Tutorial: Getting accurate coordinates with Gazelle for Hornet JDAMs

Made a quick tutorial showing how to use the Gazelle and its Viviane camera system and NADIR navigation system to recon targets to get precise JDAM coordinates for the F/A-18C Hornet:

Really nice, thnx!

Whoa! Awesome, thanks!

How does it work IRL though? Surely the pilots arent required to fly around sams to look at them from 4 different angles then pull out their excel spreadsheet or graphing calculator to get coords right? Is there some part of the flight computer we aren't getting in the sim or is this how it really is?

How does it work IRL though? Surely the pilots arent required to fly around sams to look at them from 4 different angles then pull out their excel spreadsheet or graphing calculator to get coords right? Is there some part of the flight computer we aren't getting in the sim or is this how it really is?

IRL?

Likely they just get the heading and the range that co-pilot tells to pilot. Then the accuracy of the second is enough for anything. As the pilot itself will do everything else.

Look at the how mirage and gazelle would operate together, not how gazelle and hornet.

And there would be ground troops to get accurate lazing and all that.

As helicopter would never get so close to such site as there would be hundreds of people dedicated for anti-air in such a area.

So gazelle for possible recon if ground troops can't do it. Mirage to drop bombs, ground troop to laze targets.

Gazelle would be there to work as light recon or AT truck for hit and run to protect ground troops.

We are totally lacking the ground troops element in DCS, why such odd things like gazelle and hornet are done unrealistically.

How does it work IRL though? Surely the pilots arent required to fly around sams to look at them from 4 different angles then pull out their excel spreadsheet or graphing calculator to get coords right? Is there some part of the flight computer we aren't getting in the sim or is this how it really is?

IRL recon (in modern militaries) is a joint effort of collecting information from different data sources and no, one helicopter isn't expected to do all the work, nor would a helicopter be necessarily the best asset for this kind of task (getting coordinates for static targets). There is a grain of truth here in that sense, though, that more data points you have, more accurate will your intel also be ;). I've had a small glimpse from the infantry perspective into this during my mandatory military service, where I was for a short period trained as a recon squad radioman, which is possibly why I find this fun and interesting.

I see this more as a fun (YMMV) gameplay element, that one could easily extend to MP missions in way of cooperation between different assets. One could also easily use several helicopters / flights in MP, one for each observation point to speed up the process and make it even more collaborative.

I've had a quite intense self-planned mission on Blue Flag server, doing this kind of recon on one enemy FARP. Unfortunately at that point Hornet didn't yet have precision munitions and toss bombing with waypoint accuracy up to seconds was nowhere accurate enough. But it was fun flying the Gazelle mission (I got shot down on my way back from the mission, but at that point I had already finished acquiring the coordinates and "radioed" them home) :)

Going further, one could build a mission where Viggens would first do ELINT to get a rough position of enemy positions, Gazelles for the more accurate recon and then Hornets and other fast moving assets would do the strike. Better to see this just as one tool for bit more immersive and varied gameplay than a realistic description on how recon is done IRL.

Awesome!