DCS Ka-50 Black Shark – Helmet Slew-Locking, Scoping and Sniping ‘n Bendin’ Bullets

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00:00 Intro
02:29 Recon by Looking
05:25 Lock, Slew-Locking & Tracking Gates
08:49 Laser Ranging, Inertial Tracking & Re-Locking
13:01 Vikhr Missiles
15:23 Kh-25 Missile. Singular.
15:43 The Sniper Cannon
17:41 Basic Tips
19:09 Escaping Incoming Fire
19:51 Bendin' Bullets, Trick Shots & Volleys
21:27 Summary

The Helmet Mounted Sight is great for improving your situational awareness & locking stuff FORWARDS. You’ve still got little awareness to your left and right, so shouldn’t be doing AC-130 orbits. To scout out an area, scope out the area by pointing your Shkval at it. Having a Werewolf Pack helps speed this up rather than having you relocate as much.

Coincidentally the A-10c HMCS has just come out, which is awesome in different ways – you can mark points of interest rapidly, see them on your sides and share them well. The Shark’s lower tech HMS can’t help you see stuff that’s off your nose, lacks FLIR and while you can datalinks targets or nav points it’s not as easy or obvious. The Shkval however, does automatically snap-lock targets if you do it right, allowing you to fire almost immediately if you’re in range since you’re already pointed forwards and you’ve just identified it visually as friend/foe. While you can’t see through obstacles, if your tracking gate is the right size and you move the sight slowly enough across a treeline, it can pick up a vehicle your eyes might have missed with Slew-Locking.
Most of these tips are assuming your mission profile is sniping armour or air defence which is equally capable of taking you out as you are them in the right circumstance. If your mission needs something else to be done, with a time limit or lesser threat, adapt as necessary.

The Nevada intro has almost every air defence unit (including WWII assets), plus a decent component of the Armor section (tanks, BMPs, etc.). By accident I left out a few Sa-10 and Sa-3 components. Testing it afterwards with those units the same tactic applied – there would have just been more ‘undefended’ things to put single shells in in the mopup at the end. But yes, you can clear the whole map of 60 units with one payload of 40 S-8KOM + 12 Vikhrs, Full fuel and guns. It’s not masterly skill, it’s just patience and knowing what to take out at range with what. Of course that was everything out in the open – you might be more sneaky and put short range defences around gulleys and such to begin with. Either way I can’t think of another aircraft in DCS that can do this in the same payload – the SA-15s will shoot down many incoming HARMs (unsure if glide bombs are targeted at the moment in DCS), most aircraft can’t go beneath the ceiling of Rapiers and the other helos will be melted by the TOW missiles.

As for the fun in cruise missiles, yes, I’m sure you can make a scenario where launching a cruise missile requires inputting last minute coordinates over radio static while dodging flak in the middle of SAM alley through mountain corridors…..buuuut you could have same scenario with a Black Shark where you’re also required to actually visually acquire & lock the target.
Fun Fact: the Ka-50 was originally called the Werewolf, until the “Black Shark” movie made it famous under that name. “Werewolf Pack” sounds cooler than a “Shiver of Sharks”.
Fun Fact #2: Elite Russian pilots are called “Sniper Pilots”. Somewhat coincidence, but fits with the topic of this vid.

One way to practice the HMS on civilians… cough… trailing a civilian car in a town, trying to keep it locked up in the HMS with weapons angled to take the shot while staying close and low. This forces intuitive control of your speed, slip and hover along with the head tracking to make the HMS sing.
Too close or too far and your HMS movements overshoot uncomfortably. Learn to let go of Uncage Shkval at the right moment before a radical maneuver, so your reticule is close to the target that you can align your HMS to the circle again soon and resume HMS tracking. Part of the mastery isn’t just the piloting to have a stable platform you’re not worried about crashing and a natural HMS movement that can lock targets, but also knowing when the HMS isn’t going to easily lock a target at that range/zoom and instead let go for manual hat slewing.

Supposedly the Ka-52 cost $16 million in May 2011, while the Apache D (much larger economies of scale in it’s production) was $33 in 2010. Both have radar, FLIR and other expensive bits the Ka-50 didn’t. Scant info I’ve found suggests the Vikhr costs a fraction of the intelligent Hellfire.

I've tested everything in DCS Openbeta versions of Sep-Oct 2020. Some of the vid was done with an OpenBeta bug making the Vikhr reticule not drop down to the target and the launchers appear to point down from external view, but I don’t believe it affected the results or tactics.

Any significant errors/changes from patches, time willing, I'll pin a comment.