In regards to doing flybys on WW1 era planes with a jet: Having fucked around a decent bit in RoF and Flying Circus I'd be way more worried about my plane going into an unrecoverable spin than anything terribly impressive like a breakup.
TOGSolid on
+1
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I mean, everyone and their sister has an F-16 now so that info is probably already out there (and they are working on an F-16 module), but the guy was also asking about F-22 and F-35 manuals, which he should have known would be setting off all kinds of alarms.
+5
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
A fellow redditor, I see. :P
+2
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I can certainly see where it would look fishy, and the article sounds like he was also selling them?
Agents said they obtained eBay records and learned that Tishchenko, from January 2012 through September 2015, auctioned F-16 flight manuals to buyers in Cyprus, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany and Taiwan.
The manuals contained “concise and clear instructions” for operating and maintaining F-16s, the affidavit said.
So that's not good. But I'm willing to bet they were to fellow enthusiasts. Not a good situation.
0
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Wait. As an American, can I just buy an F-16 manual?!
I can certainly see where it would look fishy, and the article sounds like he was also selling them?
Agents said they obtained eBay records and learned that Tishchenko, from January 2012 through September 2015, auctioned F-16 flight manuals to buyers in Cyprus, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany and Taiwan.
The manuals contained “concise and clear instructions” for operating and maintaining F-16s, the affidavit said.
So that's not good. But I'm willing to bet they were to fellow enthusiasts. Not a good situation.
Yeah, it sounds like he was doing this on the side to make money.
Wait. As an American, can I just buy an F-16 manual?!
If it's not classified, I think you're just not allowed to export it.
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
You can't "buy one" that I'm aware of, but you can get a hold of the non-classified NATOPS manual legally.
That was a really dumb thing for that guy to do. I'm sure he was just selling them to enthusiasts, because flight sim fans can be super nutty about authenticity...but still very, very dumb.
The whole thing is stupid--stupid because the guy was careless and/or naive (apparently the eBay sellers were from Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and else where, which do meet the criteria of "Not being in America."). The guy was clearly not being careful, especially the whole "being Russian" thing. As a state employee, I've gotten "suggestive warnings" to maybe rethink emailing my Russian penpals I've known for ten years or more because they're Russian. Not from my work computer, but in general. He spoke (or at least could write) in fluent English, and traveled, there's no way he didn't know about the current political atmosphere.
And stupid because the whole thing is uncomfortably familiar to Maria Burtina, who was jailed and thrown into solitary confinement, where I think she still is, not on the basis of being a weirdo gun-lobbyist (for a country where guns are nigh-impossible to be owned by the public), but being labeled in the NYT a dangerous Russian spy whore doing spy whore things (after a U.S. district judge told the DOJ "You're all idiots for taking a text message seriously" and threw out that part of the case).
It's all stupid. I couldn't care less how this effects DCS modules, I hope he doesn't end up spending months in an American prison.
EDIT: People on the ED Forums have been posting PDF links to what, as far as I can tell, is the same information for the F-16. God, what a dumb thing for the guy to do.
Synthesis on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited May 2019
Yeah you can't export weapons info basically, doesn't matter how old and or obsolete it is. Unless expressly given authorization it is a no-go.
Two fun somewhat related tidbits;
Anything stamped with "Property of the US GOVT" is property of the US Govt no matter how old it is or where it came from. If you find a Civil War cannon in your backyard and it has the stamp it is still the Govt's and they would like it back thank you very much. For the most part though they don't really give a shit unless you publicly announce you have it. For instance I knew more than a few soldiers who tried to sell some of their kit on ebay that they kept after leaving the Army only to have Uncle Sam come by and collect it. Though I also know more than a few who got away with it too.
The second thing. I spent many a year in the Army and had a fairly decent clearance level. One of the very first things I had to learn about that was secret business was our system for dealing with IEDs. This was many, many years ago and at the time it was basically techno-magic as far as I was concerned. However, that same day after my briefing was over I went to the Net and searched it and lo and behold there were countless websites that talked about the system in detail. Like, EVERYTHING about it, down to the range, power systems, component manufacturers, just everything. It wasn't like I had to go digging for this info either, I just typed in the name and BAM first page results! One of which was from the literal manufacturer! Still, regardless of how widespread and in detail this information was I still couldn't talk about it without getting the People's Elbow from Uncle Sam.
Addendum- For shit and giggles I tried googling that system again and it seems considerably harder to find any info about it. Plenty of articles and websites vaguely talking about it and how super-duper secret it was, but actual specs seem much harder to find. I'm sure if I went digging I could probably find something. Either way, kinda creepy.
Bonus Fun Thing- The Tale of How Axen Got His Fancy Clearance!
Many, many years ago when I was deployed my Company received orders from on high to send someone to a week long training course. This came with no other stipulations or details other then to send someone.
Typically how this works in the military is that they send someone that wouldn't be missed. Almost always a Private of some sort because in the grand scheme of things being down a single Private isn't going to interfere with operations and also NCOs usually pass the buck on things like this.
So me being a PFC (Private First Class) I was chosen and told to report to the training.
I arrive at the training building and quickly realize that I totally did not belong there. The next lowest ranking person there was a goddamn 2nd Lieutenant. I was the only enlisted person there and a fucking Private to boot. (edit- Oh yeah there was this totally awesome Australian First Sergeant there as well, but the gulf between us in rank was still pretty vast).
The first day there we had to sign a ton of NDAs and I received authorization papers that I needed to have signed by my Commanding Officer in order to actually qualify for the clearance the training course required.
So I head back to my Commander (a Captain) and hand him the paperwork and inform him of what was what.
He reads the paperwork and then tells me he can't sign it. I was pretty confused and asked why. He explained that the clearance it was authorizing me for was higher than his own. He then asked me just what the fuck the training course was about to which I couldn't actually tell him. It was an awkward situation.
So the authorization had to be shunted to Battalion level. There I learned that the Battalion Commander also could not sign the paperwork either. So off to Brigade I went with my CO in tow.
There we learned that the Brigade Commander could totally sign it, but there were rules in place that didn't allow someone to have a higher clearance then their Commanding Officer. Luckily the Brigade Commander made some calls and basically got me a waiver of sorts.
So at the end of the day and for the rest of my career I ended up with a much higher clearance then pretty much any of my future COs (and thus a higher clearance then anyone in my Company).
This also meant that anytime they had to send someone to any training or briefings or missions that required any sort of clearance I was sent. Which when I was younger was super frustrating, but when I got older I realized it was immensely fantastic for my career.
Oddly enough, years and years later, for my current job I had to be interviewed by an FBI agent who basically had my whole life's story in a folder. The job isn't a Govt job, but it is Govt adjacent. From her I learned that I totally still have my clearance and I guess will for the next, like, 20 some years I think. Of course it also means that I am still totally bound by those NDAs no matter how common knowledge some of it may be today.
Govt/Military bureaucracy is a helluva thing.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
F-16C is up for preorder on Steam, enters early access towards the end of September. Currently on sale for $63.99.
+3
Red Raevynbecause I only take Bubble BathsRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
So I know the thread's been mostly air combat focused lately, but assuming this isn't some kind of long con by Microsoft it's pretty exciting. I have a hard time trusting them after what happened with Microsoft Flight, but the video allegedly captured in realtime 4k looks soooo pretty. Site says coming in 2020.
The multiplayer doesn't work unless you can find someone running a server, but otherwise it's mostly playable. I occasionally do. It's not much a sim, but it can still be fun.
My own words during the E3 presentation were: Holy shit, is that Microsoft Flight Simu...HOLY SHIT, IT'S FLIGHT SIMULATOR!
I'm going to be like those Smash Brothers fans and declare with impunity, "It's over, this announcement won E3. Everyone can go home now."
It's very shocking. As someone who actually played Microsoft Flight...I don't blame Microsoft for its failure. It's not Microsoft, or any other one company's, fault that the entire civil aviation simulation genre spent the prior ten years violently imploding. Flight was Microsoft's attempt to salvage something beyond "Just play MSFSX for the next 20 years and be grateful it works at all," and actually grow the audience without, you know, spending millions of dollars on a product that was an absurd gamble to begin with. It didn't work, but for the extremely limited content, the quality was very good and it actually sought to correct quite a few of the giant gaping technical holes still left in MSFX.
It makes the fact that they're trying this again, with effectively a franchise restart, all the more surprising. It's probably an effort to showcase their data, GIS, and other tools alongside their massive AI investment in the last several years--on top of claim a pillar in a very quiet genre/subgenre. Yes, X-Plane is obviously still around. FSX is still around, and nothing is stopping you from playing FS2004 or older either...except that they are old releases based on very old technology.
I'm not expecting the same mod support. Honestly, PC modding on the whole has suffered in plenty of franchises--not to mention that X-Plane and FSX are both heavily, heavily characterized by for-purchase third party content packs that have taken the place of the mod community for many users. We'll probably get a heavily DLC-driven product model accordingly, but that might actually bring some level of consistency that has really been needed, like we have in ED's DCS expansions. Modding will still exist for FSX, no one's taking that away from the audience.
That's my take on it. I watched the civil aviation genre go from a cornerstone of simulation gaming to a virtual purgatory occupied by very creative people, still a sad shadow of its former presence. I really hope Microsoft's clout on PC, and their huge presence in Graphics APIs, AI, GIS can actually make this a technical masterpiece, the way major releases of FS were twenty years ago. And if implemented properly, Xbox Live integration could be an awesome way to set up quick 15-minute flights or hours-long affairs--they've got the best multiplayer/chat ecosystem on console (and considering how consistently disappointing Steam is in this area, I'd much prefer it). And they've apparently decided that if they're going to spend a huge amount of money to develop a new flight simulator, they're going to make sure everyone knows about it.
Hopefully it all works out. I'm amazed it's happening at all. The civil aviation genre, and gaming community, really aren't what they used to be.
+8
Red Raevynbecause I only take Bubble BathsRegistered Userregular
Hard agree. I thought Flight was well-executed and I appreciated the "do a small area well" method as a change from the big-but-boring-up-close worlds. I liked the missions and medals too. I recently gave in and bought the latest X-plane for practicing IFR stuff, but still think as good a simulator as it is, it's a garbage game. And that's fine, they're making their money and the world needs something to drive sims. But I think most people find flying pretty neat and it's a shame there isn't a high-quality game out there taking advantage of it.
While we're at it I hope Deadstick lives up to its promise. Still early but I like their vision for the game.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
If you tell Jester to shut the hell up enough times, he'll stop talking, as one would expect...but if you look back in the back seat from time to time, he'll be pantomiming at things. Like pointing at aircraft he sees and shrugging his shoulders. It's an incredible, random, touch that makes me laugh whenever I see videos of it.
It's weird to watch these fights. In the first merge of both fights the Mig-23 player must be at like 1.4M because his turn circle is literally 2 miles wide. That's pretty much a blow-through, so while the F-14 player correctly deduces that he can turn inside that circle, it's not really your classic 1-circle BFM fight at that point: he's got plenty of weapons separation, so he should just be shooting him with the AIM-9. But they're committed to fighting with guns... and I'm struggling to find a good analogy here. Like trying to arm wrestle in the middle of a jousting match. After he gets pointed towards the Mig, he simply stays in pure pursuit trying to close the gap but staying at corner velocity while the Mig player is able to slow down and turn back toward him in a follow on merge, only the F-14 player gets slow (I think, I can't read his gauges), and is now at an energy disadvantage. What the Tomcat player should have done is use AB to close the gap and then do a proper break-turn once he's on the Mig's turn circle (not inside it). Anyway it's clear that the F-14 player has read something about BFM, but he doesn't understand it: both players are turning horizontally (i.e. on the horizon) instead of taking advantage of the vertical, which I would expect the F-14 player to do considering he's got a tremendous power advantage. Likewise when the tomcat manages to get into the Mig's control zone he seems pretty content to just hang out there instead of closing and taking shots, and he pretty much just drives forward and overshoots at 10:50 from the Mig's constant reversals and power modulation... only that's the wrong move to be making there for the Mig player. I mean, it worked because neither guy really knows what they're doing, but if he had done that to me I would have just shot him as he reversed his turn. The tomcat player keeps saying things like at minute 11:14 he says "Oh he made a big mistake here turning left instead of right." Well, it looks like somehow the Mig recovered enough energy in the rolling scissors to get fast enough to start turning again, and turning away keeps the Tomcat trapped in lag up until 11:30 when he reverses his turn for reasons unknown. If he had kept his turn the Tomcat might have been trapped in lag long enough for the Mig to force him to do something like an offset turn circle, and then from there he could have separated (because they're using guns only again).
Anyway I'm not here to dunk on enthusiasts, it just threw me for a loop hearing someone use the terminology correctly, but also not understanding how those concepts fundamentally work. That being said it's super cool that this exists: I'd be so much better at BFM if I could practice this much at home.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
+9
Red Raevynbecause I only take Bubble BathsRegistered Userregular
Well for what it's worth I love posts like that, italianrama.
ah shucks. I mean, there are pretty much only two things that I claim any sort of proficiency with, and there generally isn't a lot of call in the "real world" for me to start talking about fighter pilot shit. So I do get excited when I see something like this outside of work. Which is weird I guess that it's "work" at work, but fun here. That probably says something about my community.
Anyway after the two fights were the guy goes back and shows the Tacview (I think that's a Navy term) and then debriefs his own fight; that's so true to life it's not even funny. And even though I’m going to debrief his debrief here, I’m very impressed that he knows as much as he does and uses the same tools as we do to boot. Anyway he starts by showing the difference in True Airspeed (TAS), but that's not as useful as Calibrated Airspeed (CAS) when talking about fight entry. CAS is how much air is flowing over the wings right now, and it's that airflow that gives you your G available. Corner Velocity (he says Corner Speed, which actually is more correct, but the term velocity has been ingrained on me) is based off of CAS not TAS, and he probably knows that given that's what I assume is displayed in his HUD. This sort of banal nitpicking makes up a lot of our debriefs because, as the adage goes, "words mean things." Anyway they do a single circle fight (you can see it from the lines in a bird's eye view) with the Tomcat in a breakturn of around 3gs (briefly caps at 4.1), which would earn you a downgrade where I come from. Realistically he should be doing a max performance energy depleting break turn here, and I'd expect to see somewhere between 7-9Gs in an Eagle, though I'm not sure what a Tomcat is capable of. You'll also notice he's dipping slightly below the horizon (good!) utilizing a little of God's G to help in his turn, but then since he's going for a gun's shot later in 20s has to climb back up for that (bad!). Now if he were doing a 2-circle fight where keeping a lot of energy on the jet for subsequent merges is important, then that turn would be more forgivable, but I bet he still has room to pull harder and keep his energy going with AB. Also, I couldn't tell from anywhere on the gauges, but there are generally only two throttle positions in BFM: full AB and Idle. Still this is very difficult for me to criticize him on as G management is largely done by feel: we practice the muscle memory of the “straight pull” so that we can get consistent results. Without that seat-of-your-pants feedback it’s not the same, and we see this when we go to our own sims.
Anyway so despite the lazy breakturn he still turns inside the MiG (due to it entering the fight way too fast) and has the nose-authority to go for a snap shot: I’d need to check the actual range on it but my gut tells me it’s invalid). He pulls 5.6 Gs to take this shot and bleeds off a ton of energy now showing 280 TAS at 18000’ which is 214 CAS on a standard day and sloooow in BFM (should be between 250 and 350 kts). At this point if the MiG kept a level turn going at his speed (about 310 kts) he would carve around the circle and be neutral to winning at the next merge. But instead he makes a huge error and goes for the ditch allowing the Tomcat to regain airspeed. Though because of the guns snap, the Tomcat is going to miss the MiGs point of departure and give him exclusive turning room. The Tomcat then has a terrible ditch follow-through where because of his lazy turning picks up way too much speed and opens up his turn circle in a reversal of how the first merge happened.
This is starting to feel like work now, but I think you all get the idea of how thoroughly and critically we debrief each other on even “simple” exercises like BFM. It’s warranted though as not only could it be a life-or-death situation, but each time we go up to do this it costs the taxpayers somewhere in the realm of $70,000.
ah shucks. I mean, there are pretty much only two things that I claim any sort of proficiency with, and there generally isn't a lot of call in the "real world" for me to start talking about fighter pilot shit. So I do get excited when I see something like this outside of work. Which is weird I guess that it's "work" at work, but fun here. That probably says something about my community.
Anyway after the two fights were the guy goes back and shows the Tacview (I think that's a Navy term) and then debriefs his own fight; that's so true to life it's not even funny. And even though I’m going to debrief his debrief here, I’m very impressed that he knows as much as he does and uses the same tools as we do to boot. Anyway he starts by showing the difference in True Airspeed (TAS), but that's not as useful as Calibrated Airspeed (CAS) when talking about fight entry. CAS is how much air is flowing over the wings right now, and it's that airflow that gives you your G available. Corner Velocity (he says Corner Speed, which actually is more correct, but the term velocity has been ingrained on me) is based off of CAS not TAS, and he probably knows that given that's what I assume is displayed in his HUD. This sort of banal nitpicking makes up a lot of our debriefs because, as the adage goes, "words mean things." Anyway they do a single circle fight (you can see it from the lines in a bird's eye view) with the Tomcat in a breakturn of around 3gs (briefly caps at 4.1), which would earn you a downgrade where I come from. Realistically he should be doing a max performance energy depleting break turn here, and I'd expect to see somewhere between 7-9Gs in an Eagle, though I'm not sure what a Tomcat is capable of. You'll also notice he's dipping slightly below the horizon (good!) utilizing a little of God's G to help in his turn, but then since he's going for a gun's shot later in 20s has to climb back up for that (bad!). Now if he were doing a 2-circle fight where keeping a lot of energy on the jet for subsequent merges is important, then that turn would be more forgivable, but I bet he still has room to pull harder and keep his energy going with AB. Also, I couldn't tell from anywhere on the gauges, but there are generally only two throttle positions in BFM: full AB and Idle. Still this is very difficult for me to criticize him on as G management is largely done by feel: we practice the muscle memory of the “straight pull” so that we can get consistent results. Without that seat-of-your-pants feedback it’s not the same, and we see this when we go to our own sims.
Anyway so despite the lazy breakturn he still turns inside the MiG (due to it entering the fight way too fast) and has the nose-authority to go for a snap shot: I’d need to check the actual range on it but my gut tells me it’s invalid). He pulls 5.6 Gs to take this shot and bleeds off a ton of energy now showing 280 TAS at 18000’ which is 214 CAS on a standard day and sloooow in BFM (should be between 250 and 350 kts). At this point if the MiG kept a level turn going at his speed (about 310 kts) he would carve around the circle and be neutral to winning at the next merge. But instead he makes a huge error and goes for the ditch allowing the Tomcat to regain airspeed. Though because of the guns snap, the Tomcat is going to miss the MiGs point of departure and give him exclusive turning room. The Tomcat then has a terrible ditch follow-through where because of his lazy turning picks up way too much speed and opens up his turn circle in a reversal of how the first merge happened.
This is starting to feel like work now, but I think you all get the idea of how thoroughly and critically we debrief each other on even “simple” exercises like BFM. It’s warranted though as not only could it be a life-or-death situation, but each time we go up to do this it costs the taxpayers somewhere in the realm of $70,000.
I know I only speak for myself, but I find that $70,000 worth it if it keeps you all sharp.
Plus all of this is really interesting and educational. Not to mention overall awesome.
Well again, I am no F-14 guy, but there’s a famous or rather infamous example of this in the F-15. I just went researching it to find the year and actually I couldn't find anything about it online, so I'm not going to be the guy to put the whole thing in detail on the internet (though it is a funny story). Regardless there is an instance where, due to a bird strike, an F-15E safety landed sans backseat so it still flies. I would be extremely hesitant to fly faster than 250 kts and 25 AOA though.
italianranma on
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
+2
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Well again, I am no F-14 guy, but there’s a famous or rather infamous example of this in the F-15. I just went researching it to find the year and actually I couldn't find anything about it online, so I'm not going to be the guy to put the whole thing in detail on the internet (though it is a funny story). Regardless there is an instance where, due to a bird strike, an F-15E safety landed sans backseat so it still flies. I would be extremely hesitant to fly faster than 250 kts and 25 AOA though.
It was in the 90s, right? Probably just never got uploaded
I honestly don’t remember. It was recent enough that my instructors still remember led the people involved. I thought it was mid-2000s, but I couldn’t find any thing.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
There's always the famous story of the Israeli F-15, piloted by Ziv Nedivi, that landed with one wing. Clipped an A-4 during some DACT. After accident analysis by McDonnell Douglas determined that the F-15 had lifting body characteristics that allowed it to fly crippled that way provided the airspeed was kept high enough.
The flight characteristics of modern fighters when heavily damaged, or in non-standard regimes, never ceases to amaze.
I was conflating it with another A-10 story I might be misremembering, but I thought a pilot landed one with an IR missile stuck in its wing.
There is the similar-sounding story of how, during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, on one or possible more occasions a ROCAF F-86 fired a the relatively new AIM-9 into a PLAAF MiG-17 in September of 1958, which remained stuck in the aircraft without exploding. The aircraft landed, the missile was removed and examined, and eventually one example was delivered to the Soviet Union, which was reverse-engineered into the K-13. Unlike the Sidewinder, the K-13 was replaced in Soviet service, I believe by the R-60 (contrary to the stereotype I suppose), but it still heavily informed later lightweight air-to-air missiles designed by the USSR.
I was conflating it with another A-10 story I might be misremembering, but I thought a pilot landed one with an IR missile stuck in its wing.
There is the similar-sounding story of how, during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, on one or possible more occasions a ROCAF F-86 fired a the relatively new AIM-9 into a PLAAF MiG-17 in September of 1958, which remained stuck in the aircraft without exploding. The aircraft landed, the missile was removed and examined, and eventually one example was delivered to the Soviet Union, which was reverse-engineered into the K-13. Unlike the Sidewinder, the K-13 was replaced in Soviet service, I believe by the R-60 (contrary to the stereotype I suppose), but it still heavily informed later lightweight air-to-air missiles designed by the USSR.
Removed of context that's hilarious. "Hey this missile didn't work. Let's copy it"
+8
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Everyone knows that the first time the A-10 fired the gun in flight, it stalled out both engines from ingesting the gun smoke right?
What most of you probably wouldn’t know is that fighter squadrons (and individual pilots) often get their 20mm bullet casings polished and turned into shot glasses. A-10s do that with their 30mm casings. Here’s the size comparison:
Everyone knows that the first time the A-10 fired the gun in flight, it stalled out both engines from ingesting the gun smoke right?
What most of you probably wouldn’t know is that fighter squadrons (and individual pilots) often get their 20mm bullet casings polished and turned into shot glasses. A-10s do that with their 30mm casings. Here’s the size comparison:
Yeah, I believe that the rumor goes that they fired the gun the first time and the bullets exiting the gun caused the plane to stall instead of the smoke doing it.
I wish I could get one of those casings. My brother took a school course taught on the AFB. They learned all sorts of physics in the course. One class they had to answer why when the bombing simulator dropped the bomb it would not hit the ground right as the plane flew over. Then they got to play with the simulator, heard war stories from the A-10 pilots and each got a casing from the crew. To this day I regret not being younger to take that class (I chose to take an Engineering class at the local University instead).
If you’re interested in an A-10 casing you can find chromed ones online. 20mm for that matter too. I could probably snag a few before I PCS next week, but if I sent them to you, you’d have to get them cleaned and chromed yourself. We drink out of ones that are just cleaned, so you could do that if you want. I think they look trashy though.
Posts
I found the video, it was here (12:30 if the timestamp doesn't work)
Pretty sure pilots do it on the routine.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
https://www.standard.net/news/military/russian-jailed-in-weber-county-charged-with-smuggling-f-/article_b7055cb8-d770-5b23-bf66-785104ff5152.html
DCS dev jailed for "smuggling" F-16, F-22, F-35, and A-10 manuals.
I mean, everyone and their sister has an F-16 now so that info is probably already out there (and they are working on an F-16 module), but the guy was also asking about F-22 and F-35 manuals, which he should have known would be setting off all kinds of alarms.
So that's not good. But I'm willing to bet they were to fellow enthusiasts. Not a good situation.
Yeah, it sounds like he was doing this on the side to make money.
If it's not classified, I think you're just not allowed to export it.
That was a really dumb thing for that guy to do. I'm sure he was just selling them to enthusiasts, because flight sim fans can be super nutty about authenticity...but still very, very dumb.
And stupid because the whole thing is uncomfortably familiar to Maria Burtina, who was jailed and thrown into solitary confinement, where I think she still is, not on the basis of being a weirdo gun-lobbyist (for a country where guns are nigh-impossible to be owned by the public), but being labeled in the NYT a dangerous Russian spy whore doing spy whore things (after a U.S. district judge told the DOJ "You're all idiots for taking a text message seriously" and threw out that part of the case).
It's all stupid. I couldn't care less how this effects DCS modules, I hope he doesn't end up spending months in an American prison.
EDIT: People on the ED Forums have been posting PDF links to what, as far as I can tell, is the same information for the F-16. God, what a dumb thing for the guy to do.
Two fun somewhat related tidbits;
Anything stamped with "Property of the US GOVT" is property of the US Govt no matter how old it is or where it came from. If you find a Civil War cannon in your backyard and it has the stamp it is still the Govt's and they would like it back thank you very much. For the most part though they don't really give a shit unless you publicly announce you have it. For instance I knew more than a few soldiers who tried to sell some of their kit on ebay that they kept after leaving the Army only to have Uncle Sam come by and collect it. Though I also know more than a few who got away with it too.
The second thing. I spent many a year in the Army and had a fairly decent clearance level. One of the very first things I had to learn about that was secret business was our system for dealing with IEDs. This was many, many years ago and at the time it was basically techno-magic as far as I was concerned. However, that same day after my briefing was over I went to the Net and searched it and lo and behold there were countless websites that talked about the system in detail. Like, EVERYTHING about it, down to the range, power systems, component manufacturers, just everything. It wasn't like I had to go digging for this info either, I just typed in the name and BAM first page results! One of which was from the literal manufacturer! Still, regardless of how widespread and in detail this information was I still couldn't talk about it without getting the People's Elbow from Uncle Sam.
Addendum- For shit and giggles I tried googling that system again and it seems considerably harder to find any info about it. Plenty of articles and websites vaguely talking about it and how super-duper secret it was, but actual specs seem much harder to find. I'm sure if I went digging I could probably find something. Either way, kinda creepy.
Bonus Fun Thing- The Tale of How Axen Got His Fancy Clearance!
Many, many years ago when I was deployed my Company received orders from on high to send someone to a week long training course. This came with no other stipulations or details other then to send someone.
Typically how this works in the military is that they send someone that wouldn't be missed. Almost always a Private of some sort because in the grand scheme of things being down a single Private isn't going to interfere with operations and also NCOs usually pass the buck on things like this.
So me being a PFC (Private First Class) I was chosen and told to report to the training.
I arrive at the training building and quickly realize that I totally did not belong there. The next lowest ranking person there was a goddamn 2nd Lieutenant. I was the only enlisted person there and a fucking Private to boot. (edit- Oh yeah there was this totally awesome Australian First Sergeant there as well, but the gulf between us in rank was still pretty vast).
The first day there we had to sign a ton of NDAs and I received authorization papers that I needed to have signed by my Commanding Officer in order to actually qualify for the clearance the training course required.
So I head back to my Commander (a Captain) and hand him the paperwork and inform him of what was what.
He reads the paperwork and then tells me he can't sign it. I was pretty confused and asked why. He explained that the clearance it was authorizing me for was higher than his own. He then asked me just what the fuck the training course was about to which I couldn't actually tell him. It was an awkward situation.
So the authorization had to be shunted to Battalion level. There I learned that the Battalion Commander also could not sign the paperwork either. So off to Brigade I went with my CO in tow.
There we learned that the Brigade Commander could totally sign it, but there were rules in place that didn't allow someone to have a higher clearance then their Commanding Officer. Luckily the Brigade Commander made some calls and basically got me a waiver of sorts.
So at the end of the day and for the rest of my career I ended up with a much higher clearance then pretty much any of my future COs (and thus a higher clearance then anyone in my Company).
This also meant that anytime they had to send someone to any training or briefings or missions that required any sort of clearance I was sent. Which when I was younger was super frustrating, but when I got older I realized it was immensely fantastic for my career.
Oddly enough, years and years later, for my current job I had to be interviewed by an FBI agent who basically had my whole life's story in a folder. The job isn't a Govt job, but it is Govt adjacent. From her I learned that I totally still have my clearance and I guess will for the next, like, 20 some years I think. Of course it also means that I am still totally bound by those NDAs no matter how common knowledge some of it may be today.
Govt/Military bureaucracy is a helluva thing.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/microsoft-flight-simulator
The multiplayer doesn't work unless you can find someone running a server, but otherwise it's mostly playable. I occasionally do. It's not much a sim, but it can still be fun.
I'm going to be like those Smash Brothers fans and declare with impunity, "It's over, this announcement won E3. Everyone can go home now."
It's very shocking. As someone who actually played Microsoft Flight...I don't blame Microsoft for its failure. It's not Microsoft, or any other one company's, fault that the entire civil aviation simulation genre spent the prior ten years violently imploding. Flight was Microsoft's attempt to salvage something beyond "Just play MSFSX for the next 20 years and be grateful it works at all," and actually grow the audience without, you know, spending millions of dollars on a product that was an absurd gamble to begin with. It didn't work, but for the extremely limited content, the quality was very good and it actually sought to correct quite a few of the giant gaping technical holes still left in MSFX.
It makes the fact that they're trying this again, with effectively a franchise restart, all the more surprising. It's probably an effort to showcase their data, GIS, and other tools alongside their massive AI investment in the last several years--on top of claim a pillar in a very quiet genre/subgenre. Yes, X-Plane is obviously still around. FSX is still around, and nothing is stopping you from playing FS2004 or older either...except that they are old releases based on very old technology.
I'm not expecting the same mod support. Honestly, PC modding on the whole has suffered in plenty of franchises--not to mention that X-Plane and FSX are both heavily, heavily characterized by for-purchase third party content packs that have taken the place of the mod community for many users. We'll probably get a heavily DLC-driven product model accordingly, but that might actually bring some level of consistency that has really been needed, like we have in ED's DCS expansions. Modding will still exist for FSX, no one's taking that away from the audience.
That's my take on it. I watched the civil aviation genre go from a cornerstone of simulation gaming to a virtual purgatory occupied by very creative people, still a sad shadow of its former presence. I really hope Microsoft's clout on PC, and their huge presence in Graphics APIs, AI, GIS can actually make this a technical masterpiece, the way major releases of FS were twenty years ago. And if implemented properly, Xbox Live integration could be an awesome way to set up quick 15-minute flights or hours-long affairs--they've got the best multiplayer/chat ecosystem on console (and considering how consistently disappointing Steam is in this area, I'd much prefer it). And they've apparently decided that if they're going to spend a huge amount of money to develop a new flight simulator, they're going to make sure everyone knows about it.
Hopefully it all works out. I'm amazed it's happening at all. The civil aviation genre, and gaming community, really aren't what they used to be.
While we're at it I hope Deadstick lives up to its promise. Still early but I like their vision for the game.
Steam: betsuni7
*As in, the exhaust and fumes from my ejection.
Anyway I'm not here to dunk on enthusiasts, it just threw me for a loop hearing someone use the terminology correctly, but also not understanding how those concepts fundamentally work. That being said it's super cool that this exists: I'd be so much better at BFM if I could practice this much at home.
Anyway after the two fights were the guy goes back and shows the Tacview (I think that's a Navy term) and then debriefs his own fight; that's so true to life it's not even funny. And even though I’m going to debrief his debrief here, I’m very impressed that he knows as much as he does and uses the same tools as we do to boot. Anyway he starts by showing the difference in True Airspeed (TAS), but that's not as useful as Calibrated Airspeed (CAS) when talking about fight entry. CAS is how much air is flowing over the wings right now, and it's that airflow that gives you your G available. Corner Velocity (he says Corner Speed, which actually is more correct, but the term velocity has been ingrained on me) is based off of CAS not TAS, and he probably knows that given that's what I assume is displayed in his HUD. This sort of banal nitpicking makes up a lot of our debriefs because, as the adage goes, "words mean things." Anyway they do a single circle fight (you can see it from the lines in a bird's eye view) with the Tomcat in a breakturn of around 3gs (briefly caps at 4.1), which would earn you a downgrade where I come from. Realistically he should be doing a max performance energy depleting break turn here, and I'd expect to see somewhere between 7-9Gs in an Eagle, though I'm not sure what a Tomcat is capable of. You'll also notice he's dipping slightly below the horizon (good!) utilizing a little of God's G to help in his turn, but then since he's going for a gun's shot later in 20s has to climb back up for that (bad!). Now if he were doing a 2-circle fight where keeping a lot of energy on the jet for subsequent merges is important, then that turn would be more forgivable, but I bet he still has room to pull harder and keep his energy going with AB. Also, I couldn't tell from anywhere on the gauges, but there are generally only two throttle positions in BFM: full AB and Idle. Still this is very difficult for me to criticize him on as G management is largely done by feel: we practice the muscle memory of the “straight pull” so that we can get consistent results. Without that seat-of-your-pants feedback it’s not the same, and we see this when we go to our own sims.
Anyway so despite the lazy breakturn he still turns inside the MiG (due to it entering the fight way too fast) and has the nose-authority to go for a snap shot: I’d need to check the actual range on it but my gut tells me it’s invalid). He pulls 5.6 Gs to take this shot and bleeds off a ton of energy now showing 280 TAS at 18000’ which is 214 CAS on a standard day and sloooow in BFM (should be between 250 and 350 kts). At this point if the MiG kept a level turn going at his speed (about 310 kts) he would carve around the circle and be neutral to winning at the next merge. But instead he makes a huge error and goes for the ditch allowing the Tomcat to regain airspeed. Though because of the guns snap, the Tomcat is going to miss the MiGs point of departure and give him exclusive turning room. The Tomcat then has a terrible ditch follow-through where because of his lazy turning picks up way too much speed and opens up his turn circle in a reversal of how the first merge happened.
This is starting to feel like work now, but I think you all get the idea of how thoroughly and critically we debrief each other on even “simple” exercises like BFM. It’s warranted though as not only could it be a life-or-death situation, but each time we go up to do this it costs the taxpayers somewhere in the realm of $70,000.
I know I only speak for myself, but I find that $70,000 worth it if it keeps you all sharp.
Plus all of this is really interesting and educational. Not to mention overall awesome.
Steam: betsuni7
It was in the 90s, right? Probably just never got uploaded
The flight characteristics of modern fighters when heavily damaged, or in non-standard regimes, never ceases to amaze.
I was conflating it with another A-10 story I might be misremembering, but I thought a pilot landed one with an IR missile stuck in its wing.
There is the similar-sounding story of how, during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, on one or possible more occasions a ROCAF F-86 fired a the relatively new AIM-9 into a PLAAF MiG-17 in September of 1958, which remained stuck in the aircraft without exploding. The aircraft landed, the missile was removed and examined, and eventually one example was delivered to the Soviet Union, which was reverse-engineered into the K-13. Unlike the Sidewinder, the K-13 was replaced in Soviet service, I believe by the R-60 (contrary to the stereotype I suppose), but it still heavily informed later lightweight air-to-air missiles designed by the USSR.
Removed of context that's hilarious. "Hey this missile didn't work. Let's copy it"
I've said this before, but the A-10 is Ork tech. No one can convince me otherwise.
Started by designing the dakka, so that makes sense.
Ed: not sure how autocorrect goes from “dakka” to “falls.”
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
What most of you probably wouldn’t know is that fighter squadrons (and individual pilots) often get their 20mm bullet casings polished and turned into shot glasses. A-10s do that with their 30mm casings. Here’s the size comparison:
Yeah, I believe that the rumor goes that they fired the gun the first time and the bullets exiting the gun caused the plane to stall instead of the smoke doing it.
I wish I could get one of those casings. My brother took a school course taught on the AFB. They learned all sorts of physics in the course. One class they had to answer why when the bombing simulator dropped the bomb it would not hit the ground right as the plane flew over. Then they got to play with the simulator, heard war stories from the A-10 pilots and each got a casing from the crew. To this day I regret not being younger to take that class (I chose to take an Engineering class at the local University instead).
Steam: betsuni7
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13329/early-on-the-a-10-warthogs-legendary-gun-was-both-a-blessing-and-a-curse
If you’re interested in an A-10 casing you can find chromed ones online. 20mm for that matter too. I could probably snag a few before I PCS next week, but if I sent them to you, you’d have to get them cleaned and chromed yourself. We drink out of ones that are just cleaned, so you could do that if you want. I think they look trashy though.