Tag Archives: aircraft

It takes two to tango: why I like single-seat attack helos

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Picture your favorite helicopter gunship. I can’t tell you much about it without knowing what it is, but I can tell you one thing: unless you’re a weirdo like me, it has two seats. I do not think this must be so. To explain why is going to take a little detour into the tactical thinking of helicopter pilots, and how that affects the way they’re employed on the battlefield.

Picture yourself as a fixed-wing pilot. You can easily fly above all but the most specialized of ground-based weapons systems. Compared to anything in the dirt, you are extremely fast, so fast that they may as well be standing still. Your bog-standard general purpose bomb is several times more explosive than the largest explosive projectiles commonly hurled by things on the ground. Your precision-guided weapons are more precise, your sensors are better, you can see further. You are as unto a god, or at least a hero of Greek or Norse myth, striking down your foes with the weight of inevitability behind you.

Got that image in your mind? Savor it for a minute. Now forget all about it, because that isn’t how flying a helicopter works at all.

Picture yourself as a helicopter pilot. If you fly high, a plane will shoot you down, or a long-range air defense system. If you fly low, things on the ground a plane would laugh at will shoot at you, and might shoot you down. You are fast, but you aren’t so fast that you can really use it to enhance your survivability. You do not generally carry especially heavy weapons, and your sensors are pretty good, but you aren’t high enough to see a long way. You are certainly not as unto a god. You’re scary, but it’s the kind of scary your adversaries can actually kill.

What does that mean for you, noble helo pilot? How does it shape your doctrine? If you’re looking for a metaphor, the right analogue for a helicopter is not an IFV or a tank. If you’re a helicopter pilot, your mindset is ‘sky infantry’. You keep out of sight, use natural cover, engage quickly before getting out of sight, and generally skulk around in the mud. Just like the infantryman has a pretty bum deal on the ground, the helo pilot has a pretty bum deal in the sky. The only difference is that the helo pilot has someone to look down on.

Why do attack helicopters generally feature two crew? Because there are three jobs in a helicopter, and one person can’t do all three at once. You need to fly the helicopter, which is a difficult task on its own; you need to use the weapons, which often requires going heads-down; you need to keep your eyes up to see threats visually, since a lot of the things that can shoot down a helicopter can only be detected by the Mark I Eyeball1. The pilot can fly and watch, if the gunner is working with the sensors or weapons systems, and the gunner can keep an eye out, if the flying gets especially hard on the pilot. Simply put, each crewman can do about one and a half things simultaneously, and each helicopter has three things you need to do. Perfect coverage.

Mathematically, it looks bad for the single-seat concept. One crewman can do one and a half things. The helicopter has three things that need to be done. Let’s work on bringing those numbers closer together.

First off: we can install an advanced autopilot. We’ll go the Ka-50, the only single-seat attack helicopter ever to see combat service, as our example2. Taking its age into consideration, the Ka-50 has one of the most advanced autopilot systems ever installed in a helicopter. It’s fully capable of flying the helicopter through a noncombat mission from just after takeoff to just before landing, and can take control in nearly every combat situation that doesn’t involve immediate evasive action, or nap of the earth flying. This reduces our list of things to do to two, but we still only have one and a half tasks doable with our single crewman.

How can we fix that? Add a second crewman, but put him in a different airframe. Your helicopters fly in pairs. How many things will we need to do at once? Fly, but the autopilot takes care of that for us. Use weapons, yes, but that’s a shared task: only one helicopter needs to be engaging at a time. That’s one thing between us. Keep an eye out, yes: ideally, both of us should be keeping an eye out, but in a pinch, one pilot can keep an eye out for the whole team. That leaves us two crewman, who together can do three things, and two or three things to do between them (that is, weapons, eyes, eyes, or weapons, eyes).

That’s really all there is to the argument. Additional automation can help reduce the workload further. A fancy threat warning system helps reduce the need for constant lookout, and helps direct pilot attention during the few, emergency situations where the autopilot is insufficient. Better weapons and datalinks allow for off-board targeting, which can be used to move the weapons employment burden around between helicopters. Autopilots with more options yield further reductions in flying workload—a terrain-following radar or lidar, for instance, would give the Ka-50 the ability to fly nap of the earth at high speeds. Better sensors help reduce the time spent heads-down for weapons employment.

I’m nearing my target word count here, so I’ll wrap up with some quick pros and cons. I’ve made a decent argument that a single-seat attack helicopter is a reasonable choice, so why might you prefer one? To start, you have reduced aircrew requirements, and reduced aircrew losses—half of two airframes is one, and half of one airframe is zero. You have a great deal of large-scale tactical flexibility. Since the two-ship element is the basic unit of maneuver, you can choose to advance in bounding overwatch, for instance, or widely separate your eyes from your weapons. Your eyes helo might be just behind solid cover on a ridge outside of enemy engagement range, able to peek and feed coordinates to your weapons helicopter, which might be advancing in concealment much nearer the enemy. In separating eyes and weapons, terrain may sometimes allow a quick attack from two angles in rapid succession, or at entirely the same time. If you have a small number of helicopter pilots, single-seat airframes let you put more into the sky at once. It’s a setup optimized for tankbusting: large targets, relatively easily spotted and shared.

Why might you choose the standard two-seater? It’s better in moderately threat-heavy COIN situations, where the front lines are poorly defined and any territory may become enemy territory. Two-seat helicopters have better small-scale tactical flexibility, and a single two-seat helicopter swing between navigation, evasion, and counterattack much more quickly than a pair of single-seat airframes. For another, two-seaters are tried and tested. Nobody operates a single-seat attack helicopter in any real number today, not because it’s not a workable theory, but because the only modern example entered service well after its technology started down the hill toward obsolescence. Today, you’d have to build your own single-seater, or buy a bunch of Kamovs and refit them, while you can buy Havocs or Cobras or, for that matter, the Ka-52, basically off-the-shelf. Two-seat helicopters have better engagement speed: for a given number of helicopters and a given number of weapons, the two-seaters will distribute their arms faster, because each airframe is a self-contained targeting and shooting unit, not depending on another helicopter for overwatch or targeting data.

That’s about all I have. One of these days, I’ll take a look at the concept, and come up with some justifications for why Luchtburg might choose a single-seat helo.

1. Or the Mark II Eyeball, also known as the missile launch warning system.
2. The Ka-50 is outmoded in today’s market, but if you look at its competitors in late 80s, when it first appeared on the scene, it’s a much closer case, and depends mainly upon some tactical considerations I’ll get into later.

Fishbreath Plays: SimplePlanes

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I’m a fan of sandboxes.

Many of my favorite games are sandboxes, or have a sandbox element: StarMade is altogether a sandbox, Rule the Waves gives you plenty of latitude to build your own navy and your own history, Falcon 4 lets you play with someone else’s castle or kick it down as you please, and Command Ops, though less open than the rest of this list, still gives you the chance to do largely as you please inside whatever scenarios you can find or make.

So, when I saw that SimplePlanes, an aeronautics sandbox by Jundroo, who made one of my favorite physics puzzle games on Android, was now on Steam, I had to give it a whirl. We’ll get the bad out of the way first: it’s a port of a mobile game, and so the interface is not as powerful as, say, Kerbal Space Program’s (which is the natural comparison), and the parts list isn’t quite as lengthy as I’d like. That said, the flight modeling is excellent for a wee building game like this, and as with any building game, there are some superb examples out there. For another downside, there isn’t a lot to do; as far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to add new maps or new challenges, which is a shame. Either one would add a ton of longevity to the game. Finally, the combat bits could be expanded upon a little—damage is very binary right now, and hitting a plane with anything will usually pop it.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the good. I’m going to do this by discussing some of the things I have built; namely, the aircraft carried by the zeppelin Inconstant, from Skypirates: the Kestrel, Falcon, Vulture, Albatross, and Gorcrow. All are based off of real-world designs. The Kestrel is a riff on the XP-55 Ascender, the Falcon is based on any number of (generally French) twin-boom pusher designs of the immediate prewar and postwar periods, the Vulture is a recreation of the Sh-Tandem, a Russian ground-attack design, the Albatross is a Blohm & Voss-inspired asymmetric design, and the Gorcrow is more or less every medium bomber between 1930 and 1945. (Note that I made a few modifications to fit my zeppelin-borne aircraft requirements and restrictions, which you’ll find at the end of this post.)

The Kestrel is one of my favorites, owing to its handling characteristics. The twin coaxial engines, with a total of 1,500 horsepower for only 6,000 pounds full load, push it to speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour. It fields an excellent anti-aircraft punch, and has superb maneuverability at high speeds. Its weakness comes mainly in its low-speed handling: its vertical stabilizers are small, to limit the drag they add, but this creates a prominent tendency to yaw instability at landing speed. As such, it’s a design that’s likely very prone to landing mishaps, and requires a steady hand on the stick and active feet on the pedals to put onto the skyhook. Though the design is unusual, it flies very well, responding smoothly with little adverse yaw or other undesirable handling characteristics. At the edges of its envelope, it can sometimes get the pilot into trouble; unrecoverable flat spins are a possibility.

In design, the Falcon is much more conservative: it treads on no unusual aeronautical ground. The twin-boom design provides some added damage resistance; losing the back of one boom isn’t immediately fatal. It’s powered by a 1,250-horsepower engine, about the largest single engine we can expect to find in the world of Skypirates, and has a maximum takeoff weight of about 9,000 pounds. (The version posted is overweight, and needs to be slimmed down.) With rather a lower power-to-weight ratio, it only reaches about 320 miles per hour, significantly slower than the Kestrel. Although its gun armament is less heavy than the Kestrel’s, it makes up for that loss in firepower by mounting several racks for air-to-air and air-to-ground rockets. Its flight characteristics befits its character: rugged and dependable, with very few surprises, although it does have a tendency to stall the lower wing in tight, low-speed turns.

The Vulture is probably the one whose looks most closely match its intended purpose. A light bomber and ground-attack plane, the Vulture is the usual aircraft of choice when Inconstant needs to make a show of force. Its unusual design gives it a great deal of lift for its footprint, and permit all of its hardpoints to be placed along the same axis as its center of mass: dropping weapons doesn’t change its balance at all, making it a forgiving platform when carrying large weapons. The centerline mount supports an aerial torpedo, but only when the plane is air-launched—aerial torpedoes are too long otherwise. (Note that Inconstant doesn’t carry Vultures equipped with landing gear.) To my surprise, the Vulture’s handling is docile in the extreme, even when fully loaded, and turns downright peppy when empty, even though it only sports a 1,000-horsepower engine. I ran into no surprises anywhere in the envelope.

The Gorcrow, powered by a pair of 700-horsepower engines, is a conventional medium bomber, with all that implies. Its handling is ponderous, but it can sling a heavy load of bombs or rockets, or three aerial torpedoes, making it Inconstant‘s heaviest hitter by far. Three gun positions, one at the back of each engine nacelle, and one atop the fuselage, round out its weapon fit. Again, an unsurprising performer—not spritely, and predictable in its handling. Unlike the other aircraft on the list so far, its bringback weight is somewhat less than its full fuel empty weight. Inconstant being fairly light on avgas stores, her Gorcrows are generally only launched when absolutely necessary, to avoid having to dump fuel overboard before landing. The in-universe version has a glazed nose, but I haven’t figured that out yet.

The Albatross, powered by two 800-horsepower engines, is a long-range transport aircraft, and also one of my favorites for its sheer unlikeliness. Although Herrs Blohm und Voss built similar aircraft for the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, I was a little concerned that the flight engine wouldn’t handle it well, given the presumably-complicated aerodynamics at play. To my surprise, it worked fine, and isn’t even particularly touchy. Anyway, the 1,600 combined horsepower pushes her to a good turn of speed when empty, nearly as fast as the Falcon, and pegs her total cargo capacity at just over four tons. The asymmetry does mean she has some slight balance concerns, but in-universe, it’s easily trimmable. Low-speed handling is good, thanks to the fat wings. Even with the asymmetric nature of the pitching and yawing forces, owing to the offset position of the empennage, it has surprising maneuverability when empty. Same remark about the glazed nose.

Now, I didn’t even get into the built-in challenges, or into serious modding. I was just messing around, and in the course of learning how to build airplanes, building these, and coming up with my flight reports, I got more than my $10 of fun. I also got at least $10 of storytelling value out of it: I now have quirks and flight characteristics in mind better for each of these planes than I did before, and I can work that into stories.

If you’re looking for a plane construction sandbox, look no further.

Fishbreath’s Zeppelin-Borne Aircraft Construction Rules for SimplePlanes

  1. Airframes should range between about 3 tons and 12.5 tons full load.
  2. Aircraft must be shorter than 70 feet and have a wingspan less than 110 feet.
  3. No single engine may develop more than 1250 horsepower.
  4. Aircraft must have a bringback-weight stall speed of 110mph or less. (The other 20-30mph to get down to zeppelin speed is assumed to come from flaps.)

Duncan Sandys: Idiot or Cylon Infiltrator?

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The casual student of history might be forgiven for wondering what happened to the British aircraft industry. During the Second World War (which they won) the British gave us the Spitfire, the Avro Lancaster, the Hawker Tempest, the De Havilland Mosquito, and many other great airplanes. Now, they can barely collaborate with Germany, Spain, and Italy to produce an overpriced, overdue, tactical fighter that fails to win orders or live up to its own ad copy. But hey, at least the Eurofighter can beat a Bugatti an a drag race. So what happened?

Two words: Duncan. Sandys.

In 1957 he took the British aircraft industry out back behind the shed and shot1 it.

He wrote a white paper on defense2 that made two points. First, the British aircraft industry had to reorganize in big conglomerates, and only those conglomerates would get future contracts. Goodbye all of the companies that competed with each other, hello giant companies that are slow moving and risk averse. Also, the contraction in number of companies means there are fewer design-level engineering positions to go around. One big company needs fewer designers than two small ones. Nothing like encouraging all of that war-won design expertise to seek other work.

But wait, it got worse. Sandys posited that manned military aircraft were obsolete. Missiles were the way of the future. Missiles were all that was needed to win wars. Missiles could intercept bombers, so they didn’t need to build fighters or interceptors. Missiles could deliver big nuclear warheads, so bombers weren’t needed to deliver nukes. And everyone3 knew the massive power of nuclear bombs had made conventional weapons obsolete. On the off chance such things were needed, missiles could deliver conventional warheads too. Missiles could do it all, and do it cheaper than aircraft without risk to aircrews. Sounds great! And Britain had basically no money after the war. They stuck with rationing well into the fifties, and that fancy empire had fallen apart. Goodbye aircraft, goodbye aircraft industry, hello missiles and big savings!

Of course, history had other ideas. Nobody wanted to blow the world to tiny bits, since that means they’d die too, so nobody ended up using all of their big ICBMs. Or their big bad atomic bombs4 for that matter. Time and again, nations turned to conventional bombs, and yes Virginia, manned aircraft to deliver them. In the Linebacker and Linebacker II campaigns, the USAF showed that B-52Ds could bring the pain to Hanoi like their fathers in the Mighty Eighth. If you were ever wondering what heavy bombers can do that tactical fighters can’t, it starts with carrying one hundred and eight 500 pound bombs, and it ends with blowing the living daylights out of everything in a box about five eighths of a mile wide and two miles long. Yes, manned heavy bombers were darned useful in Vietnam. And this even during the Christmas Bombing of Hanoi, flying into the teeth of a massive air defense network supplied with the latest in Soviet-made hardware.

But it was not just the USAF that enjoyed success with manned aircraft. The Israeli air force has enjoyed great success with their fighters. In 1967, they executed a surprise attack that destroyed both the Syrian air force and the bigger Egyptian air force on the ground. Guderian may have been the first master of blitzkrieg, but he never did it as well as Rabin. In 1973, the Israelis had to deal with brand new SA-6 SAMs during the Yom Kippur war, and this reminded everyone that pilots, and by extension their manned aircraft are adaptable. Despite significant early losses, they managed to adapt and overcome, proving highly successful once again. Again in 1981, the Israelis succeeded in destroying the Osirak reactor in Iraq, despite the Iraqi air defense network.

Of course, Saddam’s embarrassment at this led him to beef up his air defenses again, but it would not stop (mostly) American airpower in 1991. Once again, B-52s were a big part of the strike package. Versatile manned aircraft carried improvised GBU-28 “Deep Throat” bombs to destroy heavily protected Iraqi aircraft shelters and command bunkers. And despite the large number of cruise missiles used, the opening blows were struck by Apache helicopters trashing an early warning radar, and only the stealthy F-117 was to operate over Baghdad.

Want more? Well, even England found a use for their old “obsolete” Vulcan bombers in the Falklands war. Operation Black Buck was a record setting 12,600 km bombing raid where Vulcans flew from Ascension Island to neutralize the runway on the Falkland islands and deny its use to the Argentinians. And during this time period, no Polaris missiles were used in anger.

It’s the versatility of manned aircraft during this time that has ensured their longevity. Lest you think other bombers are obsolete, all B-52Gs were destroyed as part of the START treaty. Even though they’ve been adapted for conventional missions and even close air support, they’re still an important enough strategic weapon to affect the nuclear calculus.

Of course, now people are at it again. Now drones are the future! Yay networking issues. Needless to say, keep pilots in the cockpit where they belong. Or else those terrorist Cylon bastards will win.

The only real Viper is a manned Viper. So say we all!

1.) Fun fact, people in England used to be able to own guns. Yes, real guns!
2.) He misspelled the topic, actually. One more thing he couldn’t get right.
3.) USAF included on this point. At least until Vietnam and “limited response”
4.) Singer Fred Kirby called them Hell Bombs in a 1950 song. Best name for them ever.

Skypirates: a zeppelin aircraft carrier construction ruleset

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Every zeppelin which has played a major role in Skypirates to date (so far, only Inconstant and Arys, where parvusimperator’s characters are based) has been designed in accordance with a fixed set of rules. We appreciate the verisimilitude this lends proceedings, for one; for another, we just really like rules for designing things. Ask parvusimperator about tanks or IFVs sometime1.

But not now. We have zeppelin rules to cover. I believe parvusimperator, to whom I owe the credit for these, believes he originally stole them from some Germans2, which is apropos. They were designed for tabletop RPG rules system Savage Worlds, which I wholeheartedly recommend if you’re looking for something opposite GURPS on the fun-GURPS axis. In traditional RPG fashion, round in the least favorable manner unless otherwise stated.

These are primarily construction rules. They were borrowed for a Savage Worlds campaign that never happened, and so the portions of the rules pertaining to acquisition and combat were never really fleshed out. If you want to use them, you’ll have to do some innovation. (If you do, let us know! We’ll put them up here for the benefit of posterity.)

Hulls

Length(m)    Width(m)    Hexes     Lifting/Payload (t)
300                50      6x1                 425/275
350                60      7x1                 670/435
400                65    8x1.5                1000/650
450                75    9x1.5                1425/925

The listed payload assumes helium as a lifting gas, military-spec internals (protected against enemy fire), and a single keel, and is 65% of the lifting capacity, rounded to the nearest 5t. For hydrogen lifting gas, add 5%. For civilian-spec internals (not protected against enemy fire), add 5%. For triple keels in the style of USS Akron and USS Macon, which permit internal engine mountings, subtract 5%. (That is to say, the maximum payload achievable is 75%, using hydrogen lifting gas and civilian internals, and the most durable build achievable is helium, milspec, and a triple keel.)

Take the product expressed in the Hexes column, and write it down as your hex-volume.

Engines
1 ton & 1 crew (slow diesel engine),
3 tons & 1 crew (normal diesel engine),
5 tons & 2 crew (fast diesel engine)

One engine pod is needed per every hex a zeppelin is long, rounded down to the nearest even number.

Gun Turrets
1/2 ton & 2 crew for cal. 30 MG
1 ton & 2 crew for cal. 40 and 50 MG
2 tons & 2 crew for cal. 60 and 70 MG
2 tons & 1 crew for flak cannon

Machine guns may be single or double turrets. Their requirements are the same, excepting acquisition costs. Turreted flak emplacements may only hold a single gun. Add a +3 modifier to shock rolls for the gunshield.

Bow/Stern Turrets
2 tons & 2 crew for cal. 60 and 70 MG
2 tons & 1 crew for flak cannon

The bow/stern mounts can hold one gun mount or one rocket mount or one aerial minelayer. Only one thing.

Broadside Guns
2 tons & 2 crew per gun

Each gun deck may mount up to six guns per side, and are retractable. Five rounds are stored at the mount; more are brought up from the holds. Broadside guns may be directed from the bridge for firing at zeppelins or ground targets within the guns’ effective range. The gun crews may fire under local control when attacking aircraft.

Broadside guns are typically flak guns, in similar calibers: usually between three and five inches (76 to 127 mm).

Bomb Rack
5 tons & 1 crew

Some military zeppelins mount bomb racks on the underside of the hull. It mounts eight hardpoints’ worth of bombs. It may not be used to fire rockets. Bombs must be accounted for in cargo. Bombs are released from the bridge.

Rocket Rack
10 tons & 2 crew

Rocket racks provide eight hardpoints for aerial rockets. Bombs may not be dropped from rocket racks. Rocket racks may be placed at the bow or stern, or to replace broadside guns. Ammunition must be accounted for in cargo. They are fired under local control.

Control Room
[Length of hexes of the zeppelin / 2] tons and [Length of hexes of the zeppelin] crew
The bridge includes a chart room and a radio room. Sometimes, military zeppelins place these rooms separately. Civilian zeppelins always place them in the control gondola.

Cabins
1 ton & 1/4 crew

Crew are required only for passenger cabins. Accommodations aboard a military zep do not require crew.

For your one ton, you may have any one of the following: one luxury cabin (for one person, a first-class passenger or senior officer), one suite (each person requires one ton of accommodation; a suite for five people weighs five tons), one double cabin (aboard a passenger zeppelin, tourist class), one quadruple cabin (economy class), or one cell for up to eight prisoners.

Crew Rooms
2 tons & 1 crew

For your two tons and one crew, you may have any one of the following: one extra chart room, one extra radio room, one kitchen section (one section required for every ten cabins), one dining room section (one section required for every ten cabins), one lounge (suitable for ten tourist or economy class passengers, or two first-class passengers), a library (which may be expanded), an arboretum (which may be expanded), an observation deck, a briefing room or flight command center, or a science laboratory (which may be expanded).

Aircraft
We have a set of aircraft design rules which are not reproduced here. It suffices to say, for the remainder of this post, that zeppelin-borne aircraft come in airframe sizes ranging between 4t and 15t, and their weight in tons is their size for the purposes of these rules.

Internal Skyhooks
[3*size] tons & 5 crew

A traditional docking hook used to launch and recover planes: the skyhook drops planes out the bottom of the zeppelin, and extends into the air below the bottom of the zeppelin to recover them. Each skyhook may launch or recover one plane per round. The size specifies the largest plane that may be launched or recovered.

External Skyhooks
[2*size] tons & 1 crew

Skyhooks mounted outside the zeppelin’s hull, frequently used for emergency exits or as emergency landing spaces. Each may hold one plane, its maximum size specified by the skyhook’s size. The pilot gains entry to the zeppelin by means of a small ladder. Moving large cargo between an external skyhook and the zeppelin’s interior is impossible.

Launch Bay
[5*size] tons & 15 crew

Launch bays are used in the largest military zeppelins. Each may launch two planes per round, but may not be used to recover aircraft. The size specifies the largest plane that may be launched.

External Refueling Rig
[2.5*size] tons & 3 crew

Refueling rigs are external skyhooks with plumbing to refuel docked planes. Each plane may be refueled in one round. (It therefore takes a three-round cycle: recover in round one, refuel in round two, launch in round three.) Otherwise, they function as external skyhooks.

Hangar
[ size of air wing ] tons & 1 crew/10 tons

The size of the air wing refers to the sum of its weights. The hangar is an internal space in the zeppelin with room for parking, access to the launching systems, and facilities for refueling and rearming planes, as well as stowage for aircraft stores. Any zeppelin with a launch bay or an internal skyhook must have a hangar.

Repair Bay
[2*size] tons & 5 crew

Repair bays contain tools and equipment for disassembling, maintaining, and repairing planes. A hangar and an internal skyhook are prerequisites. The size specifies the largest plane which may be serviced.

Provisions
1/2 ton food/water/etc. per person per month.
1 ton per plane per combat sortie. (Includes fuel and ammunition, as required.)
1/2 ton per plane per non-combat sortie. (Includes fuel only.)
1 ton of ammunition per zeppelin gun of any type.

Engine Speed

Engine          Fuel/day (tons)  Speed (hexes)   Speed (mph full/economy)
Diesel, slow      Volumehex / 5              1                     50/10
Diesel, normal    Volumehex / 2              2                     65/15
Diesel, fast          Volumehex              3                     80/20

For travel, engines can be run at full speed, consuming the listed amount of fuel per day. They may also be run at economy speed, using the second number in the speed column and consuming half the listed amount of fuel per day.

Fuels
Engines may be fueled by blaugas, gasoline, or diesel, which are identical for our purposes. (Zeppelins which run gasoline engines may share fuel with the air wing.)

Cargo Hold
[any size] + 2 tons

The two tons are for handling equipment, and do not count toward capacity.

External Cargo Platform
[any size] + 2 tons

Smaller freight zeppelins sometimes use an external platform mounted under the hull. These are much cheaper for a given capacity, and may also be used as an emergency hangar for small planes. The cargo capacity is 1.5 * size. The two tons are for handling equipment, and do not count toward capacity.

Cargo Winch
[2 tons + cargo weight] & 2 crew

A cargo winch lowers a section of the cargo hold floor beneath the zeppelin, which may be used to easily load cargo without the use of ramps or slings.

With modifications, the platform may be used as an emergency landing point. Add one ton to the mechanism. The winch’s rated capacity must be twice the size of the plane. A plane making an emergency landing on a cargo platform loses its engines.

Zeppelin Harpoons
[5 + length in hexes of largest zeppelin which can be towed] tons & 4 crew

Intended to tow disabled zeppelins for repair, pirates sometimes modify the towing mechanisms to serve as grappling harpoons.

1. Or just read his posts here.
2. As he said, “IIRC, ja.”

Skypirates: lessons in zeppelin aircraft carrier design

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When I worldbuild, I put great importance on doing the background work, even background work which doesn’t feature in the foreground very often. So it is with zeppelins in the Skypirates world. Not only do we design them in the same modes and manners as real rigid airships, we’ve discovered that, to our surprise, they’re not quite as implausible as we thought.

Which isn’t to say that they aren’t implausible. We’re making a couple of assumptions rooted in our alternate history that are, well, unlikely. First: we assume that the limit on the size of airships was not one of 1920s and 1930s materials science, but rather one of insufficient ambition. Second: we suppose that engine technology in about 1925, owing to a few more years of the First World War to incubate, has reached levels not seen until ten or fifteen years later1. Third: we assume that large airships are much cheaper than they were in actuality, and that they’re much more common. Fourth: we assume a couple of highly-specific technological advances with respect to gas handling.

If you’re unfamiliar with airships, that last one might seem oddly specific, but it turns out to be critical. There are exactly two practical lifting gases2: hydrogen and helium. You may remember from high school science that hydrogen makes a tremendous *thump* as it blows up in the presence of flame. This doesn’t necessarily rule it out for zeppelins-of-war, but it does push it firmly into the realm of the sub-optimal. That leaves us with helium.

Helium is a pain. Its most notable characteristic3 is its mad delight in escaping every container you try to put it in, including Earth’s atmosphere. Its second most notable characteristic is its relative rarity. Because of its eagerness in leaving the planet once it’s free, there’s very little of it in the air, and it’s difficult to get out of the air. In the timeframe in which the Skypirates stories takes place, the United States historically controlled most of the world’s helium supply4, and, for political reasons, the Germans were unable to buy any for the Hindenburg. (And we all know how that turned out.)

Now, we also had another problem, not all that closely related, but ultimately in the same vein: aircraft-carrying zeppelins are heavy, and anything you put inside a zeppelin’s hull doesn’t just count against your total lift, it reduces it5. I’m going to introduce a term here, and I’m sure it’ll make airship engineers tear their hair out, but here we are: reserve displacement.

If you have a fixed amount of gas inside of a stretchable container, then reduce the pressure outside the container, the container will expand, and the pressure inside will drop. Although less air mass is displaced per unit volume, the container’s volume grows, and the container still makes lift. This effect explains why high-altitude weather balloons look tiny when they take off, and then get huge when they reach high altitudes. High-altitude weather balloons have high amounts of reserve displacement.

Rigid airships aren’t designed with lot of reserve displacement. Their gas cells start out almost fully inflated, for a very simple reason: over the course of a flight, airships get a lot lighter. Your choices are either to vent your lifting gas when you’re nearly to your destination, or rely on complicated ballast recovery systems to capture water vapor from your engine exhaust. One puts you at the mercy of the ground facilities at your destination6, and the other only works in the absence of heavy flight operations. Launching and recovering lots of planes is the same thing as dropping and taking on tens or hundreds of tons of ballast over the course of a few hours, and reality has no way to mitigate that.

So, we’re presented with three little plausibility concerns that get in the way of storytelling: zeppelins don’t have much room for gas cell expansion, limiting them to a narrow band of altitudes; realistic methods for landing require a loss of lifting gas unlikely to be available at your friendly neighborhood jungle ruin filling station; and air operations break all normal procedures for trimming and ballasting. We invented two pieces of retro-scientific fictional technology to gloss over those plausibility issues, both products of fictional Imperial German zeppelin pioneer Karl von Rubenstein.

The von Rubenstein cell is a specially-treated fabric gas cell with a fantastically7 useful characteristic: it is helium-impermeable (don’t ask me to explain it; I just said it’s fiction). von Rubenstein cells can be used as trim tanks, in a sense—if you limit a cell’s expansion, you can pump helium into it, and plain air into the others. The air-helium mix generates less lift per unit displacement, and the trim cell is holding more helium, but isn’t displacing any more air, and the lift goes down.

The von Rubenstein pump is what lets us move helium around so easily. Passing a mix of gases through its machinery yields helium as one output, and everything else as another. The air-helium mix inside a gas cell can easily be separated back into nearly-pure helium, thus raising the trim altitude again, and even atmospheric helium can be extracted, albeit slowly.

Combining the two, we have a model for airship operations. The secret is that modern zeppelins in the Skypirates world aren’t built with a lot of ballast. They’re built for a ceiling, with helium capacity and reserve displacement for that ceiling. In their untouched configuration, that’s their ‘trim altitude’—where they’ll end up, absent other concerns. To descend, or to land, or to launch aircraft, the crew pumps extra helium into the trim cells, and the zep’s lifting capacity goes down.

Practically speaking, there are a few inescapable limitations. For one, a zeppelin’s initial trim altitude—its pressure height, as the technical term goes—is inversely related to its lifting capacity. To leave room in the gas cells for high-altitude expansion, the gas cells must not be filled at sea level, and doing so leaves buoyancy on the table. To some degree, trim cells mitigate this—the excess can be pumped in and held at pressure, and eventually the reduced amount of helium in the lift cells will balance out the zeppelin’s weight, or either trim or lift cells will explode8. Between that and limited ballast, though, we have the ability to let our zeppelins cruise at a broad range of altitudes, which was our aim in the first place.

Another of those inescapable limitations comes from structural strength and weight. It strikes me as unlikely that zeppelins of the bulk we’re talking about could be built as lightly as we say the are. Assuming I’m wrong, we’re within about 10-15% of actual, possible zeppelin designs, in an ideal world, with our fantasy technologies. If I’m right, the figure is more like 25% or 30% off, I’d wager.

Even so. When I first went over the design rules parvusimperator found for zeppelins, I thought to myself, “This is awesome, but utterly impossible.” From ‘utterly impossible’ to ‘we just need to be about one-third lighter than aluminum actually is’? That’s progress.

Expect a few more posts on zeppelin design in the near future. For one, I’ve completed a first draft of a vaguely technical cutaway drawing of Inconstant, which may eventually show up on a mug, and I want to go over it some. For another, I mentioned the zeppelin construction rules, and I feel like I should provide those, too, pending parvusimperator’s approval.

1. This is not zeppelin-specific, but it does explain our extreme fuel efficiency.
2. Impractical lifting gases include water vapor, ammonia, methane, simple hot air, and (yes, I know it isn’t a gas) vacuum, all of which don’t work in large airships for various reasons.
3. Besides being lighter than air and making your voice funny when you inhale it, that is.
4. It comes from natural gas wells, mostly.
5. Airships work by displacing air with a lighter lifting gas. When you’re putting aluminum hangar plating or a library in the place of gas cells, you’re cutting into your displacement.
6. “Top me up! I need about five hundred thousand cubic meters!”
7. In the sense of fantasy, too.
8. This is bad.

As you make your Fishbed, so you must fly in it

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Last Wednesday, Leatherneck Simulations released the MiG-21bis Fishbed-N module for DCS, and I’ve been getting to grips with it since then. Here are my impressions so far on the aircraft and simulation. It’ll take a while before I’m comfortable enough with the plane to talk about the campaign or the included single missions.

The MiG-21 was designed as a high-speed, high-altitude interceptor, and its shape reflects that: teensy delta wings highly swept. Overall, it’s quite a slight machine: its maximum takeoff weight is a mere 10,400 kilograms, next to the 17,500 kilograms or so of the Su-25T (also described on this blog.

Takeoff calls for full afterburner: with a rotation speed of 350 kilometers per hour, the MiG needs the extra kick in the pants to get off the ground in good order, especially with a reasonable load. Handling in flight is benign at high speed, and a little wallowy if you get below 450 kilometers per hour or so. That said, the MiG retains good controls authority down to the lowest speeds at which it can fly, and up to angles of attack where most planes would be complaining, or bumping you into angle of attack limiters. It’s even possible to do something like the famed Cobra maneuver a la the Flanker, although not quite as crazy off-axis.

It shines brightest in the linear and vertical axes. Drag is low, and acceleration at afterburner is exceptional. Below 4,000 meters altitude, you have access to a second afterburner mode, which increases the kick in the pants factor still further. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that 0-300 kilometers per hour on the runway takes more time than 1000-1300 kilometers per hour at 2,000 meters. Climb is similarly rocket-like, especially while the second afterburner is available. Even with a full combat load, it’s only a hair away from a 1:1 thrust-weight ratio.

The front office is very 1960s, as is the design (it entered service in 1971). Steam gauges and switches are the order of the day. It comes from the era before pilot workload was a major concern, so switches you’ll need are positioned helter-skelter around the cockpit, although some of the most important functions do show some grouping. For instance, the weapons control panel, at the top left of the front panel, has all of what you’ll need to select and ready weapons.

Speaking of which, the MiG-21 is DCS’s first full-fidelity multirole fast mover, and I only feel a little bad about how much I’m stretching the definition of multirole. Your weapons include a variety of obsolete air to air missiles, from the RS-2US beam-rider to the R-55 let-us-take-RS-2US-and-add-semi-active-seeker-da upgrade to the R-3/R-13/K-13/AA-2 family of IR and SARH missiles. Also available are the R-60 and R-60M, the latter being more nearly obsolescent than straight-up obsolete. The air-to-ground loadout options include a mix of similarly obsolescent things, like 57mm rocket pods (abandoned in general use in Afghanistan, because they were insufficiently effective) and the Kh-11 Grom radar-beam-riding missile (highly effective), and the timeless FAB series of general-purpose free-fall bombs. There are also some esoteric options like the rocket-assisted runway-penetrating BetAB-500Sh. All told, it’s a curious kit, capable at short range in air to air combat, and limited in its maneuverability in that realm, and more than sufficient for oppress-the-rebels-style strike sorties, examples of which in the real Middle East have recently featured the MiG.

Aiding you in finding targets, aiming those weapons, and firing them, is the avionics suite, which really isn’t significantly more complicated than, say, the Huey’s setup. Certainly, it’s less to get to grips with than the Ka-50, and a whole lot less to get to grips with than the Warthog. The kit comprises four systems: the radar, the optical sight, the radio navigation system, and the autopilot.

The radar is simple to use, but no more capable than you’d expect: it’s useful only in the near BVR arena, and to cue radar homing missiles. It has no dogfight modes, and a detection range of maybe 30 kilometers on a good day, if you can tease contacts out of the clutter. (Clutter is modeled for the first time, and is pretty nifty. And annoying.)

The optical sight includes the actual sight unit and the weapons control panel next to it. The former is simple to set up, providing gyro-based aiming for the gun and air-to-ground rockets, and indicating what an IR-homing missile is tracking. (For radar seekers, you’re on your own.) The weapons control panel is effectively an analog stores management system: you pick the pylon with a big honking knob, the master mode (either air to air or air to ground) with a switch, and the weapons paramenters with a variety of other switcher.

The radio navigation system is surprisingly useful1. The ARK is a standard radio compass, capable of tuning the NDBs scattered around the Georgia map and providing bearings to them. RSBN stations, the other kind of beacon the MiG can tune, function like VOR/DME, providing cues to fly to or from a station along a certain radial course, and distance to the station, with a range of about 200 kilometers. The MiG can provide steering cues to intercept and fly along a radial, or, while flying along a radial, descent cues to reach pattern altitude within 20 kilometers of the station2. The third position on the RSBN mode switch is landing, which utilizes the PRMG instrument landing system3. It’s a pretty standard ILS. The NPP (read: horizontal situation indicator, read: radio compass thingy) has some tick marks on its inner dial which provide steering points to construct a standard landing pattern, which I thought a very handy feature. Stay tuned: after I mention the autopilot real quick, I’m coming back to landing.

The autopilot (really, the flight control system; the Russian acronym is SAU) has a few handy features: a straight-and-level mode, a ‘stabilized’ mode that tries to maintain your current bank and pitch4, and a pair of landing modes. One flies you in automatically, one provides you flight director cues, like you’d get on a more modern aircraft automatically, and neither seem to be working right now.

Which brings me to perhaps the most exciting phase of flight: the landing. It’s been a while since I’ve flown a simulated fixed-wing aircraft as complicated to land as the MiG. With those tiny delta wings, it requires an insane turn of speed: 350 kilometers per hour, or almost 200 knots, over the runway threshold. To compound that, it features blown flaps: engine bleed air is vented along the wings to provide more lift at low speeds and high angles of attack, as you find on landing. Most planes don’t mind an idle-throttle touchdown; with the MiG, I find myself flying into the flare and very slowly reducing the throttle to avoid dropping it on the runway like a streamlined brick. Fortunately, the brakes are good and a drag parachute is mounted in the tail, so stopping after touching down halfway down the runway doesn’t often present much of an issue. (Unless you shoot a second approach and forget to have the parachute repacked in between, in which case you’re going off the far end of the runway.)

That’s about all I have right now. I’d like to write about, or potentially stream, some of the campaign at a later date, but there are a few things stopping me—general just-past-release issues. Game performance is pretty horrid right now. The MiG’s developers are working hard on optimizations. A few avionics bugs slipped through the pre-release net, and are also being worked on. That said, the MiG was a definite buy for me, an icon from an exciting era past, and given Leatherneck Simulations’ progress on cleaning it up so far, I think it’s more than worth the cost of entry.

1. Quoth me, to skypirates collaborator parvusimperator: “I guess when you have such a short range, ‘divert to alternate’ is not an okay response to bad weather.”
2. In DCS, all of the RSBN stations are at airfields.
3. I’d been so disciplined with footnotes until just now. Anyway, the PRMG system is a lot like the western ILS, except it provides guidance both ways on a runway and fits in a single truck, which is a rare case where the Russians seem to do something better than we do.
4. Or something. I haven’t quite figured it out.

Insert clever Fishbreath/Warthog pun here

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As the most dedicated Russophile among my flight-simming friends, I strapped myself into the cockpit of my early-birthday-present A-10C intending to make like good Soviet propagandist and put it down for every trivial flaw I could find in otherwise-perfect product of decadent capitalism. My final opinion turned out to be a little more measured. The Charlie Warthog is, in a lot of ways, a fine aircraft, and perhaps even the Su-25T’s superior (I would say the jury is still out), but it’s not quite the world-beater I thought it might be.

I’ll start with how it flies. The one-word description is ‘docile’; the two-word description is ‘very docile’. Those big, straight wings yield excellent handling at low speeds, a great roll rate, and all-around pleasant performance. The two podded turbofans strapped to the fuselage in back are high-bypass, which is to say they’re the same sort as the engines on most airliners: the jet exhaust contributes less than the volume of air moved by the fan at the front. It doesn’t make for a fast airplane, and indeed a loaded Warthog struggles to reach the sorts of speeds I consider ‘slow’ in the Su-25, but in any aircraft without an air-to-ground radar, sloth is a virtue (which explains my thing for helicopters). I count this one as even. The Su-25 has better thrust-to-weight and better ability to escape danger, but the A-10 can loiter just about forever and is an easier weapons platform.

Since all fixed-wing planes are basically the same, I got on top of the flying thing in just about no time flat. The two remaining pillars of the Warthog (the systems and the weapons) I learned at about the same time, but I’m going to hit weapons first. The biggest drawback compared to other the other DCS platforms of my acquaintance is the inexcusable lack of dedicated anti-tank missiles. The Su-25T can carry sixteen, plus another six laser-guided missiles, and that’s a lot of semi-standoff capability. On the other hand, the A-10’s gun is worthy of all the praise it garners. It’s effective against every target up to and including the vaunted M1 Abrams, provided you attack from the right aspect, and it makes a lovely, lovely sound.

The guided bomb options (fitted with the GPS-guided JDAM kits and the laser-guided Paveway kits) are good, and can be mounted on most of the hardpoints, but the Maverick only works on two of them, and the Su-25T’s Kh-25 (the Maverickski) is roughly equivalent. The Warthog’s rocket options are typically American, which is to say horrid; the Russians, with their long experience in Afghanistan, have a much better selection (from tiny little 57mm peashooters to 340mm monsters). The Su-25 has better light and medium weapons, and the A-10 has better heavy stuff; in my book, that goes to the Su-25.

Finally, we come to avionics, that traditional locus of American superiority, and the A-10C doesn’t disappoint. The dash holds two color multifunction displays, which control the armaments and targeting, and can display a moving map, and it’s all brilliant. The A-10’s targeting pod (the LITENING, a hardpoint-mounted jobber), through gyroscopes, gimbals, and voodoo magic (I repeat myself), plus a healthy dose of positional awareness, can track a point on the ground even if the wing or the airplane is blocking it, through a complete turn. It features an absurd amount of zoom, plus an IR camera and a standard CCD, and really, it’s hard to say anything bad about it.

It also feeds into the Sensor Point of Interest concept: with any sensor, from the targeting pod to the navigation display to a Maverick seeker to the little visual designation cursor on the HUD, you can declare a Sensor Point of Interest. It sticks around, and you can slew all of your sensors to it at any time. It’s a very, very handy bit of systems integration, and makes re-locating targets on subsequent attack passes a lot easier than they are in the Su-25.

Still, as good as it is, the designers missed two tricks. For one: by Russian standards, the A-10C’s autopilot is archaic. The Su-25T and the Ka-50 both have modes galore, up to and including ones which will follow the mission route or line up on a target, and the A-10 has… one mode which orbits, and one mode which flies straight and level. An orbit mode being the bare minimum for a single-seat attack aircraft, the A-10’s omission of anything fancier is a significant strike against it, given how much head-down work it expects you to be doing. The second one, I wouldn’t have thought of had it not been for the Su-25T: an infrared jammer in the tail. It makes a great deal of sense. Attack planes hang around at low level, where any mujahid with an SA-7 can take a pop at them, and having a bit of kit which makes rear-aspect attacks difficult is a gigantic win.

In the end, the Warthog is what I expected it to be: a solid ground-attack platform with a gun that’s unmatched in its effectiveness. At the same time, it isn’t quite what I expected. It’s only just entering service now, and being such a modern piece of kit, I have to wonder: why did the Air Force settle for very good, when perfect was so nearly within their grasp?

Breath of Fish, Foot of Frog: A Su-25T Mission Log

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I, with a metrical title, recount my thoughts on recent Su-25T shenanigans, including the two failed attempts before the one that made parvusimperator’s final report. -Fish

I’ve already written my initial impressions of the Su-25T, so I can skip that part and go straight to the SEAD mission.

As we were getting our armaments in order, kicking the tires, and lighting the fires, I suggested, “Why don’t we try a synchronized takeoff?”

Parvusimperator raised several legitimate objections: “Because I only started flying this aircraft an hour or two ago? Because it wanders all over the runway? Because we’ll crash into each other and die?”

“Pessimist,” I said. We lined up on the runway in rough formation, him as the leader ahead and to my left. We held the brakes in, ran up the engines, and released the brakes as we started rolling… and somehow, most of the way down the runway, I passed him. As little sense as that made, it wasn’t hard to get back in formation—I just slowed down and let him pass me. We turned toward the target, three SAM batteries 100 kilometers southeast of our airfield. Two of them were medium-range area defense systems: one 9K37 Buk and one Improved Hawk. One 9K33 Osa provided short-range support. Soon after we left the field, we were already getting painted by the I-Hawk’s search radar. The radar warning receiver made a little ‘boop’ every now and then as the beam hit us. Range to target, according to our instruments, was about 90 kilometers when we started getting the radar signal, and parvusimperator’s anti-radiation missiles had a range of about 50 kilometers. We drove in to that range at about 500 meters above ground level, whereupon parvusimperator lofted the first missile at the I-Hawk’s search radar. By that time, the Buk had found us, and we turned in that direction. After parvusimperator launched his missile, the annoying solid tone my radar warning receiver was blaring into my ears turned into an annoying fast beeping.

“I’ve been launched on. Going defensive,” I said, feeling very professional as I rolled out of formation, left a cloud of chaff in my wake, and dove for the deck. Looking out the right side of my cockpit, I could actually see the missile’s smoke trail off in the distance, headed in my direction. Fortunately, my dive to the deck and my turn to put the missile on my three-o’clock ran it out of energy before it could hit me. Parvusimperator, who had been watching his missile in, was less lucky: although he had fired on the Buk battery before the missiles launched, the battery’s search radar had cued the launcher’s fire control radar onto us, letting it launch its missiles and guide them to us even after parvusimperator’s missile knocked out the search radar. He took a hit and punched out, and we restarted. Our second try didn’t go much better—owing to a DCS bug, the anti-radiation missiles blew up moments after leaving their hardpoints.

On the third try, we finally found a little more success: parvusimperator launched from nearly maximum range on both of the long-range SAMs, and tagged the short-range one with one of his other SEAD missiles. Lacking his fancy ELINT pod (which gives him HUD cues toward radars, and therefore targets), I had to resort to more desperate measures: first, my FLIR targeting pod, which proved unhelpful, and finally my good old Mark I eyeball. I found the smoking husk of the Osa, dropping a cluster bomb on it for good measure, and headed north from there, following the threat heading indicator on my radar warning receiver and eventually finding the Hawk battery just as parvusimperator did. I made one pass with rockets and destroyed the launcher, and was looping around for another when parvusimperator tagged the last vehicle with a laser-guided missile. That done, we climbed to our rendezvous point, formed up again, and went home.

Protivtankovy Parvusimperator

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The DCS Su-25T Frogfoot is the only attack aircraft in my simulated stable right now. In the interests of cooperation, parvusimperator learned to fly it a few nights ago, and has recounted his experience with it here for your edification. -Fish

As resident NATO-trained attack pilot, I took to the Su-25T without too much trouble. It certainly helped that this sim uses somewhat simplified modeling, so startup was a breeze. I can’t help but feel that the A-10C and the Su-25T are designed for very different missions. The A-10C has JDAMS and LGBs, some of which are quite large (2,000 lb. class). It also has Mavericks, which are a nice blend of fire-and-forget-ness and range. On the other hand, the Su-25T carries Vikhr ATGMs, and why the A-10C can’t equip Hellfires is beyond me. It would really improve tankbusting capability. Alas, the Su-25T only carries 16 Vikhrs, which some Soviet pencil-pusher probably figured was enough. However, the A-10C at least has some weapons that can do the same job as the Vikhrs. As for Vikhr employment, they’re very fast, but you have to maintain the target lock until impact, just like a Sparrow. The speed makes up for any inconvenience.

The bigger oversight in the A-10 is the inability to carry ARMs. The Su-25T can carry an ELINT pod to help you find SAM radars and Kh-58 and Kh-25MPU antiradiation missiles to kill them. With the A-10C, you have to rely on the Maverick, which basically means you can only kill Osa and Strela-1 SAMs with any degree of safety. Strela-10s can be engaged with care.

The A-10C’s avionics really put it ahead of the Su-25T. The MFDs, Digital stores management, moving map capability, and, most especially, Litening Targeting Pod capability dramatically improve flyability. The Litening pod’s electro-optical sensors are stabilized, so airframe buffeting doesn’t show up in your display. It will also remember where it was pointing provided you don’t exceed it’s G-limits, which is next to impossible in the A-10C. So the pod will helpfully remain pointed at the bit of dirt, Soviet armored vehicle or terrorist’s left nostril that you were looking at before you decided to turn to bring weapons to bear or evade ground fire. This also lets the experienced Hog-driver orbit either around the target area or next to the target area while he searches. The one advantage of the Shkval and/or Khod on the Su-25T is that since it is forward-aspect only, you always see an indication of where it’s searching in your HUD, making searching with visual references in front of you much easier for the novice pilot.
The Digital Stores Management System (DSMS, pronounced diz-miz) is super convenient, and analog systems don’t even come close. DSMS lets you select which pylon you want to launch stores from (helpful for balance), tells you how many rockets you have remaining, and lets you set fusing options and targeting modes (e.g. CCIP/CCRP). The A-10C’s presentation of CCIP and CCRP are better, as they help you fly onto the correct path to hit your target.

As mentioned before, the Su-25T handles better than the A-10C full stop. It’s faster and more agile. Ground handling is a bit tricky, and that is the one handling vice of the type. The Su-25T is also not well equipped for loitering, using thirsty turbojet engines.

I will also add that the Su-25T’s weapons encourages close flying, so I got to test how well the Rook could withstand 12.7mm BMG rounds the hard way. Several passes over M1 Abrams tanks had resulted in my plane being positively riddled, causing Flight Instructor Fishbreath to recommend that I return to base twice. I did no such thing and pressed my attack until I was happy I killed enough tanks. Afterwards, damage assessment from my instructor indicated that my plane was riddled with holes and it was missing several panels. However, handling wasn’t very impaired, which impressed me (and was the reason I had kept attacking, since it seemed like nothing important was damaged). Airbrakes deployed fine on my final approach. Given damage to my wings and flaps, my instructor suggested not using flaps to avoid a spin if only one of them deployed. At approach altitude, I agreed. Passing the outer marker, I put my gear down. But main gear did not budge. I opted for a belly landing, and continued with the approach. As my plane jolted to the ground, I deployed my parachute, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Eventually I skidded to a stop and shut down my engines. Now I could take a look at the external view, which showed that the part of the tail holding the braking chute was completely shot away. But despite all of the damage and missing bits, the Rook brought me home alive, and earns that special place in my heart, along with other ugly-but-tough planes like the Hog and the Wildcat.

With the newfound SEAD ability, Fishbreath and my now-proficient self decided we would go SAM-killin’. I took the ELINT pod and ARMs to kill SAM radars, and he took rockets and cluster bombs to kill TELs and command vehicles. We took off simultaneously, and then held formation like pros into the target until we started getting lit up by search radars. Our targets were an MIM-23 Hawk battery, an 9K37 Buk (SA-11 Gadfly) battery and an 9K33 Osa (SA-8 Gecko) battery. My plan was to hit the Hawk and the Buk with long-range Kh-58s, and then nail the Osa with a Kh-25MPU. Fishbreath would then destroy remaining launchers and command vehicles with cluster bombs and rockets. Closest to our ingress route was the Hawk battery, and it is very unnerving to hear that it has locked onto you while you wait for the battery to come within range of your missiles.

Accompanied by the Bomb Run theme from Dr. Strangelove, I shoved my throttles to the stops and bore in on the Hawk battery at full power. I launched one Kh-58 at it, and then turned to engage the Buk. By now I was much closer to the Buk, so I was able to launch shortly after acquiring it. I then promptly turned away hard to stay out of range of the missiles and avoid reprisals. Once I noted that the missiles had hit their targets, I engaged the Osa battery with a Kh-25MPU. After impact, I thought my threat display ought to be clear, and at first it was.

After only the briefest of moments, it became clear that there were still active radars. I detected radars from the Buk and the Hawk still active. I thought that we probably only had search radars left, but I decided to silence the infernal beeping of the RWR just the same. I rolled in on the Buk, locked it up, and fired my other Kh-25MPU. Bozhe moi! It blew up just in front of my nose! Clearly capitalist spies had gotten to our missile stocks. Also, I was out of ARMs. I would have to use other missiles. And, unfortunately, I couldn’t directly cue these with the ELINT pod. So I got my flightpath so that the radar icon was near an attitude marking on my HUD, then switched to air-to-ground mode and engaged the Buk search radar with a Kh-25ML. That target down, I decided to finish off the Hawk sensors. After a few tries, the same technique worked like a charm. Fishbreath finished off the battery with some rockets, guided in by smoke from the burning radars.

Landing the Su-25T with its parachute was quite fun. The return from this flight was my first proper landing in a fully functional plane and ILS cues made it a breeze.

Whirlybird Student Parvusimperator

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It was all going so well last week. I got over my inherent fear of an aircraft who’s normal state has the wings moving faster than the fuselage and is, by definition, unsafe. I got over the fact that the cockpit has minimal visibility (except to port, where the door is), is claustrophobic, and has not much more advanced than switches. I even got over the fact that there’s a 70’s TV in front of me that gets only one channel. And hey, I guess I can get over the fact that I’m trusting some stupid satellites for my position rather than letting my INS do its own dirty work. My first takeoff wasn’t too bad to begin with, but I started messing with the cyclic too early and left my tail on the ground. Apparently this isn’t an optional part (or so I’m told–it does about as much as a pet platypus), so I tried again, being more careful with the cyclic this time. Worked great, and I was able to accelerate, slow down, and do some snazzy looking turns. And in spite of myself, I started to like the Akuloshka. I was having fun and she (or do the Russians call it a he?) was very responsive and agile. Alright, for a guy who just climbed out of an A-10C, this isn’t saying much, but it was still a blast.

Then my instructor told me that ‘Flight director mode is not for real flying’. Figures. I picked it up easily, so it must be a useless skill. Apparently the Kamov Design Bureau decided that one man was enough for flying and gunnery if they gave him an autopilot to do all the flying work so he could concentrate on the missiles. Great theory. So now I had to put this plan into practice. First, I had to be conscious of where my controls had last been centered from the autopilot’s perspective. Second, I had to be aware of the limitations of the autopilot’s control authority. This all came out okay with some practice and trying to keep my control inputs small. All of it that is, except hover mode. Which, basically makes you get in a hover before hover mode can do anything. When I just had to damp my forward motion, I got into a hover okay. But then I flew around a bit and tried again, and I had introduced a bit of sideslip. Sideslip that just wouldn’t go away and stay gone. I focused on getting rid of it, and then tried to kill my speed, and oh look, sideslip’s back. Did you forget to completely zero out the horizontal inputs? Probably. Or maybe you kicked in too much on the pedals, and you’ve got a bit of a turn coming. Lovely. Now time to correct again, but oh wait—no, you’ve got more forward velocity.

After much cursing, and not much help from my instructor beyond “small inputs” (although to be fair, he can do very little when he can’t see my control inputs—a two-seat trainer would be great), I decided that I was getting entirely too frustrated. You know you need a break when you decide that you’d rather figure out your CDU than work on aerial maneuvers. And at that point, I was ready to code coordinates in my CDU rather than keep wrestling with the autopilot. Which brings me to another gripe with Akuloshka—where are the acronyms? Where are the barriers to understanding? How are we supposed to minimize actual words in our procedural checklists?

But, after a little research and practice, I finally figured out how to not move at all. In the air. It’s a bigger accomplishment than it sounds like, believe me.