DCS : MiG-21Bis by Leatherneck Simulations - Weaponry I : Air to Ground Weaponry (and mini review)
Hello Folks!
I will be writing a series of articles on awesome MiG-21Bis module by Leatherneck simulations, including an overall review like I did for F-86F. But I will wait for that particular one until I master more of MiG, it is a module that offer a lot to master! Here though, as the first part of weaponry, I will mainly be looking at various air to ground ordnance options the MiG has, and in later parts of weaponry series for MiG-21, will look at air to air options as well as misc equipment like pods and RATO.
While I intent to leave main review for later entries here, let me still provide an overall short description of aircraft, module, and my impressions. MiG-21 itself is one of the most iconic supersonic jetfighters ever, only Ak-47 says "Soviet!" better than this MiG (which is called Ak-47 of skies anyway). It is the most produced supersonic aircraft in history so far. Bis is the last and most upgraded of production versions. It is mainly an interceptor / fighter, but has a variety of options for ground attack as well.
And to touch shortly on module itself, it is nothing short of awesome in my opinion. While Leatherneck previously stated they will not a be doing a beta release and instead it will be a full release right on, MiG did turn out to be an open beta after all. That is ok though, software development being what it is, especially with complex stuff like flight simulation software. Having said that, it certainly is fairly safe to declare the MiG to be one of the most complete initial release in DCS so far. There are some frame rate issues with AMD graphics cards like mine, which are in process of being solved already. There are a few non game breaking bugs in systems and flight model too, but they are being cared of as well from what Cobra inform us on forums. With a manual, a campaign, full set of weaponry, comprehensive training missions, single missions and instant action missions, module is pretty full of content. Regarding authenticity of simulation, I believe it suffices to say that lead programmer Novak Djordjijevic (Dolphin887 in ED forums) is currently an active duty MiG-21Bis pilot, flying real MiGs for a living. MiG-21 is an aircraft I always liked and was interested in, and wanted to have a realistic one in a simulation for decades now. Leatherneck certainly have my thanks for making this a reality, and for making that in a great level quality. It is simple yet challenging, and while it is not a modern combat aircraft, and can't be expected to outperform such platforms, it still can be quite effective when utilized with skill. MiG is old alright, but it's no slouch :)
Having touched on aircraft and module itself shortly, I will leave rest of that to later articles, and get to main point of this one : Ordnance available to our MiG-21Bis :
Lets start with the basic, default, "always with you" armament :
GSh-23L auto cannon is a light and two barreled 23mm weapon with high rate of fire and moderately big shells. It has a fairly high rate of fire of about 3400-3600 rpm. MiG carries 250 rounds with it, which is neither anemic, nor plentiful, with a continous pull of trigger, it gives about 4 seconds of firing. 23mm rounds are fairly powerful against aircraft, their main target. Thanks to this, and it's high rate of fire & relatively low recoil, it can do really well if you are accurate to land a good burst on target, whether A-A or A-G. Against ground targets, it is again decently strong, and can do good work on targets up to and including IFVs. It can damage older tanks like M-60 and T-55 but will have a hard time doing much of an impression on them, and for heavier tanks, it just doesn't quite cut it.
Aside from strong points like caliber, rate of fire and low recoil on bright side, if we look at the darker side of medallion, GSh-23 doesn't have a really high muzzle velocity. This is part of the reason why it has a difficult time against heavy armor, but also makes the gun rather short ranged with considerably quick bullet drop. Coupled with fast and light nature of MiG, strafing runs are quite adventurous until you get used to them, and then, they are still somewhat adventurous once you are used to :). This also complicates air to air utilization since air to air gunnery pipper does not provide any automatic ranging like even F-86 could, and it is accurate only against targets maneuvring up to 3.5g. For anything better, you are ought to use the fixed net, or "8 mode" as most people knew it from LOMAC and FC3 aircraft :). In fact, fixed net really is useful in MiG for many things even when you have a perfectly adequate moving pipper on, and here you can adjust it's opacity / brightness to your liking so it won't look intrusive as it tends to be on FC3 aircraft. CCIP gun pipper for air to ground, on the other hand, is fairly accurate, especially in dive angles at least around 30 degrees, it can be slightly short sometimes, but is usually fairly darn accurate. In really shallow dives though, it calcualtes a point quite short of target. Since this is not a high velocity 30mm monster like those on A-10, Su-25, Su-27 or MiG-29, don't hold back, and fire a decently long burst, for either air to air or air to ground. This way, you'll make up for smaller caliber, and will make use of advantages like low recoil and decent rate of fire.
One quirk is, to fire the gun, you need to use a pyrotechnic charge which will load / unjam it. We have 3 of those on aircraft, assigned to 3 buttons under armament selection rotary switch. Why you may ask? For a first ever in DCS modules, gun on our MiG can jam at certain conditions like firing a long burst while pulling many Gs etc. Nice to see such detail, since even some fairly modern fighters like Gripen has restrictions on what parts of flight envelope can it's gun be used without jamming it.
Now we gave the gun it's run, let us look at Air to Ground ordnance, our focus for this article :
S-5M Rockets : This 57mm rocket is the ground attack weapon you can hit most targets with, since the MiG can carry up to 96 of them. Two types of pods are available : UB-16 and UB-32, which carry 16 or 32 rockets as per their names suggest. You can mount UB-16 on either hardpoint, but UB-32 can only be hung on inner hardpoints. With these loaded, you really should be careful not to exceed 4-5 g maximum, otherwise they are guaranteed to get pried off from your wings. There are 3 possible salvo settings to choose from : you can either fire 4, 8 or 16 rockets with one press of weapon release button. 57mm rocket is fairly weak though. You need a fairly close landing burst for most targets, and for tanks, you need many direct hits. 4 rocket per salvo option is only useful on really light skinned vehicles to be honest. CCIP pipper is like the gun, fairly accurate for most dives unless it is a very shallow dive. A dive of 25-30 degrees with moderate speed around 600-800 km/h IAS, from around 1.5km altitude is a good way to utilize rockets.
Good thing about S-5 is, you can take some other loadout for two outer hardpoint and still have 64 S-5, or intead load heavier stuff on inner hardpoints and still have 32 S-5 loaded. Though, if you intent to hurt serious stuff like T-80, T-90, M1 etc, or even T-72 actually, you are more likely to only tickle and annoy them with S-5. That is, unless you unload half of the pod on them and actually have most of those rockets score a direct hit.
Watch when pulling up from dive after expending some armament though... I've had more times where I pried my rocket pods off the wings than I like to admit :).
S-24A & B Rockets : Big boy we know from Su-25, this rockets are fairly big, and are carried a single one per hardpoint. Packed with 125 kg of explosive force, and are always fired two of them at one press of weapon release, they do some serious damage where they land, and are more than adequate to take out even the heaviest tanks. They also have fairly decent range and are quite accurate (though near misses are fine too due to size of warhead and the fact that you always fire both rockets at once). These are the main and most potent armament MiG has against hard ground targets like tanks, but will also take out many soft targets with one accurate hit. B subtype seem more powerful one in DCS. Same technique as S-5M more or less apply to S-24 use as well, with S-24 being a bit longer range and more accurate, and fired in a single pair instead of a salvo. Down side to this powerful and accurate weapon is that MiG-21 can carry only 4 of these, which translate to 2 firings. Currently, I consider S-24 as go to fire and forget point target weapon for MiG-21Bis, since even if it's not guided, it is easy to aim and use, fairly accurate, has decent range, and unlike Kh-66, you can fire and turn away.
Kh-66 Missile : Here we are with a guided, precision attack weapon! Well, almost :). An upsized RS-2US, this weapon is a beam riding, radar guided air to ground missile with a big 100 kg warhead. With that warhead, missile is strong enough to blow up even the thoughest tanks of DCS World. This missile is more or less the ancestor of Kh-25 missile series, and resemblance is clear from the looks already. Indeed, first upgraded version of Kh-66 was called Kh-23. To utilize it, you need to switch radar to locked beam mode. Although, you pretty much should use locked beam with any air to ground weapon for accurate rangefinding and a better pipper, this missile specifically needs it since it's the only way the guidence works. To fire them, you will need to turn weapon selector to S-24 1-2 position. Pipper will be fixed around the 3rd notch of fixed net, and this marks where your radar beam is looking. Once fired, missile will try to follow your radar beam with it's seeker on it's back. Which means, you'll use the aircraft as a pointer, keeping pipper on target for the duration of flight. Currently, there are two ways to do this, you can use target lock button and pipper will stabilize on that point, essentially radar antenna will be gyro stabilized on that point. The other is to just fire the missile and steer the aircraft to where you want the missile to impact. There is discussion on forums whether locking on a ground point is realistic or not. It may not be too hard actually, but I don't know whether real MiG really had the capability. But it doesn't really matter for me since I much prefer to utilize the Kh-66 without lock. Unlike laser guided Kh-25ML of Su-25, once locked, you can't move the pipper at all, if you wan to you'll need to unlock which will return the beam to boresight, and missile may have to do crazy stuff to get back there or lose the beam. For moving, or distant targets, I find using it without lock to be much better / reliable. Note that, due to guidance mechanism and old tech, missile isn't qite pinpoint accurate, especially at range, but is still pretty decently accurate, and with it's large warhead is adequate against most targets. It is mainly intented against large targets like building or ships, but I've found it works just fine on vehicles with some practice. Unlike every other heavy ordnance on MiG, this one is fired single and not in pairs, which create some complications. Asymmethrical load on MiG isn't allowed normally, and once first Kh-66 goes off the rail, aircraft become quite imbalanced and would want to roll and drift towards the remaning missile's side, which is right. Ideally, firing both missiles in one pass is the best, but it is possible to opt saving the other one for another pass or a different target, albeit with a very funky flying aircraft...
The problem with this guidance is, you will have to keep the aircraft going almost straight, right on to target, and in a slight dive. By the time missile(s) hit, you may be quite close to taret yourself! So it is dangerous to use against things that can fire back, at least the ones that fire missiles back.
With some practice, it is possible to fire both missiles in one pass, from maximum range, split by about 5 seconds, and hit two different targets / target groups by steering the aircraft towards second intented point of impact after first missile hits.
From long ranges and against vehicles, it is more practical to consider this an area target weapon than a point target one. Against light to mildly armored levels of protection, it can damage or even kill multiple targets with a close hit, even if you won't be pin point accurate from that distance.
You can only mount Kh-66 under inner hardpoints, since this is quite a heavy weapon.
Unlike what we may assume at first, this is not the weapon to pick off SAMs with. It requires us to guide it all the way through by flying towards target. If you stay fast while doing so, you'll be quite near the target at time of impact, and would be fired upon by the SAM. If you do it slow, you won't be able to respond to any other threats, or if indeed a longish range SAM fired back in response, you won't be able to escape with your low energy. Also the missile is fairly big and fat, and many SAM systems can detect and shoot the missile out of the sky, I've seen a Tunguska doing that to me, to be honest I've seen Tunguskas do that even to Mavericks, so don't push it too much unless becoming a smoldering hole in terra firma is ok with you ;). Against mobile SAMs, I've had more success with S-24, cluster bombs, and indeed even the gun :) since with those you can both attack and jink and remain fast at the same time.
UPK-23-250 gunpods : Comes with an overhead panel on cockpit to utilize, this is the same GSh-23 guns with same amount ammo as internal one each. We can't fire gunpods and internal gun at the same time, but once ammo in gunpods are depleted, firing will continue directly from internal cannon.
Bombing in general : There are general purpose, cluster, and finally (simulated) tactical nuclear bombs available for MiG-21Bis, in 100,250 or 500 kg versions.
Primary method for bombing in MiG-21Bis is CCIP dive bombing. ASP gunsight will provide a CCIP pipper to show where the bomb will fall but this requires very steep dives and you'll be fairly close to ground (and target) when you can see the pipper and drop the bomb. Though, if you adhere to a strict procedure, pipper is actually highly accurate, and you can land those bombs right on top of even point targets quite often. And for such a procedure, utilization of fixed net is at least as important as your CCIP pipper. You can find your own procedure, but I have found what works for me is : Climbing to at least 3000 meters, (4000-5000 is much better though!), lining myself up with target using fixed net, idling the engine (and if I am above 700 km/h and high, I may even employ airbrakes), diving steeply with an angle between 45-70 degrees (60 seems to be the best option), aligning bottom of fixed net on target, wait for pipper to appear and let pipper walk towards the target and release when it is over the target. If you have other ordnance loaded after dive bombing, you should be careful not to exceed 5g while pulling up, which, considering how close you should be to ground (possibly full of angry people shooting back at you), and how fast you are, how little your wings are etc, can get very adventurous indeed! On plus side though, this procedure can really get a good accuracy for bombing with dive/CCIP pipper, unlike in F-86 where I have a very low rate of success using CCIP pipper.
While the only automated bombing aid in MiG-21Bis is CCIP pipper, due to being very fast, MiG-21 has potential to be used in other bombing methods with tactical advantages for some situations. Make no mistake though, aircraft won't give you any automated hints as to how to achieve those, and lots of practicing will be needed to find a speed / bomb / altitude / release angle / range combination to get reliably accurate with those, often using only the fixed net as a guide. They are difficult, even finicky, but would be very rewarding to achieve (and those skills would be useful with any aircraft in DCS which is able to release bombs and is fast enough).
Outer hardpoints can load a sinlge 100 or 250 kg bomb, while inner hardpoints can load 100,250 or 500 kg bombs in single, as well as 100 kg ones in quadruple ejector racks.
I have found that, Combining 8 x FAB-100 and 2 x FAB-250 works good for toss bombing to long linear targets like convoys or airfield parking areas. FAB-250 s can travel somewhat further, but for most speeds and release angles difference isn't enormous. FAB-500 can be tossed really far, but aircraft can carry only two. High drag FAB-100 and FAB-250 can also be an option for releasing them over a convoy with a low alt / high speed level run. FAB-500 with it's low drag and large blast radius isn't recommended to be used that way. Cluster bombs are ideal for that low altitude (about 1000-1500 meters) and high speed level bombing attack, and frankly this is almost the only way to use them with a decent spread and some sort of accuracy, they will form a linear path of submunitions creeping over the ground. Toss bombing is another option for cluster bombs, which will land with a large and circular pattern of spread, but they can't be tossed nearly as far as general purpose bombs and it is difficult to have submunitions to land on a predicted area. I just really wish there would be a way in DCS to adjust burst time or altitude for cluster munitions before takeoff, they would be soo much better and more versatile with tossing or indeed with any kind of bombing this way.
General purpose bombs (FAB-100, FAB-250, FAB-500) : Iron bombs are normally carried one per hardpoint, and are always released in pairs. Though, you can carry 4 x FAB-100 under each inner hardpoints using a multiple ejector rack. 3 positions in bombs section of armament selector allow you to either release outer, inner or all hardpoints that carry bombs. In front panel, obscured by flight stick, is the tactical drop switch. For bombing this switch needs to be turned up, otherwise bombs will be dropped unarmed and won't do anything on targets. Aerodynamics and ballistic trajectories of various bombs are quite different, FAB-100 and FAB-250 seem to be of high drag versions, and due to both this and their lighter weight, they don't travel nearly as far as FAB-500 can. Infact, unless it is a steep dive release, FAB-500 and other types of bombs will land significantly far from each other in a simultaneous release, and with toss bombing, you'll be able to lob low drag and heavy weight FAB-500 quite further than other types of bombs.
FAB-500 can obviously break some stuff, well dropped pair of FAB-250 can do good damage too but near misses will only damage IFV class vehicles rather than destroying them outright. Their destruction require either a direct hit or a very near miss. Multitudes of FAB-100 can be dropped on a convoy to walk along it, but this can't be achieved with dive bombing and requires other techiques like tossing or level bombing from low altitude / high speed. As stated before, you won't have any pipper helping you with those, and they require a lot of practicing instead :).
Cluster Bombs (RBK-250, RBK-500, BL755) : When used in dive bombing the same way with general purpose bombs, cluster bombs unfortunately are fairly poor options. But I have found, level bombing can work great on convoys or concentration of targets, although it takes a lot of practice to get right and even then is difficult to be consistent with. These weapons are to be used only against area targets like concentrations or convoys of vehicles, infantry hidden in woods or cities, aircraft in parking area etc. Utilizing them same as a general purpose bomb in a dive will result in a very narrow spread of sub munitions, and damage of the ones that hit may or may not approach to what a blast / frag bomb could have achieved in such an attack, but area of effect won't be larger. To achieve a proper spread, you either need to release them at around 1000 meter altitude from a high speed level release (preferably all of them at once) which will create a linear pattern. Alternatively, you may toss / loft them, and that will create a circular pattern. Both methods are difficult to get accurate with but if you can master, can be used to take out many targets in one go, and toss bombing will even let you release the bombs from a standoff distance against AAA and MANPADS, around 4-4.5 kms from target area.
Among bombs themselves, Russian RBK bombs have a low drag config and ballistics of RBK-250 and 500 are more or less similar, although RBK-250 is able to go further thanks to cleaner aerodynamics. So with RBKs, you can release them all at the same time and get a nicely concentrated spread from all 4 bombs on an area, even if they are of mixed types of 250 and 500. British designed BL755 has lots of submunitions and I suspect those submunitions themselves are more potent against heavily armored targets, but it's ballistics is quite different and both container and submunitions will fall much shorter than RBK bombs, so it can't be used together with RBK-250 in a single pass to get a concentration of submunitions, instead, they will spread their submunitions literally hundreds of meters apart of each other. Also it doesn't seem to spread submunitions as long as RBK in low altitude and high speed level releases (which makes some sense since it will decelerate much faster and submunitions will be released with lower speed themselves). So while BL755 may have more destructive potential itself, I have found that I do much better with RBK bombs myself, but your milage may vary.
And last but not least, the tactical NUKES (RN-24 and RN-28) : Yup, nukes... stuff that go really, really boom, big time... In actual fact, these are simulating large area of blast effect from tactical nuclear weapons of low yield. DCS doesn't simulate all the effects associated with nuclear weapon blasts, either visually or physics wise, like mushroom cloud or EMP, radioactive fall, incendiary effects due to crazy heat etc. Anyway, they are still fun to practice with. They are loaded on centre hardpoint under fuselage, and main landing gear doors are removed when they are equipped. When either is equipped, an additional control panel over the windscreen will be added to cockpit, from which we can set up procedure to employ them. Although RN-24 is physically the bigger looking one, RN-28 seem to do much more damage to vehicle targets, RN-24 seem to hurt buildings. While they have the largest blast radius in DCS, being tactical nukes, they are not doomsday weapons either and still require some accuracy. Their effective radius is about the size of a small airfield. There are various ways to employ them, what worked for me is, a supersonic toss from a 30 degree climb from low altitude, from about 6-7 km distance to target.
So, we are through the sizable list of air to ground ordnance available to MiG-21Bis in DCS module by Leatherneck Simulations. Hope you have enjoyed the read and will have success employing them in DCS!
This is the first part of what I hope will be a series of many articles here on the MiG. I want to finish it by a big thanks and also congratulations on Leatherneck Simulations for this awesome module, easily my favorite currently, and I can see it stay there for a long while to come! Hoping to see many more great releases from them.
Best regards and happy flying people!
I will be writing a series of articles on awesome MiG-21Bis module by Leatherneck simulations, including an overall review like I did for F-86F. But I will wait for that particular one until I master more of MiG, it is a module that offer a lot to master! Here though, as the first part of weaponry, I will mainly be looking at various air to ground ordnance options the MiG has, and in later parts of weaponry series for MiG-21, will look at air to air options as well as misc equipment like pods and RATO.
While I intent to leave main review for later entries here, let me still provide an overall short description of aircraft, module, and my impressions. MiG-21 itself is one of the most iconic supersonic jetfighters ever, only Ak-47 says "Soviet!" better than this MiG (which is called Ak-47 of skies anyway). It is the most produced supersonic aircraft in history so far. Bis is the last and most upgraded of production versions. It is mainly an interceptor / fighter, but has a variety of options for ground attack as well.
MiG in all it's glory...And to touch shortly on module itself, it is nothing short of awesome in my opinion. While Leatherneck previously stated they will not a be doing a beta release and instead it will be a full release right on, MiG did turn out to be an open beta after all. That is ok though, software development being what it is, especially with complex stuff like flight simulation software. Having said that, it certainly is fairly safe to declare the MiG to be one of the most complete initial release in DCS so far. There are some frame rate issues with AMD graphics cards like mine, which are in process of being solved already. There are a few non game breaking bugs in systems and flight model too, but they are being cared of as well from what Cobra inform us on forums. With a manual, a campaign, full set of weaponry, comprehensive training missions, single missions and instant action missions, module is pretty full of content. Regarding authenticity of simulation, I believe it suffices to say that lead programmer Novak Djordjijevic (Dolphin887 in ED forums) is currently an active duty MiG-21Bis pilot, flying real MiGs for a living. MiG-21 is an aircraft I always liked and was interested in, and wanted to have a realistic one in a simulation for decades now. Leatherneck certainly have my thanks for making this a reality, and for making that in a great level quality. It is simple yet challenging, and while it is not a modern combat aircraft, and can't be expected to outperform such platforms, it still can be quite effective when utilized with skill. MiG is old alright, but it's no slouch :)
Having touched on aircraft and module itself shortly, I will leave rest of that to later articles, and get to main point of this one : Ordnance available to our MiG-21Bis :
Lets start with the basic, default, "always with you" armament :
GSh-23L auto cannon is a light and two barreled 23mm weapon with high rate of fire and moderately big shells. It has a fairly high rate of fire of about 3400-3600 rpm. MiG carries 250 rounds with it, which is neither anemic, nor plentiful, with a continous pull of trigger, it gives about 4 seconds of firing. 23mm rounds are fairly powerful against aircraft, their main target. Thanks to this, and it's high rate of fire & relatively low recoil, it can do really well if you are accurate to land a good burst on target, whether A-A or A-G. Against ground targets, it is again decently strong, and can do good work on targets up to and including IFVs. It can damage older tanks like M-60 and T-55 but will have a hard time doing much of an impression on them, and for heavier tanks, it just doesn't quite cut it.
Aside from strong points like caliber, rate of fire and low recoil on bright side, if we look at the darker side of medallion, GSh-23 doesn't have a really high muzzle velocity. This is part of the reason why it has a difficult time against heavy armor, but also makes the gun rather short ranged with considerably quick bullet drop. Coupled with fast and light nature of MiG, strafing runs are quite adventurous until you get used to them, and then, they are still somewhat adventurous once you are used to :). This also complicates air to air utilization since air to air gunnery pipper does not provide any automatic ranging like even F-86 could, and it is accurate only against targets maneuvring up to 3.5g. For anything better, you are ought to use the fixed net, or "8 mode" as most people knew it from LOMAC and FC3 aircraft :). In fact, fixed net really is useful in MiG for many things even when you have a perfectly adequate moving pipper on, and here you can adjust it's opacity / brightness to your liking so it won't look intrusive as it tends to be on FC3 aircraft. CCIP gun pipper for air to ground, on the other hand, is fairly accurate, especially in dive angles at least around 30 degrees, it can be slightly short sometimes, but is usually fairly darn accurate. In really shallow dives though, it calcualtes a point quite short of target. Since this is not a high velocity 30mm monster like those on A-10, Su-25, Su-27 or MiG-29, don't hold back, and fire a decently long burst, for either air to air or air to ground. This way, you'll make up for smaller caliber, and will make use of advantages like low recoil and decent rate of fire.
One quirk is, to fire the gun, you need to use a pyrotechnic charge which will load / unjam it. We have 3 of those on aircraft, assigned to 3 buttons under armament selection rotary switch. Why you may ask? For a first ever in DCS modules, gun on our MiG can jam at certain conditions like firing a long burst while pulling many Gs etc. Nice to see such detail, since even some fairly modern fighters like Gripen has restrictions on what parts of flight envelope can it's gun be used without jamming it.
Now we gave the gun it's run, let us look at Air to Ground ordnance, our focus for this article :
S-5M Rockets : This 57mm rocket is the ground attack weapon you can hit most targets with, since the MiG can carry up to 96 of them. Two types of pods are available : UB-16 and UB-32, which carry 16 or 32 rockets as per their names suggest. You can mount UB-16 on either hardpoint, but UB-32 can only be hung on inner hardpoints. With these loaded, you really should be careful not to exceed 4-5 g maximum, otherwise they are guaranteed to get pried off from your wings. There are 3 possible salvo settings to choose from : you can either fire 4, 8 or 16 rockets with one press of weapon release button. 57mm rocket is fairly weak though. You need a fairly close landing burst for most targets, and for tanks, you need many direct hits. 4 rocket per salvo option is only useful on really light skinned vehicles to be honest. CCIP pipper is like the gun, fairly accurate for most dives unless it is a very shallow dive. A dive of 25-30 degrees with moderate speed around 600-800 km/h IAS, from around 1.5km altitude is a good way to utilize rockets.
Good thing about S-5 is, you can take some other loadout for two outer hardpoint and still have 64 S-5, or intead load heavier stuff on inner hardpoints and still have 32 S-5 loaded. Though, if you intent to hurt serious stuff like T-80, T-90, M1 etc, or even T-72 actually, you are more likely to only tickle and annoy them with S-5. That is, unless you unload half of the pod on them and actually have most of those rockets score a direct hit.
Watch when pulling up from dive after expending some armament though... I've had more times where I pried my rocket pods off the wings than I like to admit :).
S-24A & B Rockets : Big boy we know from Su-25, this rockets are fairly big, and are carried a single one per hardpoint. Packed with 125 kg of explosive force, and are always fired two of them at one press of weapon release, they do some serious damage where they land, and are more than adequate to take out even the heaviest tanks. They also have fairly decent range and are quite accurate (though near misses are fine too due to size of warhead and the fact that you always fire both rockets at once). These are the main and most potent armament MiG has against hard ground targets like tanks, but will also take out many soft targets with one accurate hit. B subtype seem more powerful one in DCS. Same technique as S-5M more or less apply to S-24 use as well, with S-24 being a bit longer range and more accurate, and fired in a single pair instead of a salvo. Down side to this powerful and accurate weapon is that MiG-21 can carry only 4 of these, which translate to 2 firings. Currently, I consider S-24 as go to fire and forget point target weapon for MiG-21Bis, since even if it's not guided, it is easy to aim and use, fairly accurate, has decent range, and unlike Kh-66, you can fire and turn away.
Kh-66 Missile : Here we are with a guided, precision attack weapon! Well, almost :). An upsized RS-2US, this weapon is a beam riding, radar guided air to ground missile with a big 100 kg warhead. With that warhead, missile is strong enough to blow up even the thoughest tanks of DCS World. This missile is more or less the ancestor of Kh-25 missile series, and resemblance is clear from the looks already. Indeed, first upgraded version of Kh-66 was called Kh-23. To utilize it, you need to switch radar to locked beam mode. Although, you pretty much should use locked beam with any air to ground weapon for accurate rangefinding and a better pipper, this missile specifically needs it since it's the only way the guidence works. To fire them, you will need to turn weapon selector to S-24 1-2 position. Pipper will be fixed around the 3rd notch of fixed net, and this marks where your radar beam is looking. Once fired, missile will try to follow your radar beam with it's seeker on it's back. Which means, you'll use the aircraft as a pointer, keeping pipper on target for the duration of flight. Currently, there are two ways to do this, you can use target lock button and pipper will stabilize on that point, essentially radar antenna will be gyro stabilized on that point. The other is to just fire the missile and steer the aircraft to where you want the missile to impact. There is discussion on forums whether locking on a ground point is realistic or not. It may not be too hard actually, but I don't know whether real MiG really had the capability. But it doesn't really matter for me since I much prefer to utilize the Kh-66 without lock. Unlike laser guided Kh-25ML of Su-25, once locked, you can't move the pipper at all, if you wan to you'll need to unlock which will return the beam to boresight, and missile may have to do crazy stuff to get back there or lose the beam. For moving, or distant targets, I find using it without lock to be much better / reliable. Note that, due to guidance mechanism and old tech, missile isn't qite pinpoint accurate, especially at range, but is still pretty decently accurate, and with it's large warhead is adequate against most targets. It is mainly intented against large targets like building or ships, but I've found it works just fine on vehicles with some practice. Unlike every other heavy ordnance on MiG, this one is fired single and not in pairs, which create some complications. Asymmethrical load on MiG isn't allowed normally, and once first Kh-66 goes off the rail, aircraft become quite imbalanced and would want to roll and drift towards the remaning missile's side, which is right. Ideally, firing both missiles in one pass is the best, but it is possible to opt saving the other one for another pass or a different target, albeit with a very funky flying aircraft...
Kh-66 Grom away!!The problem with this guidance is, you will have to keep the aircraft going almost straight, right on to target, and in a slight dive. By the time missile(s) hit, you may be quite close to taret yourself! So it is dangerous to use against things that can fire back, at least the ones that fire missiles back.
With some practice, it is possible to fire both missiles in one pass, from maximum range, split by about 5 seconds, and hit two different targets / target groups by steering the aircraft towards second intented point of impact after first missile hits.
From long ranges and against vehicles, it is more practical to consider this an area target weapon than a point target one. Against light to mildly armored levels of protection, it can damage or even kill multiple targets with a close hit, even if you won't be pin point accurate from that distance.
You can only mount Kh-66 under inner hardpoints, since this is quite a heavy weapon.
Unlike what we may assume at first, this is not the weapon to pick off SAMs with. It requires us to guide it all the way through by flying towards target. If you stay fast while doing so, you'll be quite near the target at time of impact, and would be fired upon by the SAM. If you do it slow, you won't be able to respond to any other threats, or if indeed a longish range SAM fired back in response, you won't be able to escape with your low energy. Also the missile is fairly big and fat, and many SAM systems can detect and shoot the missile out of the sky, I've seen a Tunguska doing that to me, to be honest I've seen Tunguskas do that even to Mavericks, so don't push it too much unless becoming a smoldering hole in terra firma is ok with you ;). Against mobile SAMs, I've had more success with S-24, cluster bombs, and indeed even the gun :) since with those you can both attack and jink and remain fast at the same time.
UPK-23-250 gunpods : Comes with an overhead panel on cockpit to utilize, this is the same GSh-23 guns with same amount ammo as internal one each. We can't fire gunpods and internal gun at the same time, but once ammo in gunpods are depleted, firing will continue directly from internal cannon.
Bombing in general : There are general purpose, cluster, and finally (simulated) tactical nuclear bombs available for MiG-21Bis, in 100,250 or 500 kg versions.
Primary method for bombing in MiG-21Bis is CCIP dive bombing. ASP gunsight will provide a CCIP pipper to show where the bomb will fall but this requires very steep dives and you'll be fairly close to ground (and target) when you can see the pipper and drop the bomb. Though, if you adhere to a strict procedure, pipper is actually highly accurate, and you can land those bombs right on top of even point targets quite often. And for such a procedure, utilization of fixed net is at least as important as your CCIP pipper. You can find your own procedure, but I have found what works for me is : Climbing to at least 3000 meters, (4000-5000 is much better though!), lining myself up with target using fixed net, idling the engine (and if I am above 700 km/h and high, I may even employ airbrakes), diving steeply with an angle between 45-70 degrees (60 seems to be the best option), aligning bottom of fixed net on target, wait for pipper to appear and let pipper walk towards the target and release when it is over the target. If you have other ordnance loaded after dive bombing, you should be careful not to exceed 5g while pulling up, which, considering how close you should be to ground (possibly full of angry people shooting back at you), and how fast you are, how little your wings are etc, can get very adventurous indeed! On plus side though, this procedure can really get a good accuracy for bombing with dive/CCIP pipper, unlike in F-86 where I have a very low rate of success using CCIP pipper.
While the only automated bombing aid in MiG-21Bis is CCIP pipper, due to being very fast, MiG-21 has potential to be used in other bombing methods with tactical advantages for some situations. Make no mistake though, aircraft won't give you any automated hints as to how to achieve those, and lots of practicing will be needed to find a speed / bomb / altitude / release angle / range combination to get reliably accurate with those, often using only the fixed net as a guide. They are difficult, even finicky, but would be very rewarding to achieve (and those skills would be useful with any aircraft in DCS which is able to release bombs and is fast enough).
Outer hardpoints can load a sinlge 100 or 250 kg bomb, while inner hardpoints can load 100,250 or 500 kg bombs in single, as well as 100 kg ones in quadruple ejector racks.
I have found that, Combining 8 x FAB-100 and 2 x FAB-250 works good for toss bombing to long linear targets like convoys or airfield parking areas. FAB-250 s can travel somewhat further, but for most speeds and release angles difference isn't enormous. FAB-500 can be tossed really far, but aircraft can carry only two. High drag FAB-100 and FAB-250 can also be an option for releasing them over a convoy with a low alt / high speed level run. FAB-500 with it's low drag and large blast radius isn't recommended to be used that way. Cluster bombs are ideal for that low altitude (about 1000-1500 meters) and high speed level bombing attack, and frankly this is almost the only way to use them with a decent spread and some sort of accuracy, they will form a linear path of submunitions creeping over the ground. Toss bombing is another option for cluster bombs, which will land with a large and circular pattern of spread, but they can't be tossed nearly as far as general purpose bombs and it is difficult to have submunitions to land on a predicted area. I just really wish there would be a way in DCS to adjust burst time or altitude for cluster munitions before takeoff, they would be soo much better and more versatile with tossing or indeed with any kind of bombing this way.
General purpose bombs (FAB-100, FAB-250, FAB-500) : Iron bombs are normally carried one per hardpoint, and are always released in pairs. Though, you can carry 4 x FAB-100 under each inner hardpoints using a multiple ejector rack. 3 positions in bombs section of armament selector allow you to either release outer, inner or all hardpoints that carry bombs. In front panel, obscured by flight stick, is the tactical drop switch. For bombing this switch needs to be turned up, otherwise bombs will be dropped unarmed and won't do anything on targets. Aerodynamics and ballistic trajectories of various bombs are quite different, FAB-100 and FAB-250 seem to be of high drag versions, and due to both this and their lighter weight, they don't travel nearly as far as FAB-500 can. Infact, unless it is a steep dive release, FAB-500 and other types of bombs will land significantly far from each other in a simultaneous release, and with toss bombing, you'll be able to lob low drag and heavy weight FAB-500 quite further than other types of bombs.
FAB-500 can obviously break some stuff, well dropped pair of FAB-250 can do good damage too but near misses will only damage IFV class vehicles rather than destroying them outright. Their destruction require either a direct hit or a very near miss. Multitudes of FAB-100 can be dropped on a convoy to walk along it, but this can't be achieved with dive bombing and requires other techiques like tossing or level bombing from low altitude / high speed. As stated before, you won't have any pipper helping you with those, and they require a lot of practicing instead :).
Cluster Bombs (RBK-250, RBK-500, BL755) : When used in dive bombing the same way with general purpose bombs, cluster bombs unfortunately are fairly poor options. But I have found, level bombing can work great on convoys or concentration of targets, although it takes a lot of practice to get right and even then is difficult to be consistent with. These weapons are to be used only against area targets like concentrations or convoys of vehicles, infantry hidden in woods or cities, aircraft in parking area etc. Utilizing them same as a general purpose bomb in a dive will result in a very narrow spread of sub munitions, and damage of the ones that hit may or may not approach to what a blast / frag bomb could have achieved in such an attack, but area of effect won't be larger. To achieve a proper spread, you either need to release them at around 1000 meter altitude from a high speed level release (preferably all of them at once) which will create a linear pattern. Alternatively, you may toss / loft them, and that will create a circular pattern. Both methods are difficult to get accurate with but if you can master, can be used to take out many targets in one go, and toss bombing will even let you release the bombs from a standoff distance against AAA and MANPADS, around 4-4.5 kms from target area.
Clusters away!Among bombs themselves, Russian RBK bombs have a low drag config and ballistics of RBK-250 and 500 are more or less similar, although RBK-250 is able to go further thanks to cleaner aerodynamics. So with RBKs, you can release them all at the same time and get a nicely concentrated spread from all 4 bombs on an area, even if they are of mixed types of 250 and 500. British designed BL755 has lots of submunitions and I suspect those submunitions themselves are more potent against heavily armored targets, but it's ballistics is quite different and both container and submunitions will fall much shorter than RBK bombs, so it can't be used together with RBK-250 in a single pass to get a concentration of submunitions, instead, they will spread their submunitions literally hundreds of meters apart of each other. Also it doesn't seem to spread submunitions as long as RBK in low altitude and high speed level releases (which makes some sense since it will decelerate much faster and submunitions will be released with lower speed themselves). So while BL755 may have more destructive potential itself, I have found that I do much better with RBK bombs myself, but your milage may vary.
And last but not least, the tactical NUKES (RN-24 and RN-28) : Yup, nukes... stuff that go really, really boom, big time... In actual fact, these are simulating large area of blast effect from tactical nuclear weapons of low yield. DCS doesn't simulate all the effects associated with nuclear weapon blasts, either visually or physics wise, like mushroom cloud or EMP, radioactive fall, incendiary effects due to crazy heat etc. Anyway, they are still fun to practice with. They are loaded on centre hardpoint under fuselage, and main landing gear doors are removed when they are equipped. When either is equipped, an additional control panel over the windscreen will be added to cockpit, from which we can set up procedure to employ them. Although RN-24 is physically the bigger looking one, RN-28 seem to do much more damage to vehicle targets, RN-24 seem to hurt buildings. While they have the largest blast radius in DCS, being tactical nukes, they are not doomsday weapons either and still require some accuracy. Their effective radius is about the size of a small airfield. There are various ways to employ them, what worked for me is, a supersonic toss from a 30 degree climb from low altitude, from about 6-7 km distance to target.
Nuke away...
Two lines on small island were two convoys of mainly heavy IFV and a few tanks, bomb landed right inbetween them, out of 36 targets on island 28 were destroyed. Point of impact was about 6 km from point of releaseSo, we are through the sizable list of air to ground ordnance available to MiG-21Bis in DCS module by Leatherneck Simulations. Hope you have enjoyed the read and will have success employing them in DCS!
This is the first part of what I hope will be a series of many articles here on the MiG. I want to finish it by a big thanks and also congratulations on Leatherneck Simulations for this awesome module, easily my favorite currently, and I can see it stay there for a long while to come! Hoping to see many more great releases from them.
Best regards and happy flying people!
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