near_blind

It should be able to do that.

Oi boy, It's sparrow time again As of testing a few minutes ago against a MiG-23 or a MiG-27 at co-alt, 27 thousand feet, 26 miles starting distance: AIM-7F - Will not guide on targets outside of 20 NM - Will not guide on targets with ECM (is defined as HOJ capable) AIM-7M - Does not respect ACM cover when deciding whether to loft - Will not guide on targets with ECM (is defined as HOJ capable) AIM-7MH - Does not respect ACM cover when deciding whether to loft - Will not guide on targets with ECM when ACM cover is raised. Also just so we know what to look for. Does synchronizing just mean that the Sparrow lua definitions were made to match? Is there confirmation the HB AIM-7s are also taking advantage of the behind the doors changes ED has been making to the guidance and sensor systems?

lol, no worries! We're all friends here.

Unless someone hooked us up with a working Sparrow II, you're going to be hard pressed to find a Sparrow that goes active.

I've got no idea how we got here in the F-16 forum, but here we go: there are actually two separate F-14Bs. It was clear pretty early that the TF-30 was not an ideal engine to power a fighter, and the Navy sought from the beginning to find a more powerful alternative to put into the F-14. To get aircraft airborne sooner rather than later, it was decided that the initial run of prototype and production F-14s (YF-14A and F-14A) would be powered by the PW TF-30-412 from the F-111B program while the replacement was developed. Once the replacement, the F401-PW-400 engine was available, production would switch to the F-14B, which would feature the same avionics as the A, but with these new engines. The F401 was a derivative of the Eagle's F100 engines, and a single prototype F-14B was built to test the engines. Issue is afterburning turbofans were tricky to get right in the 1970s and the Eagle also had significant teething issues with its engines. The same time the US defense budget was being reduced in the post Vietnam, gas crisis environment and things began to get tight all around. The Navy had to cut certain planned features for the F-14 to get it into production sooner rather than later, and as part of this abandoned the development of the F401. In the 1980s the Navy, still unhappy with the TF-30s, paid to put a pair of GE F101 derivatives developed for the F-16 into that original F-14B prototype. The results were promising enough that the follow on F110 was selected to power the then upcoming F-14D upgrade. The decision was also made to build a run of F-14As with these new engines as a temporary stopgap before the entire fleet was replaced with the comprehensive F-14D upgrade. The F-14As with the new engines were designated the F-14A+. In the early 90s the decision was made to redesignate the A+ fleet as Bs. This is the aircraft we have in DCS.

Yeah, there's not a whole lot to Sparrows compared to all the caveats of the AIM-54. In DCS, there is no difference in behavior between PD-STT and P-STT. The ACM cover doesn't drastically change missile behavior, it just reduces the LTE from 3s to 1s. The only real 'gotchas' are the F and the M shouldn't loft. The MH should automatically determine whether it lofts with the ACM cover down, and shouldn't loft with the ACM cover up. BRSIT manually engages FLOOD, but that should also kick on if a radar lock is lost anyhow.

The MH has also stopped guiding on ECM targets with the ACM cover up. Every patch, a new surprise

The PD functionality is modelled, the PSTT is functionality is not.

The DDD, like RWS, is going to show raw doppler rate returns: because it sees two velocities doesn't mean the two contacts are going to appear on the TID. However if you don't believe that there is additional processing going on as part of TWS, nothing I say is going to convince you this isn't intended behavior. If nothing else I'd submit a separate thread for those missiles not receiving their active signal in addition to this thread.

Heatblur N64 emulator... when?

From the Manual: In A/C Stab and ATTK modes, the TID isn't showing their actual velocity vector, but their heading and speed relative to you. As for why the velocity vector is going all crazy, it's because TWS is on the threshold of being able to pick out the individual contacts, but isn't quite there yet. It's trying to average out the velocity of the two flankers, and that's leading to some funky vectors. As for the missiles. Neither missile in the first track look like it received an active signal from the radar. There was discussion of an issue where extrapolated tracks that have wandered too far from the game object that they're meant to represent would never receive an active signal. There was supposed to be a fix for it in the last open beta, but I've seen more missiles fail to go active after the patch then before. I think this is a bug. Maybe @IronMike knows what that fix actually entailed. Your second track, it looks like the missile went active, but it bit off on chaff. The third track, it looks like the first missile never went active on the extrapolated track again. I have no explanation for why that second missile never received an active signal, that definitely looks like a bug. Third missile made stupid missile decisions and bled all its speed.

Watching the track, the starting range is in excess of what I would expect the DCS AWG-9 to be able to break out two contacts with 4000 feet of separation. As their range closes to you, their separation decreases and they maintain similar altitudes airspeed. This looks consistent with how HB seem to have modelled their radar, at least to me. I'm not arguing the track shedding behavior is correct. I'm not so sure, but I have nothing to prove or disprove one way or another.

In broad terms, the radar doesn't see four aircraft in a formation, it sees four blobs close together. How clear it can refine down those blobs, and how much it can break them out depends on a bunch of stuff including the beam width, and the ability of the radar to process the gains. The rudimentary computers driving the AWG-9 limit it in this respect, and it struggles to break things out at medium to long range. In RWS the radar is showing what are more or less raw radar returns. As it sweeps over our collection of blobs, it generates a hit on your TID and DDD every time it gets a return it thinks is valid. It doesn't really care about anything else. In TWS, the radar is doing a lot of processing, trying to take the collection of blobs and fit them into a coherent track object with a speed and a position so that it can find it again the next time it sweeps through that area. If it didn't, then the radar would constantly look like what you're describing in your first track, and you couldn't guide missiles. As part of the processing its trying to find the centroid of the radar contact, and as part of that, it needs to decide if that's really one big blob, or four small blobs. If it can't break them out well enough, it sees them as a single contact. There isn't a real pattern to the the radar breaking out targets other than the closer you get, the better the radar can break individual targets out of a formation.

The pilot could however shout at the RIO to deploy a specific countermeasure or program. I've lost track of the number of times Jester's assumption that any missile launched without an RWR indication is a heat seeking missile has contributed to the missions pre-mature ending. I'd love a request option for each of the CMD dispenser hat directions.

Iran absolutely had AIM-7s and AIM-9s. I believe the issue that pilot would be alluding to is that the AIM-7s and AIM-9s they had didn't necessarily work with the F-14. I've heard they eventually figured out a way to get the AIM-7s to talk to the AWG-9. I don't know how much trouble it would be to make the AIM-9s work, but I believe at that point Iran wasn't all that interested in losing their premier area air defense tool in dogfights.

Source? Best source I've found so far is Comrade Gordon who has the SM as a prototype in '05, entering initial squadron service in '08, and becoming widespread thereafter. The SM3 is post 2010. The point is that even if we take the '05 date, there are 10 Su-27SMs in service compared to 300 Su-27Ss. The -27S is far more representative of the RuAF at that time in the same way the F-16 and F/A-18 are for the US Air Force and Navy. There were F-22s around at that point then there were Su-27SMs. Hey, if you can get documents on the Export Gucci Flankers, all the power to you, I don't think those countries are going to share. With the exception of the Chinese, you're still going to be stuck to the weapons you have currently. Chinese Flankers would be awesome, I don't think you'll ever see them outside of AI units. Judging by the export and domestic, err... success, of the MiG-29M... get it if you can, I guess? The R-77-1 doesn't exist until 2014 at the earliest, by that point AIM-120D is well into US frontline service and the -120C-7 is something akin to old news, much less the C-5. tl;dr get Chinese or get tactical.

20NM is reasonable at medium altitude and transonic, it's where I usually take my first Sparrow shots. With a good crank, the missile will generally time out ~ 7NM from the target. You can get close to 30 miles out of it if you get supersonic and high, but past 25NM you start running into battery life issues. Below 20,000 ft try and hold shots a little closer.

Make sure this option in the Options -> Special -> F-14 is disabled. The idea is Jester is supposed to transition from PD to Pulse when you get close to 10NM. However Jester is coded such that if he tries to make that transition from while the target is below the nose, or off to one side, he will most likely fail. Jester does not know to take this into consideration when making that transition, so the lock is dropped. As for Sparrows outside 10 miles, they're a bit screwy right now. The MH is the most fine, it'll generally guide so long as it doesn't get chaffed. The M and F have an issue where they won't guide on a target with ECM, and seem to have issues on tracking targets outside 10 miles or with low closure. All of them, even if they do track, are prone to drift outside of fuzing distance when approaching the target for reasons that might be related to random aiming error ED introduced

@Quid, my comment wasn't meant to be a slight towards you and I apologize if it came off like that. I'm not against adding the performance increase with bleed air off (assuming it fries your electronics), I just think there are higher priorities when it comes to the FM and engines. Furthermore the whole drama over landing flaps and their damage model has left me rather jaded when it comes to the memetic Tomcat Tactics. After a while, watching people insist that extraordinary gambits were mundane tactics in the face of developers and SMEs explaining to the contrary gets frustrating.

I'll toss one in as well. On a 68 mile shot, the Amos reached Mach 5, never exceeded 45,000 feet, and maintained speed such that it was at Mach 2.2 when it passed me at 40 miles. I'm no expert on the AA-9, but it maintaining such a speed with such a shallow loft and at relatively low altitude seems suspect. Tacview-20210730-020424-DCS.zip.acmi AMOS.trk

As long as you keep the held track in front of you, yes, it the missile should receive a active signal at time out. Whether or not the missile will be able to see the target by this time is up to a number of factors, and is not guaranteed.

Not a new quote, and not the first time it's been brought up. I'm still going to trust Victory over stories of Hoser trying to flex on the Air Force during the largest peace time inter service dick waving contest of the 1970s.

Just out of curiosity, what are you expecting? Assuming 'balance', the Russian aircraft that would be in service against a 2005 Hornet and a 2007 F-16 would be a Su-27S. In fact it would be the same Su-27S we have in FC3. The upgraded Su-27SMs didn't exist in anything other than one or two off prototypes until 2010, and even then they were just entering squadron service in limited numbers. The Su-35S wouldn't be a deployable thing until around the Russian intervention in Syria around 2015. A handful of Su-30s existed in the 90s, but they were closer to a two seater Su-27S than the Indian and Chinese commercial variants and their derivatives. Russia itself wouldn't actually domestically acquire the fancy version until the 2010s. MiG-29 development also kind of cratered: the MiG-29M technically exists in 2005, but no one seems to want it, so do with that what you will. So if you want a contemporary fighter to the current western options, you can choose between: The Su-27 we have, the Su-33 we have, the MiG-29 we have, an export Su-30 (good luck getting the technical details), or an upgraded MiG-29. All of these except the export Su-30 will also be shooting Alamos, because Russia didn't think the R-77 was worth spending extra money on. If I were you, I'd go ask China to bestow the blessings of J-10s and J-8IIs upon us.

@Hawkeye60, Shot in the dark. As a way to learn DCS weapons configuration, I went through the WWII version of the BBs and added actual 16'' ammunition and guns, and replaced all the other weapons (5'', 40mm, 20mm) with the existing DCS definitions rather than the Italian BB values. I'm more than happy to share the work I did if you want it.

I would argue the potential issue is we're in a fighter, our job is to kill things, and we just disabled 3/4s of our weaponry for a marginal increase in engine performance. That might have happened in training where pipper on counts as a kill and you can just cage the gunsight at 53 mils. In a sim where stuff is actually shooting back... it seems a bit silly.