In standard Air RB there is very little reason to take bombs or rockets on fighters. Most notable in jets, but this is also prevalent in pretty much every BR, though I'm going to talk about jets since that's what I most frequently play.
In-game, fighters are mostly ran entirely clean, yet irl it was very rare to send anything but maybe an interceptor out clean. Perhaps you'd have a few fighters with ordnance and one/two escorts that would defend them, who would be sent out near-to-clean. Yet in Air RB, there is very little reason to, since you'll be super slow and get dived on by five enemies in the first three minutes. What incentive is there? I don't even think it's a solveable issue personally. In Operation, people prefer killing. They'll run their plane clean and scour the air for anything to fight and kill and will jump on anyone who has ordnance, especially stuff that can't be dumped and then let you zoom back to normal speeds, like rocket pods. This then makes others give up on carrying ordnance and do the same, leading to this fighter arena meta that's so boring and without purpose to me. I mean it's already a common sight to see Vautours, AD-4s, Canberra B.6s, Ar 234C-3s and previously R2Y2s dumping their ordnance upon spawning to go fight. I don't even think EC fixes this either, since there'd be people running around clean hunting anyone who dared to attack AI targets and thrash them in their superior plane. It happens in Sim EC and happens in heli EC. You don't go around pillbox hunting unless you're an attacker or a stock Mi-4AV. Honestly, ground doesn't fix it either. A lot of planes have paltry ordnance loads that make sense for taking out light fortifications but suck at anti tank, like 100lb/kg or 250lb/kg bombs, AP rockets or other random stuff. Try killing a T-64B or T-80U with the four 250lb bombs on a G.91R/3. These'd work in air at killing AAA or artillery or even light pillboxes, but not at killing tanks. Additionally, though standard air targets are rather paltry (pillboxes, AAA, Artillery, bases, the airfield, tank formations and maybe some ships, bridges or a train), it'd be fun to actually use the ordnance options given to us and snag points from bombing/rocketing them, yet it always seems pointless.
I want to use the G.91s with ordnance. I want to have an incentive to take bombs and Bullpups on a F-100D. I think it'd be fun to use S5Ms on the MiGs. Using ordnance on the Hunter F.6 would be interesting. These aircraft we
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> The U.S. dropped 2,756,941 tons of ordnance on 113,716 Laotian sites in 230,516 sorties between 1965 and 1973 alone. By September 1969, the Plain of Jars was largely deserted.
> U.S. aircraft dropped more ordnance on Laos than on all countries during World War II, leaving Laos with about 78 million pieces of unexploded ordnance (UXO) by the end of the war. Casualties continue to mount from UXO dropped by the U.S. and Laotian Air Forces from 1964 to 1973. It has been reported that, between 1964 and 1973, areas controlled by the invading communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao were hit by an average of one B‑52 bomb-load every eight minutes, 24 hours a day. Xiangkhouang Province was the most heavily bombed province. Thirty percent of bombs failed to explode immediately.
The citation for the 78 million is to this PDF: Khamvongsa, Channapha; Russell, Elaine (2009). "Legacies of War: Cluster Bombs in Laos"
This is jaw-dropping, and raises many questions.
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Was a 30% failure-to-explode rate considered normal? How did this rate compare to rates in previous decades (e.g., WW2) or later ones (e.g., Persian Gulf War)?
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Is the figure of 78 million unexploded bombs a widely accepted estimate?
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Given some calculation (see below), and assuming the numbers in the quoted passage are accurate, we can infer either (a) a low number of planes per mission along with a high number of bombs per plane (like 5 & 226), (b) a high number of planes per missions along with a low number of bombs per plane (like 200 & 6), or (c) somewhere between the two. Which is closest to the truth?
Calculations
To bastardize the Drake equation, to achieve u = 78 million unexploded bombs we can multiply together:
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Number of missions
m:230,516(over nine years this implies 70/day on average) -
Average number of planes per mission
p:? -
Average number of bombs per plane
b:? -
Probability that a bomb will fail to explode
f:30%
The two parameters to be estimated bear the relationship b = u/(m*p*f), or, equivalently, p = u/(m*b*f). Plugging in the known values of u, m, and f, we have:
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b = 78,000,000 / ( 230,516 * p * 30%) -
p = 78,000,000 / ( 230,516 * b * 30%)
In other words, allowable pairs
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So what do you guys think if I made a spreadsheet/document containing the most common aircraft ordnance from the most popular mods. I already have 3CB, RHS, Vanilla, ACE3, And CUP. Am I missing anything? I’m really want to know your feedback and anything would be helpful.
I understand taking bombs and / or rockets affect an airplane performance, but does it also affect it after dropping them?
How does it work in AB? You drop your bombs and you get improved performance until the bombs magically reappear under your wings?
How does it work in RB/SB? If you take bombs with you, but you start getting chased and drop the bombs to dogfight, do you get the same performance without bombs (discounting minimal aerodynamic drag from the bomb mounting points)?
Anyone knows of a link where some Excel warrior put all this info in place?
