INFORMATION MIKE: Combat

There's a new Super Hornet in town...

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:32:07 GMT

Staying true to the theme of my last few posts, I thought I'd bring it back to Flight Sim and share something I came across yesterday: a new F/A-18E Super Hornet add-on for Flight Simulator 2004 and X by Vertical Reality Simulations.

If this is as good as it promises to be, it’s gonna be a first: a truly hardcore simulation of a modern fighter for FS. My favorite part of their site is the "Read more" section, in which (among other things) they provide details about the sensor and targeting simulation (bolding by me):

"Short of actually shooting down AI aircraft, sensor and targeting systems are simulated just as their real-world counterparts. You can lock up AI aircraft and receive feedback to the HUD, radar and early warning systems, just as if you were in an electronic military exercise -- the only thing missing is the lethality. The radar simulation takes a number of factors into consideration, including signal strength (range), aspect angle, closing velocity (Doppler shift), and more. A total of 8 radar modes (4 primary and 4 ACM sub-modes) are simulated."

This will obviously appeal to true study sim geeks like me, though I suspect most people will be annoyed that they can’t actually blow stuff up. But really, who needs explosions when you have loadable, slewable AGM-65Es and Fs that will maintain a gimbal on any designated point on the ground? (Just kidding. Sorta.)

As they explain in a post on their forum:

"Keep in mind here that there's a pretty broad difference between MSFS and a combat sim, and no amount of ingenuity can cross that. You can't kill things, and the underlying database isn't designed for things like providing IR values. We can only go so far, but I think you'll be amazed at what we've been able to accomplish.
"The bottom line is we're simulating the aircraft and its systems to the best of our ability within the confines of FS; Anything beyond that is gravy and subject to the limitations of the sim, or at least our ability to get creative with them."

Yeah, Flight Simulator has limitations (the lack of projectiles foremost amongst them). The community has always pushed the boundaries of what's possible within those limitations though, and these guys are certainly promising a lot. Can't wait to see it.

T-38 Ride Report

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:56:03 GMT

(No, not my ride report, unfortunately....)

In my last post I mentioned that:

"I find myself impressed with the folks who fly fighters for a living. Not just for their ability to multi-task to the edge of task saturation in one of the most stressful environments I can imagine, but also for their ability to withstand the sheer brutality of the physiological stress they subject their bodies to."

Well, I came across something today that you might find interesting if you've ever wondered what it's really like to fly in a fighter plane. It's a series of forum posts about two T-38 rides that do a great job of explaining what it's like.

Last July some guys from the team developing the forthcoming sim Fighter Ops spent three days at Laughlin Air Force Base doing research. Two of them managed to get rides in a T-38C. If you're a cocky hot shot PC-based fighter jock like I'm rapidly becoming, I highly encourage you to read their lengthy testimonies of what quickly became a humbling experience. Some hilarious writing, and full of good information if you're intrigued by this stuff.

In amongst the numerous posts, I found what at first appeared to be good news. Apparently, physcial conditioning can increase G tolerance. According to a page on E-Aerospacemed.com, increasing your anaerobic capacity and and muscular strength can improve your ability to effectively perform the Anti-G Straining Maneuver.

"Research has shown 10-12-wk weight lifting program can increase G-duration tolerance ~50% compared w/ non-exercise control group w/ direct individual correlation b/w muscle strength and G-duration tolerance."

That's the good news. The bad news is that "Aerobic conditioning has no effect on G tolerance," and that "Excessive aerobic conditioning can cause cardiac dysrhythmias a/w reduced G tolerance, increased susceptibility to motion sickness on centrifuge, and increased length of time of incapacitation w/ G-LOC."

Damn. So much for my wholistic approach to fitness. To blackout or not blackout: that remains the question. (And there's a great article about just this on SimHQ.com.)

Well, I guess it's back to Falcon: Allied Force and the FSD T-38 for me. At least until Fighter Ops comes out, or until someone offers me a ride in the real thing. My sick sacks are packed.

Of Tomcats, Hornets, Vipers, and Cubs

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:27:13 GMT

A few nights ago I watched the new documentary "Speed & Angels," about Jay and Meagan, two young Navy pilots chasing their childhood dreams of flying the F-14 Tomcat. The film is a combination of exhilarating aerial action, intense in-cockpit footage, and a thought-provoking human interest story about why people choose to become fighter pilots, what it's like, and what effect the lifestyle (and going to war) has on them and their families.

I thought the film was well done, a nice balance between high-stress adrenaline thrills in the air and more thoughtful reflection on the ground. The emotions I experienced while watching it were mixed. On the one hand, it fueled my "Top Gun"-inspired childhood fantasies and made me want to be a fighter pilot (well, to have been a fighter pilot...). On the other hand it made me realize that while the experience of flying a Navy jet is cool like few other things, the experience of life aboard an aircraft carrier during wartime is hardly something to fantasize about. Not to mention that combat flying itself is no arcade game. As pilots in the film mentioned more than once, there are few pilots who can carry out a combat mission without it profoundly changing them, and there is nothing fun about landing a jet on the swaying deck of a moving aircraft carrier in the middle of the night hundreds of miles from land...and thousands of miles from home.

In the end though, my love/hate relationship to the very idea of my having become a fighter pilot in an alternate life is rather moot. As a retired F-14 pilot recently told me (and the film confirmed yet again), those of us with lanky marathon runner bodies with great arteries typically have awful G tolerance. I suspect I'd have passed out during centrifuge training, only mere moments after the evil thing had started its spin cycle.

So yeah, I find myself impressed with the folks who fly fighters for a living. Not just for their ability to multi-task to the edge of task saturation in one of the most stressful environments I can imagine, but also for their ability to withstand the sheer brutality of the physiological stress they subject their bodies to. Truth be told though, the folks in the film who impressed me the most were the Radar Intercept Officers (RIOs) in the back seats: they just sit there and never puke. How, is a mystery to me.

"Speed & Angels" is a beautiful, thought-provoking film about following your dreams, and I highly recommend it, whether you fantasize about being a fighter pilot--or helping to make a world in which fighter pilots are superfluous.

Trying to fall asleep after watching the film, unable to shake visions of gusty night traps from my mind, I started thinking about the F-14 Tomcat, about its more modern replacement the F/A-18 Hornet, and about the fighter jet I know the most about, the Air Force's F-16 Falcon. I woke up six hours later with a bad case of the fighter bug. Boys will be boys, apparently.

So, last night after work I fired up Falcon: Allied Force and took an F-16 up for a virtual workout. It was getting late, but after parking the jet I opened my closet and took a good long look at the Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS joystick that I bought on a whim a year ago and have barely used. Then I grabbed my binder full of F-16 documentation and headed to bed. Bad idea.

Today, I found myself poking around the Web at lunch seeing what's out there for F/A-18 simulations. For Flight Simulator X, there's Flight Deck 4 from Abacus, and the Aerial Foundry Hornets look promising. I also came across some great freeware planes and carriers. Ever the realist though, it seems like Jane's F/A-18 is still arguably the king, and probably the only Hornet sim that goes deep enough into systems and avionics for my admittedly eccentric "edutainment" tastes.

I'm in a bit of a quandary though. There's just something about the Falcon that's calling to me (especially when you refer to it like pilots do and call it a "Viper"). The Freebirds Virtual Fighter Wing has SO much interesting F-16 training material on their site, yet diving into yet another study sim right now is not something I have time to do at all, let alone two of them. But, the F/A-18 can land on aircraft carriers, and I've always wanted to learn how to do that....

As Navy Test Pilot John "Toonces" Tougas put it in a great article from Flight Journal that I just came across comparing the F/A-18 and the F-16:

"The F-16 Viper is like the Dodge Viper, and the F/A-18 Hornet is like a Lexus. If I want to cruise around town and experience pure acceleration performance, I would drive the Viper. If I want to cruise in total luxury on a long road trip with all the amenities and Gucci displays, I would drive a Lexus....The real bottom line is this: if I were a bad guy, I would hate to go up against either one."

A few days after watching "Speed & Angels," I'm obsessed as ever with this stuff. Yet truth be told, I'm not so sure I'd really want to go up against any bad guys at all. Fighter jet technology is unquestionably an amazing testament to what human beings can do when we put our minds to it. I can't help wondering though what we could accomplish if we didn't have to spend our efforts developing technology like this.

Tonight, I may just boot up FSX, hop into my virtual Piper Cub, and celebrate life...exploring this amazing planet that we live on at considerably slower speeds. But damn, I love learning complex things. I could have been a fighter pilot....