Laser bombs haven't been working properly for a month now

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Not specifically, but reflected laser energy can vary dramatically (with the way the carrier wave is encoded it’s more so the range at which the pulse modulation can reliably be decoded) depending on a number of conditions(e.g. approach angle, angle off the designator, type of delivery, type of designator, target constitution, shape of target, constitution of scene, etc.).

In effect there is no real hard range limit beyond that of the designator. But in this case it would be for some standard delivery against a standard target set.

84

I have the impression that I’m still having an issue with the Skipper. Yesterday in Sim I only managed to hit the target when I launched it from about 4.8 km. From longer distances it just goes straight down. I need to test it again after work.

85

Skipper has been working fine in RB.

86

From what ranges are you using them in those cases? If you want to use them from beyond 4.8km (or near that), you have to account for the drop by launching upwards (by quite a lot). If you are just launching them when facing the target directly at long ranges, the skipper will drop to the ground as you describe.

For longer ranges I suggest you actually stick to the Paveway IIs, because you can use CCRP in that case. The A-6E has a CCIP rocket sight, but it’s pretty useless for the skipper at longer ranges, as it will fall outside of the display region. I don’t think there’s a rocket CCRP sight anywhere in this game even.

In case you want to know how to use the CCRP sight:

Spoiler

Toggle the sight to the bomb mode and you should see the following:
image

Stabilize your sight on the target, and the lines in red should appear (if target is within front view). Then simply align the middle of your reticle with the vertical line, and wait until the middle of your reticle aligns with the small horizontal line (relevant lines are in red) and release the bomb. You can also move your aircraft so that the reticle moves up to this horizontal line (will be usually necessary if you drop from longer ranges).

Depending on your game settings, the game may even prevent you from dropping the bomb while CCRP is activated until the CCRP drop conditions have been met. Also, the skipper may not be terribly longer range than a regular Paveway II, so you may be able to use the bomb CCRP, use it like normal, but instead of dropping the bomb, switch over to the skipper and launch that instead, it should at least get the skipper near the target, probably good enough to guide in.

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I know hot to use CCRP ;)
Today I played one match using GBU-10 bombs and managed to score a hit even on a convoy — a moving target.

In the second match I took 2× Skipper + a GBU-10. The first Skipper I launched flew off in an unknown direction, most likely straight down.

Only the second one, released at an angle of about 20–30 degrees, worked properly — I waited until the distance dropped below 5 km and only then did it hit the target.

I have the impression that sometimes — or maybe only on the first use in a given battle — Skippers fly straight down instead of heading toward the target, while every subsequent use is almost a guaranteed hit.

Overall, I try not to exceed 5-6 km from the target and about 4-5 km altitude (or just below clods) so that the Skipper has enough time to align itself with the laser.

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If you have replays saved, maybe you can see in sensor view what happened to it exactly.

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89

The first launch is beyond 4.8 km, the second one is closer than 4.8 km with a dive.

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That first launch looked pretty good, but I’ve tried doing the same launch several times and I think I know what the problem is.

So, while my explanation of the sphere centered on the target area still sorta is true, a better way to think of it is to imagine a cone in front of the LGW’s flight direction with increasing range the closer you designate. This way you also acccount for the LGW FOV. In this case, using CCIP marker in ARB mode, it can already be seen that at this altitude, at this firing angle and this speed, the skipper overshoots the target if we just look purely ballistically, so my guess is that the Skipper’s seeker FOV never overlapped with the laser spot, even though it is technically within seeker acquisition range.

Like this:

Spoiler

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In this case I guess you could’ve used the CCIP rocket sight. In any case, at ranges that are close to ~4.8km mark (6km is relatively close) and you have high speed (like here you have 1000 km/h), you can more or less fire directly at the target. In the earlier report video, I believe you fired from 8km away at like 500 km/h speed, so it undershot by a lot, here it overshot instead.

Ngl, sim doesn’t have as good of a way of telling how to launch the skipper as in ARB, so I guess you just have to develop some feel for it. Or use the rocket sight for closer range (proportional to launch altitude too I guess) high speed launches, and maybe use the bomb CCRP sight as a guide for extra long range launches, although I can’t say how much

Also I tried plotting the purely ballistic paths of the GBU-16 (in orange) and Skipper (in green), with the blue point being roughly where the laser spot is, on statshark. Kinda suprisngly, or not, GBU-16 doesn’t differ a huge ton from Skipper, so you can probably use the CCRP as a guide for Skipper pretty well. Also can be seen that from level launch as in the first launch, both would’ve overshot the target, as their seeker FOV would not have allowed them to see the laser spot.

Spoiler

Take it with a grain of salt though, statshark is not always completely accurate.

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