell time.
Sweden isn’t a member of NATO so it was an unknown whether or not the Soviets would ignore their neutrality and just cross through to Norway (good for us even though it gave us a larger treat vector) or just do an amphibious end run around North Cape.
The USN plan was to snug up into Vestfjord with a couple of carrier battle groups, hiding behind the Lofotens from the long range ASCMs (SS-N-12, SS-N-19, AS-4) and mine ourselves in. The RNoAF F-16s would guard the eastern approaches through the mountain valleys. The Tomcats would do their long range interception against the Backfires trying to get around from the north, while the A-6Es would initially attrit the amphibious landings, conduct war-at-sea strikes against Soviet SAGs trying to head south to get ASCM shots up into Vestfjord and, if they had the chance, conduct strikes into the Kola.
Oh what a merry bunch we would have been, going “toe-to-toe wit the Ruskies.”
Nice write up. A suggestion for the RB-15, is to change their approach points (BX-7), you can setup one to arrive from the east, and one from the west to help split defenses. It only takes a bit of practice to get comfortable doing that on the the run in once you’ve located the threat.
All we could ever hope for was to make the Swedish route too costly for Ivan to comtemplate. Nobody believed we could stop them, just delay them.
Pretty much the same plan as we had, down here to the south of you.
As I recall it, the bulk of our amor exercises during my time, consisted of a series of delaying actions, spiced up with the occasional counter attack.
Quite interesting to read about all the planned demolition of bridges, plans for stay behind units of Homeguards and SF troops, and just general destruction of our own infrastructure to slow down the reds.
Good thing nothing came of it!
The issue with the Harpoon being primarily that it does not skim the waves until terminal. Flying under the “LOW” setting altitude, they will stay there but then it’s how close do you want to get to the waves.
I found that afterburning ahead of a launched missile made for simpler spacing then trying to not be slightly fast and launch #2 after just catching #1 with them being together as a result. Again with the low altitude then comes fuel usage concerns.
The pop-up mode was certainly inferior with serious ADA involved for the Harpoon, but did get both missiles and CIWS involved. A flight of Hornets could do well to keep the ADA occupied with higher flying Harpoons (LOW) while the Viggens sneak in.
It was also nice that while many of our planned strikes result in casualties on ingress or engagement near target - this time we ran the attack, exfiltration went smooth from the immediate area and upon being chased we turned back and schwacked the attackers - adding insult to injury - with a hobbled together flight of three very different airframes.
I’m looking forward to going through your Viggen videos!
In terms of the rockets / bombs discussion - I guess one thing is that there’s almost no need for pop-up with the high-drag bombs, whereas I think with the rockets to get the right HUD picture you have to have a 10-30 degree dive, no?
I’m doing a bit of simple weapons practice and finding that if I do a really low bombing run right past a Tugnuska, I’m okay…but even a slight pop-up for rockets is easily lethal as the radar-tracked guns get you.
I’m obviously very new at Viggen so not disputing your findings, just raising the question!
True. That would be appropriate for the Viggen era.
That means you have to know exactly where the target is, and trust your navigation to get there. Unless you pop up, there’s no way to visually ID the target. So, it kind of depends on the requirements of the mission.
Good point. I’ve got an easy to ID target (airfield) on the weapons testing / practice mission I made so hadn’t thought about that.
The Viggen is starting to make sense - so far I have done the training missions a few times, practiced cold starts and navigation and mostly used the auto throttle for landings.
Tonight I practiced the computer a bit more, changed waypoints to target points a few times to memorise the sequence. Next up is learning how to use the radar, so I can start using the fixes and moving target points etc.
Yeah I’m thinking of moving to rockets - I spent several hours last night trying to develop a good BK-90 mission against an SA-6. I had to “dumb down” the SA-6 AI a bit to add in more human-like response times. Still I cannot bet my wingman to shoot…he just lallygags around saying he is going to engage the primary target until the SA-6 finally gets a lock on him.
Then its all “Missile Launch!! Engaging Defensive! Save me Obi Wan! Oh the Humanity!…etc”
…and sure enough, off pop the BK-90s and his fuel tank…good for noth’n that’s what he’s good for!
Make sure to set the group to restrict jettison and then change the reaction to threat parameters from abort mission (default) to an evasive option or to ignore a threat.
