DCS: Mi-24P - What we know + Discussion

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The P feels like a cop-out so that they don't have to do MP seating or reply on AI to make a chin gun work. Still waiting on MP for the Huey.....

I dont think so. I HOPE NOT.

For one they said their AI copilot will be better than jester. Thats BOLD. then they said Multicrew will come later in EA which is worrisome

Ill be VERY UPSET if they dont do multicrew. that shud be a requirement by now. Ill buy it, but not if theres no AI multicrew. If they cut both I dont care how much I love the airframe I wont support that. Even an F4 or A6. I refuse to fly planes in 2020 when Ive seen it proven they can have a jester ai or somesuch and also multicrew. If the militaries of the world. famous for 'lowest bidder' feel a plane or helo NEEDS 2 men, than why should I fly in a game and do the work of 2 men?

I agree... except I think they chose the P because the community wanted it. TBH Id have preferred a D as is the quinessential 70s and 80s hind... whether or not the gatling 12.7mm was effective or not... but you know the community. they want MOAR FIREPOWER. And the cannons are pretty sweet.

I dont see how they can make a helo with no AI gunner at this point, itll make guided at missiles insanely hard, especially russian wired guided ones.

In fact is the other way around, with community prefering the V and ED choosing the P cause it fits better the DCS envinroment, poor infantry AI, sniper APC gunners and no blast damage for rockets.

Personally I prefer the P version with the punch of the twin 30mm canon, now this will always remain a discussion.

Like having an upgraded version of the Ka-50 with thermal observation capability or even a conversion to the Ka-52...

At the end the V or the P version is less important than see this module finally modeled and ready for release.

Is P version's gun all manual like any plane's gun or is there any targeting aid?

In fact is the other way around, with community prefering the V and ED choosing the P cause it fits better the DCS envinroment, poor infantry AI, sniper APC gunners and no blast damage for rockets.

I think... the Yak-B really wasn't a reliable weapon and had limited effectiveness... a lack of firepower combined with a tendency to jam... and this meant that the advice received from actual Mi-24 pilots was apparently to go with the Mi-24P...

I do kindof hope that there might be an Mi-24D with phalanga missiles and Yak-B someday for earlier scenarios... but I definitely see why they wouldn't model that version first.

"The community" doesn't prefer the V. Some members, most of which know little about the weapons system, like it. Mostly the very vocal but also very small share of people who play online and with a friend on the same aircraft. I can tell you that, from the people I know, most are actually a lot happier they went with the P since it means serious firepower and not having to rely on AI to use the gun or wasting pylons on cannon pods.

The problem with Yak-B is that it's a crappy, unreliable and inaccurate .50 cal minigun that's only good for shooting up infantry in the open. Those who flew the Hind in ArmA3 (the one from RHS mod, especially) will know that, though since ArmA doesn't have weapon jams, it was somewhat useful for suppressing infantry (in that case, spraying bullets all over the place was actually a good thing). It could take out unarmored trucks, but that's it.

The P is a little harder to use, but believe me, that gun is worth it. It's reasonably useful against BMPs and light armor, and HE shells are like spraying the infantry with hand grenades. They go through walls and light cover much better than .50 cal, too. If you want a turret-armed Hind, the VP is the one you want.

"The community" doesn't prefer the V. Some members, most of which know little about the weapons system, like it. Mostly the very vocal but also very small share of people who play online and with a friend on the same aircraft. I can tell you that, from the people I know, most are actually a lot happier they went with the P since it means serious firepower and not having to rely on AI to use the gun or wasting pylons on cannon pods.

IIRC there was a poll about which version was prefered and the V won ( I can be wrong of course, it was some time ago and cannot found it again). I don't care which version we will get, but I know I want the long wing version, with retractable landing gear.

The problem with Yak-B is that it's a crappy, unreliable and inaccurate .50 cal minigun that's only good for shooting up infantry in the open. Those who flew the Hind in ArmA3 (the one from RHS mod, especially) will know that, though since ArmA doesn't have weapon jams, it was somewhat useful for suppressing infantry (in that case, spraying bullets all over the place was actually a good thing). It could take out unarmored trucks, but that's it.

 

The P is a little harder to use, but believe me, that gun is worth it. It's reasonably useful against BMPs and light armor, and HE shells are like spraying the infantry with hand grenades. They go through walls and light cover much better than .50 cal, too. If you want a turret-armed Hind, the VP is the one you want.

i just would prefer the D because it was more heavily in service when the USSR was around, and also because itd force ED (well perhaps actually) focus on multicrew more.

Im very nervous about multicrew, theyve already flip flopped a little on the issue.

if an AI jesterski is 100% confirmed with release ( and not dreaded 'later in EA') than id be happy with a P just as much

In fact is the other way around, with community prefering the V and ED choosing the P cause it fits better the DCS envinroment, poor infantry AI, sniper APC gunners and no blast damage for rockets.

hmm part of the problem was i conflated V and P in my head. LOL

I do wish theyd do something about rocket blast damage. I mean LOL theyre a russian company! russians are known to love using rockets in war!

Su25 pilots preferred loadout irl - ROCKETS

mi24 cold war tactics? LOTS OF ROCKETS

apparently it works too. I really wish theyd adress this. and if rockets have no splash damage... does that mean bombs dont?!

Rockets do deal splash damage in DCS. Part of the problem lies in the oversimplified ground unit damage model, but the other is entirely human error - people usually pick up rockets with HEAT warheads, which have a much reduced frag radius compared to HE and frag ones. On top of that, they sometimes expect fragmentation damage to do anything to armoured vehicles, and that's just not happening. Here are some effects of splash damage from near-misses by the S-8OFP2 on the first two images, then the S-5KO, and the S-24B.

Rockets do deal splash damage in DCS...

While I'm inclined to agree with you on most of what you've said, I have a few points to raise.

Number 1:

The most common variant of S-8 used by the Russian AF is the S-8KO/KOM, typically labelled as a HEAT warhead, and it is; No doubting that. However, there are multiple sources which states that the rocket also has an additional fragmentation effect, the most viable of which is the official Russian arms export website, "Rosoboronexport", which has a neat little, dedicated paragraph to the S-8KOM, that states, and I quote:

Designed to destroy armored, light armored and soft-skinned materiel. Owing to the fragmentation effect, the rocket also inflicts damage on manpower.

From memory, in DCS, S-8KOM rockets can land within mere metres of infantry and inflict little to no damage.

Number 2:

The S-24B loaded on the MiG-21bis differs substantially from the rocket by the same name loaded onto the Su-25A/T. Not sure why this is, but the MiG's version is notably more effective against just about everything, with a remarkably large fatality radius vs infantry. I'm curious which of the two versions is more accurate.

The problem with Yak-B is that it's a crappy, unreliable and inaccurate .50 cal minigun that's only good for shooting up infantry in the open.

The contrary. YakB is reliable and accurate. It is for no reason why it is used in their GUV-8700 gunpod and other vehicles as well.

And as any caliber, you can't kill infantry or destroy targets that cover/armor you can't penetrate. A infantry behind a rocks is in good cover. A infantry inside a APC that is over 1.5 km distance is in acceptable cover. Most (if not all) that era APC are protected against 7.62 caliber but 12.7 mm will go through at acceptable ranges. It was extra armor that was added later on to give protection against up to 14.5 mm from front.

The Russian long range sniper rifles V-94, OSV-96 and SVN-98 also use this type of ammunition with a special solid brass bullet similar to the U.S. M33 type. The V-94 sniper rifle has been introduced in the Russian army and used by special forces. The other two rifles are new developements.

The NSVT machinegun, mounted on many armored vehicles (e.g. T-64 and T-70), still uses this caliber. The barrel has 8 right-hand grooves resulting in an improved fire-rate of 750rpm. The 50 round ammo-belts used a linkage of 3 B-32 to 1 BZT-44 (3 API to 1 API-T). These bullets have the following armour-piercing effect: 90% of all bullets penetrate a 20mm thick armor plate at 100m. The capability of the tungsten carbide core bullet BS is said to be about 7 times higher than standard bullets. 75% of all bullets ignite the petrol placed behind the 20mm armor plate.[/Quote]

 

Those who flew the Hind in ArmA3 (the one from RHS mod, especially) will know that, though since ArmA doesn't have weapon jams, it was somewhat useful for suppressing infantry (in that case, spraying bullets all over the place was actually a good thing). It could take out unarmored trucks, but that's it.[/Quote]

 

It is more than that, and it didn't jam at all as you imply.

There is a lot of use of 12.7 mm guns on battlefield for vehicles as well for bases/camps.

 

12.7 mm is very effective against many attack helicopters and even more for utility ones, and lot of vehicles even that are armored.

 

The P is a little harder to use, but believe me, that gun is worth it. It's reasonably useful against BMPs and light armor, and HE shells are like spraying the infantry with hand grenades. They go through walls and light cover much better than .50 cal, too. If you want a turret-armed Hind, the VP is the one you want.

 

The 12.7 mm will go through almost anything that you build anyways. A 7.62 mm is already enough for that.

 

The problem is that with 12.7 mm you need to hit a target or penetrate cover front of them, but with 30 mm you need just to get close.

 

If you have IFV or MBT as target, you forget the 30 mm and you get a ATGM or S-8. That is what makes YakB nlbetter as you have more targets to destroy with it by Co-pilot and when hard targets appears, you go other than 30 mm cannon anyways.

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The problem is that with 12.7 mm you need to hit a target or penetrate cover front of them, but with 30 mm you need just to get close.

...and that, in a nutshell, is why Yak-B is much less useful in practice than it would seem like it should be. It's not "very accurate", not when fired from a Hind at typical ranges, anyway. All gatling guns have limited accuracy, be it the GAU-8 or a garden variety minigun. Yak-B is no exception, and while the rate of fire does compensate a little, against targets in cover it's vastly inferior. I've heard about the gunpod installation, BTW, but I don't think it's anyone's favorite weapon (and true to that, I haven't seen many pictures of them in actual use).

It's not a problem with the 12.7mm round, which is as good as any .50 cal, but with the fact that a helo like the Hind has no use for a .50 cal minigun. As I said, you can kill trucks, and that's because all you need to do for that is to hit somewhere around the engine. To destroy an APC, you'd have to be able to reliably put rounds on it, which means getting quite closer to it than you'd like to be, and hovering there (giving the APC a chance to shoot back). It's the very same reason why GAU-19 isn't used much, either. 7.62mm miniguns are also very inaccurate, but they're used because the sheer rate of fire is good at keeping enemy troops suppressed. It doesn't excel at killing the enemy, it excels at forcing them to keep their heads down while the infantry moves in to kill them.

...and in the context of DCS today, where infantry is very limited and does not react like it would to being suppressed by an HMG, the YakB is nearly useless. Those who want to get a feel for the 30mm cannon in DCS can experiment with the Ka-50's fixed gun mode. It does a brilliant job at eliminated vehicles and infantry, particularly if employed with the tactics used by Russian Army Aviation - fire rockets when in range, then press closer and do a gun run in the same pass.

Even in ArmA, which provides a rather impressive infantry suppression mechanics, Yak-B is only really useful when working closely with ground forces (though if cover is scarce, it can be very lethal). If the Hind was used like it was originally intended, as a "flying IFV", then it would make sense, because that's what it'd be doing - dismounting infantry and then hovering nearby, supporting them with the minigun. However, in Afghan it was not the case, and I doubt they would use it that way very much in Europe, either, though it would work better in that role thanks to lower altitudes and cooler air. In any case, infantry ops in DCS are incredibly bare-bones. 

29.11.2020 в 20:28, Cheetah7798 сказал:

While I'm inclined to agree with you on most of what you've said, I have a few points to raise.

 

Number 1:

The most common variant of S-8 used by the Russian AF is the S-8KO/KOM, typically labelled as a HEAT warhead, and it is; No doubting that. However, there are multiple sources which states that the rocket also has an additional fragmentation effect, the most viable of which is the official Russian arms export website, "Rosoboronexport", which has a neat little, dedicated paragraph to the S-8KOM…

It's right. IRL, the S-8KO/KOM rockets have a HEAT-Frag warhead (with a fragmentation ring), which is similar to the S-5KO warhead (see below the pictures under the spoiler).

29.11.2020 в 20:28, Cheetah7798 сказал:

… From memory, in DCS, S-8KOM rockets can land within mere metres of infantry and inflict little to no damage…

IIRC, at the present time fragmentation damage is not implemented in the DCS World. However, according to the ED developers, the game simulates blast damage, which probably has a random implementation, IMHO.
 

On 11/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

...and that, in a nutshell, is why Yak-B is much less useful in practice than it would seem like it should be.

It is effective caliber, it can't be denied. But it is not meant to penetrate protected targets like bunkers, very modern APC's / IFV at long distances or even get through a rocks. A 30 mm doesn't even do anything if enemy is behind a rock and it hits on that rock on opposite side of the soldier. The effect is that when you hit behind that rock and at close proximity that you get the effect. 

You can always take a explosive 12.7 mm rounds as well for every fifth or so to improve the damage, but there is not more than just couple grams of HE in each bullet, making them effective only at couple meter ranges at best, but that is more than enough. 

HE on the right, a normal incendiary is second from left.

On 11/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

 It's not "very accurate", not when fired from a Hind at typical ranges, anyway. All gatling guns have limited accuracy, be it the GAU-8 or a garden variety minigun. Yak-B is no exception, and while the rate of fire does compensate a little, against targets in cover it's vastly inferior. I've heard about the gunpod installation, BTW, but I don't think it's anyone's favorite weapon (and true to that, I haven't seen many pictures of them in actual use).

It is very accurate for its purpose. Please, remember the context and purpose of the weapon. No one wants a weapon that has a 0.5 mil spread like a sharpshooting rifle, because you don't really hit anything with it as the effective range is the limiting factor. The maximum range is nothing more than a ballistic capability, but that is still the one of most used value in DCS. But that is as well point of cover, that you are protected by the cover. A enemy soldier dig in the ground is still protected against mortars, artillery, air launched rockets and especially autocannons etc. You need almost direct hit from those to get soldiers injured or killed, and more likely the soldiers will withdraw before that.

  There is a reason why area of effect weapons are used when enemy has defensive positions and dig in good, as they even have cover to withstand a 155 mm shell straight on them. Why hundreds of shells are used by artillery to "soften" the enemy position before attack, to get enemy withdraw to cover and cause time consuming tasks, confusion and if possible injuries and deaths so that when the main attack starts there is little as possible defending the positions.

The gunpods are actively in use, just like the 23 mm variants as well. But there is more need for a AT missiles and far more effective 57/80 mm rockets for large area effectiveness than there is for 30 mm cannon. The Afghanistan is not same thing as European terrain or tactics. That needs to be taken in the context that 30 mm was not added to Mi-24 because it is better, but because it was needed in such rocky terrain where everything is cover for the enemy, and you need to fly over wide open areas where you don't have cover to get closer than couple kilometers as 12.7 mm HMG's shot you down otherwise. So you needed to keep a distance and have a cheap weapon to shoot here and there after rockets. For that a 30 mm fixed gun was not a problem, but it was for everywhere else where Mi-24 tactics are to perform overflies, to pop-up close-by and attack and withdraw back behind the trees and hills to cover only to circle back later. For that purposes the Mi-24VP was wanted back to as Mi-24P was not enough. And that lead to many opt for the YakB or GSh-23L that are still the most used variants.

You need to as well accept that the most vehicles you will ever face in the combat, are not armored. They are unarmored vehicles and other that are lightly armored. Be it a transport, rocket launchers, mortar, supply etc. Then for the older era the APC are vulnerable for the 12.7 mm caliber. And even a MBT crew does not want to be under 12.7 mm fire, as under any fire really than small calibers.

And when more armored targets are faced, it is time to use a 80 mm rockets or AT missiles as 30 mm is not enough.

On 11/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

It's not a problem with the 12.7mm round, which is as good as any .50 cal, but with the fact that a helo like the Hind has no use for a .50 cal minigun.

It is not a fact, it is an opinion.

If we would just replace a 30 mm with 12.7 mm in Mi-24P, I would agree that I would take 30 mm instead.

Give a rotating turret with 12.7 mm as in Mi-24D/V and I likely take it more often over 30 mm fixed one.

But give a 23 mm rotating turret as in Mi-24VP/VM etc, and I take that at least more often than 30 mm fixed.

On 11/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

As I said, you can kill trucks, and that's because all you need to do for that is to hit somewhere around the engine. To destroy an APC, you'd have to be able to reliably put rounds on it, which means getting quite closer to it than you'd like to be, and hovering there (giving the APC a chance to shoot back).

1) You don't need to get close to it.

2) You definitely don't need to hover to shoot at it.

3) With the rotating turret you don't need to even fly toward it, making you far more difficult target than a flying straight at it.

There are many different tactics that needs to be used, most can't be used because DCS lacks the realism part for that. Like one is that the APC is not kept in the frontal defensive positions, their position is far further in the air-cover and driven to support infantry position only when required. The vehicles are defended and protected as that is the infantry only way to move quickly around. In DCS the mission designers place them all openly visible and to be killed.

12.7 mm is often as a vehicles self-defense weapon, and for couple kilometers you are effective against helicopters and other low flying targets, and even further against ground targets. It is not as effective as a modern autocannon with all fancy computerized automatic tracking and kill probability of 0.8 with a first round, but such will as well cause fear among pilots not to fly straight at such. And that brings back the rockets and AT missiles as you want range and area of effect. 

On 11/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

It's the very same reason why GAU-19 isn't used much, either. 7.62mm miniguns are also very inaccurate, but they're used because the sheer rate of fire is good at keeping enemy troops suppressed. It doesn't excel at killing the enemy, it excels at forcing them to keep their heads down while the infantry moves in to kill them.

That is underestimating firepower of the firepower....

Even in DCS the miniguns are very effective, but mainly because enemy can't dig in and AI is just with super vision to see infantry even in forests and there simply is no cover or concealment for ground units to utilize, forcing engagement ranges to more realistic short ranges. 

The spread is a benefit for the aiming and effect, but will shorten the effective range by increasing time of fire. Why you don't want a "laser beam" but good spread for an higher effect. 

When you take fire, you will get out or withdraw on the cover. If you have enemy positions, you don't want to use a 30 mm cannon that is forced you to circle around after each gun attack and limited to one position. Even 3-6 helicopters performing the constant engagements is more effectively done by using rockets on the area, but you don't really send your infantry there where you are firing at with explosive area weapons (that 30 mm includes). 

Anyways you always need the infantry to gain the foothold on the area. To do the real combat and actually be there to advance the campaign. Air units are nothing more than supporting the infantry on the ground to do their job. And as long enemy can be suppressed, the weapon is effective.

And there is almost nothing as effective than volleys of S-8 rockets on the area where enemy is.

If Apache would have its 30 mm cannon fixed, it would be unsuitable helicopter for tasking what it does. The key is not the 30 mm, but the aimable turret instead fixed.

With KA-50 having a slightly traversin turret is huge advantage over it being used only as fixed one.

Similar way a Su-25 with SPPU-22-1 gunpods are great as you can avoid flying straight at the target but instead maintain a altitude while firing at ground.

UH-1H with fixed miniguns forward is very much less useful than having a Co-pilot aiming with them to your front hemisphere. Then having doorgunners firing anything that is at your sides. 

If the Mi-8 door gunner wouldn't be incapable to fire accurately without waving the Kord around, it would be effective as human player firing at it, again key being "aiming" instead fixed. 

36 minutes ago, Fri13 said:

It is not a fact, it is an opinion.

One shared by real Hind crews, from the looks of it. This opinion is derived from what I know of fighting in Afghan, and also flying the Hind around in ArmA. Sure, if you can catch the enemy on open ground, a 12.7mm minigun is good enough. However, the 30mm gun also works in those situations, and has more utility in others. Hind is not the Apache, it's meant to keep moving and make passes much like a fixed wing aircraft would. 

Also, an unstabilized turret like what the Hind has does require you to hover close by. If you don't get close, you'll spray bullets all over the place, and you'll likely not score enough hits on anything armored to kill it. Even an APC that isn't otherwise armored against 12.7mm could, if hit an an angle, cause the round to bounce off. You need to put a lot more of those rounds on such a target to ensure a kill, and if the spread is larger than the target at the given range, you're going to waste a lot of rounds. If you just fly by, you'll never hit anything with the turret, unless you're orbiting the target very, very slowly (which doesn't make you a very hard target at all). DCS AI door gunners are unrealistically good, BTW. Try shooting those guns yourself, or check out how they work in ArmA. 

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

One shared by real Hind crews, from the looks of it. 

Still an opinion, not a fact.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Also, an unstabilized turret like what the Hind has does require you to hover close by.

No it doesn't. 

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

If you don't get close, you'll spray bullets all over the place, and you'll likely not score enough hits on anything armored to kill it.

You are not suppose to use the gun past 3 kilometers. And you use AT or rockets against armored targets that are already protected against 30 mm anyways. 

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Even an APC that isn't otherwise armored against 12.7mm could, if hit an an angle, cause the round to bounce off. You need to put a lot more of those rounds on such a target to ensure a kill, and if the spread is larger than the target at the given range, you're going to waste a lot of rounds.

30 mm can as well richotte from the APC armor. You are not required to kill-kill target, a mobility kill is enough or any other kill.

12.7 mm is very effective up to 2500 meters against that time (80's and even 90's) APC's almost regardless their angle, and you are there against the infantry, not the APC itself when it is empty. The firepower comes from its high use of ammunition as you affect large areas effectively with it, as it is not a bolt-action sniper rifle where you spend few rounds per vehicle. 

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

If you just fly by, you'll never hit anything with the turret, unless you're orbiting the target very, very slowly (which doesn't make you a very hard target at all).

Just wrong. The doctrine that was developed for Mi-24D and Mi-24V was specifically high speed passes.

You are stuck to idea that helicopter needs to hover or be very very slow to be able shoot at anything.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

DCS AI door gunners are unrealistically good, BTW. Try shooting those guns yourself, or check out how they work in ArmA. 

I am superior compared to AI, even when the weapon controls are terrible in the DCS. And I do not care about ARMA. In reality I am excellent with the 12.7 mm HMG, it is not difficult to handle and use. The real challenge is that in reality you can't spot any infantry if they don't reveal themselves, and to hit a APC you need to spot it and that again is something they truly do all they can to avoid it. When you can find the target, it becomes very effective weapon to use. On a moving platform it is up to the pilot/driver to be able keep vehicle steady and not to rock it all over the places like a 5 year old in a rowing boat.  In DCS there are no such challenges as it is unrealistically easy to spot ground (or air) units from tens of kilometers distances.

55 minutes ago, Fri13 said:

Just wrong. The doctrine that was developed for Mi-24D and Mi-24V was specifically high speed passes.

You are stuck to idea that helicopter needs to hover or be very very slow to be able shoot at anything.

The doctrine was developed for following up rocket attacks. This means the helo is flying straight at the target. Using the gun in that scenario is rather simple, the turret is basically pointing forward and doesn't have to traverse much. However, it doesn't make it significantly harder to hit (it's armored against frontal shots for a reason). It can shoot while moving, all right, but it's not going to be spraying bullets at some target way off the the side while flying at high speed. In fact, I suspect the doctrine of following a rocket attack up with the gun was developed because the S-5 rocket that Hind-D used at the time wasn't very effective, either. If you combine two crappy weapons in one pass, chances are one of them will do enough damage.

A mounted HMG is easy to handle, but Yak-B is not a HMG. It's a helicopter-mounted minigun. If you're shooting from a moving platform, at a moving target, from a gun that's inherently inaccurate (as all gatling-type weapons are), then chances to actually hit the target enough times to immobilize it (meaning hitting the engine or wheels) are low. You would need to fly fairly close which exposes you to much more accurate fire from the ground.

The Hinds in the RHS mod for ArmA3 are the best simulation right now, until this gets released. Plus, I think the actual Hind crews know what they're talking about better than you do. So, I'd take their opinion over yours. Raw numbers never tell the whole story.

01.12.2020 в 15:51, Fri13 сказал:

12.7 mm is very effective up to 2500 meters against that time (80's and even 90's) APC's almost regardless their angle, and you are there against the infantry, not the APC itself when it is empty. The firepower comes from its high use of ammunition as you affect large areas effectively with it, as it is not a bolt-action sniper rifle where you spend few rounds per vehicle.

You tell unreal stories. Especially considering that the range tables of Soviet/Russian 12.7×108mm cartridges are compiled for a range of no more than 2000m, and the maximum sighting range of the USPU-24 gun emplacement (YakB-12.7) does not exceed 2000m.

IRL, the Mi-24V pilots and operators fired from the USPU-24 at ranges of 800–1000m.
 

15 hours ago, S.E.Bulba said:

It's right. IRL, the S-8KO/KOM rockets have a HEAT-Frag warhead (with a fragmentation ring), which is similar to the S-5KO warhead...

Nice images, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like there's a thread at the base of the warhead. Does this mean the boosters and the warheads are separate objects; and that one could theoretically mix and match warheads between boosters?

Quote

IIRC, at the present time fragmentation damage is not implemented in the DCS World. ...

I've long been aware of that. I was more (implicitly) getting at the fact that the S-8OFP2 currently in-game has a rather generous damage radius vs infantry; Quite possibly the blast damage you mentioned, but the KOM is effective almost exclusively via direct hits.

I guess, in a round-about way I'm wondering what the major IRL differences are between the KOM and OFP2 variants, and whether what we see in-game is even a remote reflection of that reality.

Practically speaking, the only time KOMs become viable in game are when you're targeting APCs, or mid-50s/60s MBTs, and due to the inherent inaccuracy of rockets, this task requires getting within guns range of the target in most cases; which is practically suicide for a helicopter. Less so for the Su-25, but still dangerous. For everything else, OFP2s take the podium.

It feels as if the S-8KOM should settle in more of a middle-ground between where it is now, and where the S-8OFP2 is. But, I've got little to back that hunch.

4 hours ago, Cheetah7798 said:

Nice images, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like there's a thread at the base of the warhead. Does this mean the boosters and the warheads are separate objects; and that one could theoretically mix and match warheads between boosters?

Almost all rockets are modular that manner. There is no connections between the modules and you can in future create compatible new warheads/rockets like APKWS II. 

Quote

I've long been aware of that. I was more (implicitly) getting at the fact that the S-8OFP2 currently in-game has a rather generous damage radius vs infantry; Quite possibly the blast damage you mentioned, but the KOM is effective almost exclusively via direct hits.

The DCS doesn't count fragments, why a HE is always more effective than a fragmented or HEAT warheads that has much less high explosive power than pure HE. This makes the HE warheads more effective than they should against armored targets that would require fragments. 

5 часов назад, Cheetah7798 сказал:

Nice images, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like there's a thread at the base of the warhead. Does this mean the boosters and the warheads are separate objects; and that one could theoretically mix and match warheads between boosters?

By 'booster' did you mean the rocket section of the missile? In the Russian-language military vocabulary, the missile is usually divided into 2 main sections: the armament section (warhead) and the rocket section (rocket engine, nozzle block, empennage unit).

If I understand you correctly, then yes – all Soviet modernized S-8 rockets (marked with the letter 'M': S-8KOM, S-8OM, S-8TsM, etc.) have the same 9-GSch-4421 rocket section. At the plant, the rocket sections are connected to the armament sections, and the rockets are supplied to the armed forces already assembled.

The S-8 rockets of the first modifications (not marked with the letter 'M') had a different rocket section, but they have already been discontinued.
 

5 часов назад, Cheetah7798 сказал:

I've long been aware of that. I was more (implicitly) getting at the fact that the S-8OFP2 currently in-game has a rather generous damage radius vs infantry; Quite possibly the blast damage you mentioned, but the KOM is effective almost exclusively via direct hits.

I believe that purely subjective observations. For example, personally, I have had cases in the DCS World when S-8KOM rockets fell around the car, but did not destroy it (only its 'health points' were slightly reduced), but at the same time 'died' infantrymen who were away from the gap of the nearest rocket at a distance of up to 50m.

5 часов назад, Cheetah7798 сказал:

I guess, in a round-about way I'm wondering what the major IRL differences are between the KOM and OFP2 variants, and whether what we see in-game is even a remote reflection of that reality.