Apache Missions you'd like to see

[idenwen]

On 12/24/2021 at 12:10 AM, poochies said:

A la  Longbow 2... ahhh the memories.. great campaign!

LB2 did not have F-16s. Air Cover was by the longbows themselves. IIRC there was even a CAP role in the dynamic campaign you could assign to a flight.

[NeedzWD40]

10 hours ago, bies said:

 

This would be the ultimate scenario, Desert Storm 1991 very good as well. But both are way outside our AH-64D Longbow Apache timeframe.

There was original analog AH-64A guarding Fulda Gap during the Cold War or engaging Iraq armored and mechanized divisions in Iraq.

Taking away the FCR and restricting weapons gets you 90% of the way there. With the way most people play, all the extra data capabilities won't get used anyways, so it's plenty suitable.

You can also advance the years a bit and give some greater capabilities to the enemy while keeping the core the same.

7 hours ago, idenwen said:

LB2 did not have F-16s. Air Cover was by the longbows themselves. IIRC there was even a CAP role in the dynamic campaign you could assign to a flight.

It did if you asked for an air strike on an enemy aircraft. F-16s would show up to help out in that event.

[AvgeekJoe]

10 hours ago, bies said:

 

This would be the ultimate scenario, Desert Storm 1991 very good as well. But both are way outside our AH-64D Longbow Apache timeframe.

There was original analog AH-64A guarding Fulda Gap during the Cold War or engaging Iraq armored and mechanized divisions in Iraq.

But not that many differences between the A & D.  With weapons limitations in mission planner, we can prevent radars & radar-guided missiles from being loaded.

[bies]

2 hours ago, AvgeekJoe said:

But not that many differences between the A & D.  With weapons limitations in mission planner, we can prevent radars & radar-guided missiles from being loaded.

On one hand it's true.

On the other hand the all-digital cockpit, GPS navigation, NVG, datalink etc. kill some part of immersion - it's a different era of aviation compared to Cold War or Desert Storm technology Apache. All of this technology added far more capability to Apache than FCR - which was unreliable and had many limitations according to pilots.

For now Apache / Kiowa squadron during 2008 Russia-Georgia war sounds the most appealing to me for AH-64D Longbow.

Edited January 6, 2022 by bies

[kgillers3]

13 minutes ago, bies said:

On one hand it's true.

On the other hand the all-digital cockpit, GPS navigation, NVG, datalink etc. kill some part of immersion - it's a different era of aviation compared to Cold War or Desert Storm technology Apache. All of this technology added far more capability to Apache than FCR - which was unreliable and had many limitations according to pilots.

For now Apache / Kiowa squadron during 2008 Russia-Georgia war sounds the most appealing to me for AH-64D Longbow.

 

I'm gonna pick a little bit at your ruins immersion part.  So they used GPS nav to get to the release point via 53's.  53's dropped a chemlight marking a predetermined point where the 64's could realign their INU's. Due to the nature of the target and the amount of rehearsals, each crewmember knew exactly what they were going to strike, in fact 95% if not all of the mission was done with 0 comms. The only way they were able to accomplish this was due to the rehearsals, so that rules datalink out because you would have all the targets already, and you wouldn't want to transmit.  Now IDK if they had the function at the time if they would have used it or not.  It's half of one dozen of the other, but I think you could have just as an immersive experience if you wanted to. Drop the 53's, put the appropriate targets in the mission editor if that's a thing IDK, and don't use datalink. 

Just my opinion. 

[kgillers3]

I had opportunity to hear about the mission in person from Gen Cody and a few of the pilots who were apart of TF Normandy and flew it from their point of view, one of the things interesting was how they got the aircraft approved for non standard configuration and them taking off well over max gross.  Where there's a will there's a way.  Now I could be mucking some of the details, it's been a while and a lot has happened so I might be combining missions.  If there's something I said that's grossly off lemme know, but regardless I still think that mission is definitely one I'd like to see. 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by kgillers3

[bies]

Yes, there were different ways to do things with older technology, i've heard an interview with A-10A pilot in Desert Storm - they were flying A-10As at low altitude, at night, without NVG!

TF Normandy was a special mission with specially prepared aircrafts, i would like to see it as well. Overall Apache destroyed ~1000 tanks / AFV and other assets during the operation.

[Stratos]

Operation Just Cause stule in 1989, Apache A using NVG to engage pinpoint targets in urban envinroment.

[BigBANGtheory]

For me what I would like to see most is missions that direct me perform specific flight manoeuvres over a practice range.

What I see a lot of in DCS both via tutorials and missions amounts to 'fly to this way point and shoot at stuff' rather than missions or tasks that teach you more advanced flight manoeuvres its like you're just expected to do them over time or carry on with basic flight control. I know you can use external sources of information I'd like that to be bought inside the sim if it can I guess is what I'm trying to say....

 

[kgillers3]

9 hours ago, BigBANGtheory said:

For me what I would like to see most is missions that direct me perform specific flight manoeuvres over a practice range.

What I see a lot of in DCS both via tutorials and missions amounts to 'fly to this way point and shoot at stuff' rather than missions or tasks that teach you more advanced flight manoeuvres its like you're just expected to do them over time or carry on with basic flight control. I know you can use external sources of information I'd like that to be bought inside the sim if it can I guess is what I'm trying to say....

 

TBH with exception of a few, most of our maneuvers are very simple and extensions of basic maneuvers. Taking advantage of things that aerodynamically occur in a helicopter.  I like your idea, you're gonna have to practice the basics though, then understand how to correlate them too your maneuvering flight if that makes sense.  It's not all yanking and banking   

[BigBANGtheory]

On 1/8/2022 at 9:32 PM, kgillers3 said:

TBH with exception of a few, most of our maneuvers are very simple and extensions of basic maneuvers. Taking advantage of things that aerodynamically occur in a helicopter.  I like your idea, you're gonna have to practice the basics though, then understand how to correlate them too your maneuvering flight if that makes sense.  It's not all yanking and banking   

yeah so making that into missions and tutorials, learning to finesse, the performance and how to get the most out of the aircraft in order to raise your skill... that type of thing

[idenwen]

On 1/6/2022 at 9:47 PM, NeedzWD40 said:

It did if you asked for an air strike on an enemy aircraft. F-16s would show up to help out in that event.

Seems I never did that  Thanks for the correction.

[Sparc]

I'd like a mission where I can strap a soldier to the side of my Apache and deliver him safely to base. 

[doedkoett]

I am pretty sure you won’t be able to have a 3d model of a soldier strapped to the side of your bird, but in almost all other respects, that would be a possible mission. Right down to adding the weight of the soldier to your aircraft when the soldier is ”picked up”. Unfortunately there is no way afaik to control the weight distribution, so the weight is probably just added at cg. 

[archtech]

All the missions from Janes Longbow. Would like to relive in full fidelity.

[Sukhoi1991]

Plz make it endless and dynamic.

[Sinclair_76]

On 1/22/2022 at 5:18 PM, archtech said:

All the missions from Janes Longbow. Would like to relive in full fidelity.

I think that's a case of rosy retrospection. Sure at the time the missions were great. But when I now see yt video's they kind of lack. Just a random splot of units, a SAM in the middle of nowhere....No organized formations, no logical battlefield layout. 

[pimp]

I would definitely love to see On-Call Tasking missions in different urban areas that include pin-point targets for hellfires and groups of insurgents for guns.

[DN308]

Missions I would like to see would be in one hand some « classic » anti armor combat missions and in another hand some anti guérilla missions.

In the first case, it would be really nice to play a long distance infiltration 

[Rick50]

On 1/7/2022 at 1:55 AM, bies said:

Yes, there were different ways to do things with older technology, i've heard an interview with A-10A pilot in Desert Storm - they were flying A-10As at low altitude, at night, without NVG!

I remember hearing that they would turn on the Maveric AGM-65 and use them as a night image device, not just when about to missile something!  Dunno how long those could be used in that way, as it would be WAY beyond the original design specs... thing was probably designed not to exceed 3 minutes of use! 

 

 

On 1/7/2022 at 6:57 AM, Stratos said:

Operation Just Cause stule in 1989, Apache A using NVG to engage pinpoint targets in urban envinroment.

 

At one point they were taking fire from an appartment building... a ground sniper/marksman loaded some tracers, and with radio coordination, used the tracers to target mark for an Apache!   I don't know what weapon the Apache used but might have been a Hellfire.

[Raptor9]

1 minute ago, Rick50 said:

I remember hearing that they would turn on the Maveric AGM-65 and use them as a night image device, not just when about to missile something!  Dunno how long those could be used in that way, as it would be WAY beyond the original design specs... thing was probably designed not to exceed 3 minutes of use! 

There is a book called "Warthog" by William L. Smallwood that describes the experiences of several A-10 squadrons Desert Storm in 1991. The book is written from a series of interviews he conducted with the pilots later that year.

They go into the night operations of the A-10A as well, in detail.  An entire squadron was assigned to night missions even before the air war kicked off.  It's a good read.

[Rick50]

On 1/19/2022 at 11:13 AM, doedkoett said:

I am pretty sure you won’t be able to have a 3d model of a soldier strapped to the side of your bird, but in almost all other respects, that would be a possible mission. Right down to adding the weight of the soldier to your aircraft when the soldier is ”picked up”. Unfortunately there is no way afaik to control the weight distribution, so the weight is probably just added at cg. 

 

At Early Access ? You are surely correct!

 

But down the road, by the final release? I don't see why any of that wouldn't be somewhat easy for the ED team to do. For a soldier on the side, for the off-center weight, I think it would be fairly easy to accomplish. It'd be more about whether they want to spend the development day to make it happen, so maybe not. 

Not that it's the same thing, but way back when I was bigtime into FS2004 I would edit various weight values, as often I found that a freeware aircraft wasn't set up with much thought to editing weight distribution. Meaning, they'd get all the right weights, but wouldnj't edit the weights' locations, so it would just be at the datum. Boring.

I'd edit fuel tanks, at one point I added the values for Learjet tip-tanks, and that REALLY improved the banking handling, made a turn or roll feel much more immersive. Instead of one cargo location that defaulted to zero weight, I'd assign real weight and maybe put 5 points. I noticed one developer added a weight value... for EVERY SEAT in a 737, and doing so made it feel more real!  And I'm no programmer, I just learned a little here and there by looking at aircraft.cfg's and doing my own edits. Trial and error, experiment and enjoy glory! 

I just remembered, one time I wanted to simulate the handling of a helicopter with a sling load, so I added the cargo weight, and located it 100 ft below the heli... and IT WORKED!!   Strangely I can't remember if I shared any of that, but this wasn't a "holy grail discovery" at all, many did know how to do this, it's just that many didn't.

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Rick50

[skypickle]

Hellfire by Ed Macy describes the British action in Afghanistan by the Apache squadron. Specifically the attack on Koshtay was an amazing recounting of an amazing sortie. That would make an amazing coop mission.

[Rick50]

So in the mid-90's I was over in the chaos formerly known as Yugoslavia, part of a UN Peacekeeping mission.  A few times, the combatants would piss off NATO or the UN, and an airstrike would come in and lase a few pieces of armor or artillery, it was usually due to some kind of a violation of ceasefire agreement or too close within range of a civilian refugee camp or area.  So some aircraft would come, perhaps from Aviano airbase in Italy, and drop a few LGB's, make a lot of noise for miles around, and go away.  There were also CAP flights too. On rare occasions an early UAV (unarmed in those days) might be there too, but I only saw one that belonged to the Croatian AF just before Op Storm.

 

One day though, an F-16 was shot down. The pilot ejected and then was on the run, hiding in ditches and bushes, trying to evade capture. Days later the USMC launched an armada of helos to go get him, with Supercobras and SeaStallions, and support from Harriers and other assets. 

Read more about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_O'Grady

 

Sure, Marines don't have Apaches of any kind, but consider all the details of the mission and how it went down, the threats faced. And we know that in real life, Apaches have operated from Assault ships and carriers before. 

[Moxica]

A convoy hunt, including some of those infamous white Toyota technicals that plagued amongst others Syria for some time..

Edited April 7, 2022 by Moxica