If gaijin ever decides to make cruise missiles fly lower I would love to see the MBDA Apache being added as well
Expect they’ll get BL-755s
around 4200lbs will do it. You need to do around 23400 damage or so and it will auto bleed the rest
Unfortunately for the game, as many people have already pointed out, several countries have banned cluster munitions.
The BL-755 is really a Cold War-era weapon, associated with aircraft such as the Jaguar, Tornado, F-4, F-104, G.91Y and AMX, just to stay within the UK, Germany and Italy.
The same goes for other submunition dispensers, such as the MW-1, Alenia Skyshark and the British JP233 used by the Tornado, not to mention the various UK/American systems, including the BLU-series submunitions and Mk 20 Rockeye II
In any case, I believe the decision is entirely up to the developers. At the end of the day, it’s a gameplay choice.
I dont know if the Hornets could carry them, but all Version should get it, or atleats the C early/Late and the Super Hornet and the new F/A 18D, as it is for NE
Hornets A through D did historically carry the Rockeye series of cluster bombs (Mk.20/CBU-99/CBU-100 etc.) which isn’t modelled yet by the looks of what bombs are in the dev server files.
Canadian CF-188s (CF-18 Hornet) also carried BL-755 historically, and it’s probably certified for other Hornets as a result. Swiss Hornet would be a likely candidate for BL755 because it was used on their Hunters and F-5Es, but the country began destroying their stockpiles of the bomb (TABO 79/90) in parallel to the introduction of the F/A-18C.
Super Hornets likely equip AGM-154A JSOW stand-off submunition dispensers instead of cluster bombs, but since they inherit Zunis and other rockets from the legacy Hornet that don’t really work on the Super Hornet, I imagine they’d also get Rockeyes if they’re added.
Honestly, i don’t think that is currently the way the cluster bombs are currently working. They have a visual of the cluster bomb opening up to release the bomblets, which is done after the cluster bomb have dropped a certain amount.
However the way that it looks to be working, is that it is dropping a invisible “regular bomb”. When that hits the ground, it then activates an area of effect where the bomblets then damage things in a specific radius.
This is seen if you use the tracking camera for the bomb at high altitude vs low altitude. The radius of the damage for the cluster bomb is around the same. Where if it were really releasing the bomblets at 5km, it would spread out over a massive area. At the same time if you release it at 5m, the bombs hit the ground without releasing the bomblets, but still do a big radius of damage.
Funny because I tried it against the trucks and dropping 4 CBU-87 which should be 808 sub muntions non hit the trucks…
Please no, we already have too many A/G weaponry our Hornets never used.
As to F-5, afaik only the F-5F ever carried them for training, but very rarely.
Btw, new CBU’s have been added to dev, CBU-58 for various aircraft (A-7, F-16, F-111, F-4, A-10,…) in various trees, and Belougas for French M2K’s and Jaguar.
Sadly no Bl.755 or Rockeyes yet…
Indeed I’ve got a couple of photos of the TABO 79/90 version bombs modified with NATO lugs for the F-5 and the F-5Es carrying the drill weapons
live bombs were grey with a yellow nose band IIRC
Cool, thx! I stand corrected. = )
Yep:

I was gonna be miffed if no belougas
Or not; belougas are abysmal :(
all CBUs are rn
hopefully they will fix them before live
but if not they should add them to GRB, because they are worse than the non CBU loadouts planes already have
Checking the cluster bomb configuration file reveals settings such as submunition dispersion altitude, number of fragments released, dispersion radius, and number of effects displayed.
It appears that there are no ballistic or 3D models for the submunitions; hit detection seems to be probabilistic, based on the dispersion radius and the number of fragments released, rather than the submunitions themselves.
Also, the premature playback of the parent bomb’s explosion animation seems to be a bug and does not reflect the actual dispersion timing.
For cbu-58b and 87b (currently both use the same settings):
Dispersion radius: 80m
Number of fragments generated: 2020
Number of effects: 50
Fragment penetration: RHA 3mm penetration at 0m~7000m
Is it right that all the cluster bombs are labelled as “Combined Effect Munition” when that designation is primarily associated with the CBU-87 CEM by nature of the combined HEAT/FRAG/Incendiary effect of its BLU-97/B Combined Effect Bomb submunitions?

Definition of CEMs from the UN’s body on regulation of cluster munitions
https://www.clusterconvention.org/files/publications/A-Guide-to-Cluster-Munitions.pdf
It’s not a catch-all or alternative term for cluster bombs.
Currently the CBU-58, RBK-500 and Beluga are all labelled as CEMs



CBU-58’s BLU-63 submunitions are HE-FRAG/Incendiary without the anti-armour (HEAT/shaped charge) element.
I’m unsure specifically what submunitions the RBK-500s are currently configured as simulating: They say ShOAB-0.5 (ШОАБ-0,5) on the side, which are HE-FRAG bomblets, but the devblog said the RBK-500s were anti-armour (which would be PTAB).
Beluga has three different types of submunition, each with different effectors; So could collectively be seen as a CEM, but I don’t think France uses this designation for Beluga.
I believe atm they’re still modelled as basically the same thing, without really detailed and realistic specific submunition specs and capabilities.
We’ll have to see how that develops.
I especially am skeptical about how it atm seems to be just a RNG based area effect, instead of the actual modelling of the submunitions, their ballistics and effect on targets…
I actually stand even more corrected: it was exclusively the F-5E’s that could carry the TABO, and the F explicitly not, as stated in the manual!
Btw, I’m in the process of writing a reports to add the TABO to the Swiss Tiger and Hunter…

