So, I was mucking about a bit with some quite frankly excessive air power (and if one friend will keep cracking jokes about 500kg bombs then I'll show them the sort of munitions that can be thrown around!) and I noticed something. First go-around my air controller (British, calling in a GR4 with an 894kg bomb) was targeting a building with a couple of tanks next to it. Not only did they miss the building, they missed it by so much the bomb was ineffective (small consolation to the Syrian BRDM it landed near!) It was a point target, so they were definitely going for the building in question. On the second go-around they called the strike in on the tank, and lo and behold if they didn't smash the bomb right through the engine deck. As the air controller had a laser designator, I wondered if they'd just not used it on the building. A test was in order.
If I were doing this properly I'd set up a map with buildings and targets to bomb, and in substantial numbers, but this was far more on a whim and so it's nowhere near as rigorous. My hope was that the results would be evident from having eight air controllers bomb buildings of roughly the same size (give or take) while eight others bombed trucks in the open. This ultimately proved quite messy - I believe each aircraft dropped one bomb, but they could have dropped two, I think (each GR4 carried four bombs) and as mentioned this was a comparatively low-effort test so I wasn't going to track each plane and its bombs. Not this time, anyway. I ended up just counting the hits after the first pass of the aircraft, and then again after the second.
Results - buildings
First pass - four buildings had a direct hit and destroyed, with one near-miss that failed to destroy the building and one very wide of... wherever it was aimed at.
This was a hit:
While this was most certainly not! I had thought they were aiming for the grey building at the top there, but it was hit moments later - that could have been two bombs from the same plane, but it seems more likely it was at a building not hit in the first pass which was ~130m away.
On the second pass, the remaining four buildings had direct hits that destroyed them. Overall twelve bombs were dropped, though I only accounted for two of the misses. While some of the buildings were near the edge of the map, and so could have had impacts off-map, all of those were hit on the first pass, meaning that two bombs dropped somewhere I didn't spot them (i.e. off-map, unless there's some failure rate that counts them as expended?) - at a distance of at least 200m. I felt this was a surprisingly bad performance - all the aircraft and air controllers were Regular, +0 leadership, but I had assumed the fancy kit meant it would be perhaps one bomb that goes astray, not four!
Results - vehicles
I set up eight trucks roughly far enough apart that they wouldn't be affected by the bombs, though really what I'm looking for is matching the crater to the hull, regardless of whether it's actually destroyed. Then things got messy, as they started driving around in response to the explosions nearby, I realised I'd put them in a depression and couldn't be seen, the smoke kicked up by the first few bombs would probably affect the laser designator, and my computer decided to crash (which it does with the CM games, on occasion. I think my graphics card really dislikes it.) Before the whole test self-combusted I did track five bombs called in on the vehicles, and all five were close enough that the vehicle was actually in the crater (and, needless to say, destroyed). Though the remaining one that had been called in could have missed off-map.
Eight buildings and five vehicles are far from sufficient for a proper statistical test, but it does make me think that there's something in this. My initial assumption that it's about using the laser designator is mostly based on the idea that it's only fired at 'enemies' - that could be tested by using non-laser-equipped troops to call in the bombs and see how they do, though I don't know if there are any Air Controllers who don't have lasers but would still be equivalent to those that do (I'm assuming that asking a platoon commander, even one of the same experience, gives a substandard quality).
I hope this is of some interest, and if nothing else it's a cautionary tale about how likely aircraft are to hit a building, even in the modern titles.
If I were doing this properly I'd set up a map with buildings and targets to bomb, and in substantial numbers, but this was far more on a whim and so it's nowhere near as rigorous. My hope was that the results would be evident from having eight air controllers bomb buildings of roughly the same size (give or take) while eight others bombed trucks in the open. This ultimately proved quite messy - I believe each aircraft dropped one bomb, but they could have dropped two, I think (each GR4 carried four bombs) and as mentioned this was a comparatively low-effort test so I wasn't going to track each plane and its bombs. Not this time, anyway. I ended up just counting the hits after the first pass of the aircraft, and then again after the second.
Results - buildings
First pass - four buildings had a direct hit and destroyed, with one near-miss that failed to destroy the building and one very wide of... wherever it was aimed at.
This was a hit:
While this was most certainly not! I had thought they were aiming for the grey building at the top there, but it was hit moments later - that could have been two bombs from the same plane, but it seems more likely it was at a building not hit in the first pass which was ~130m away.
On the second pass, the remaining four buildings had direct hits that destroyed them. Overall twelve bombs were dropped, though I only accounted for two of the misses. While some of the buildings were near the edge of the map, and so could have had impacts off-map, all of those were hit on the first pass, meaning that two bombs dropped somewhere I didn't spot them (i.e. off-map, unless there's some failure rate that counts them as expended?) - at a distance of at least 200m. I felt this was a surprisingly bad performance - all the aircraft and air controllers were Regular, +0 leadership, but I had assumed the fancy kit meant it would be perhaps one bomb that goes astray, not four!
Results - vehicles
I set up eight trucks roughly far enough apart that they wouldn't be affected by the bombs, though really what I'm looking for is matching the crater to the hull, regardless of whether it's actually destroyed. Then things got messy, as they started driving around in response to the explosions nearby, I realised I'd put them in a depression and couldn't be seen, the smoke kicked up by the first few bombs would probably affect the laser designator, and my computer decided to crash (which it does with the CM games, on occasion. I think my graphics card really dislikes it.) Before the whole test self-combusted I did track five bombs called in on the vehicles, and all five were close enough that the vehicle was actually in the crater (and, needless to say, destroyed). Though the remaining one that had been called in could have missed off-map.
Eight buildings and five vehicles are far from sufficient for a proper statistical test, but it does make me think that there's something in this. My initial assumption that it's about using the laser designator is mostly based on the idea that it's only fired at 'enemies' - that could be tested by using non-laser-equipped troops to call in the bombs and see how they do, though I don't know if there are any Air Controllers who don't have lasers but would still be equivalent to those that do (I'm assuming that asking a platoon commander, even one of the same experience, gives a substandard quality).
I hope this is of some interest, and if nothing else it's a cautionary tale about how likely aircraft are to hit a building, even in the modern titles.