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madman1960 5 years, 7 months ago.
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Segments from our March 17 Twitch live stream, where we took a first swipe at playtesting home-expansion rules, units, and weapons for 1982 “Peace for Galilee”
In this video – AIR STRIKES! Syrian interceptors! SAMs! Ground fire! Oh my!
Handful of snipers for Spectre Operations:
@limburger – great question regarding laser guided bombs, and on-board target designation rather than ground-based target designation. The short answer is: it depends.
High level: Laser guided bombs have a sensor in the nose, keyed to a predetermined IR Laser frequency and modulation. A targeting laser is put on what you want the bomb to hit. Being an IR laser, its invisible, cuts through darkness, smoke, etc. You DO have to have a direct line of sight on the target, though (lasers are straight lines, obviously). The laser bounces off the target and scatters all over, but the bomb can detect that reflection and use it as a guidance point. This is often called “painting” the target.
The bomb is dropped, and can use inertial guidance to “glide” toward whatever is reflecting that laser. As long as the laser remains fixed on the target, the bomb will find it, homing on the reflected laser energy.
The trick is, the source of the targeting laser and the source of the bomb don’t have to be the same.
Sure, they CAN be, but it defeats half the purpose of the LGB. The examples in the wiki article you source are from Vietnam, where Paveway LGBs were used on large immobile targets like buildings and bridges. One or more aircraft can “paint” the target, and the planes (probably F-105 Thunderchiefs in these cases) can drop the bombs, the bombs will ride the laser down to the target. The issue is that the plane has to “see” the target with a direct LOS to paint the target itself. AND the plane has to remain over the target, keeping the designator painted on the target, until the weapon strikes.
Much more common, and as we see on tactical battlefield targets like tanks, SAMs, or bunkers (i.e., the kinds of targets you actually go after in a wargame – smaller and mobile), it makes much more sense to have infantry on the ground paint the target. They are small, concealed, and not firing (other than the laser) so are next to impossible to spot. An invisible laser is bounced off the target, and bombs start raining down with pin-point accuracy.
This is the idea behind systems like the Pave Penny laser pod mounted on planes like the A-10. These are laser receivers, not emitters. They need a laser to track, usually from the ground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pave_Penny
You know what, a picture is worth a thousands words. The best movie scene I can think of that actually shows how these weapons work – fictional incident from Clear and Present Danger:
@limburger – Mavericks in the Yom Kippur War:
Dude you are right on this. I was a little skeptical (let’s face it, Wikipedia is not a “source”) but poking around other sources including USAF and Janes … yes, it was definitely used in Yom Kippur. These were brand new at the time, entering service in mid-1972 and already exported to non-NATO allies by 1973?
I would suspect these were shipped over hurriedly after the war started as part of Operation Nickle Grass. This is when the US emergency-air lifted 20,000+ tons of supplies to Israeli in the midst of the Yom Kippur War, including aircraft and high-tech items that would eventually help them counter the Egyptian and Syrian SAM threat. I would suspect (I don’t know for sure) that this is where the Maverick came in, and could well have been a temporary feature in the IAF, at least until later in the 1970s or early 1980s when the Maverick became more widespread. At the time, though, the Maverick was the newest of the new, the absolute “silver bullet” that probably provided decisive or at least very helpful in knocking key links out of Syrian and Egyptian air defense networks that had, until this point, largely removed the IAF from the war,
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2016/July%202016/The-Yom-Kippur-Airlift.aspx
Great Spectre snipers, @suetoniuspaullinus – are those Russians with those Dragunov SVDs? Mercs? Western operators trained to use ex-Soviet equipment?
@templar007 – Nothing about Oriskany is “li’l.” So the ladies tell me (just kidding). And I have no issues with tanks on a 28mm table. Just not tanks fighting each other so much. 😀 (Although even I’ve committed this affront in 20mm).
No worries, @rastamann – you should have e-mail with the files and Google Drive links. Let me know if you want me to set us up a game of one these weekends.
Seriously elite SEAL operator there, @suetoniuspaullinus .
Indeed, @limburger, Apaches are insane. I remember playing Soviets or East Germans in GDW Assault and watching my friend Mike just tear apart whole battalions of T-80s and T-72s with just a handful of them. A few SA-17s and SA-8 Gecko launchers took care of that next time … I don’t think I was able to shoot any down but at least kept them from taking out whole segments of my tank and mechanized regiments with impunity.
Awesome work so far, @grimwolfuk – I have left recommendations and comments in your project! 😀
We had a great stream today, everyone! Thanks to everyone who stopped by! That was a fun little demo of 1982 Lebanon expansion for Valor & Victory. I was only going to stream for an hour or so, turned into 3:45:00! I will be “off the radar” next week due to EOQ at work, but i really hope to be back starting on April 6 for some live games, either Valor & Victory Lebanon, Vaietnam, Panzer Leader WW2, Panzer Leader Lebanon, Panzer Leader Gulf War 1991, or of course Darkstar!
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