SgtPappy

I was under the impression that it was still possible but it needed a work around. I am curious about this as well.

I have become quite interested in understanding missile-defeating tactics but I realized that AI missiles are far more easily fooled by countermeasures than player-launched weapons. Since the last few DCS updates, I know that it's currently more difficult to mod the missiles. Does anyone know an up to date resource where I can learn to modify AI missile countermeasure rejection probabilities so I can simply hop on DCS any time and practice defeating them as if they were player missiles? Thanks!

Thought I was the only one currently having the same issue.

I hope Heatblur will introduce the AIM-9J with their Iranian F-14A and maybe that will be even worse than the AIM-9P. I think the F-8 will have the AIM-9G/H as well. Things are looking up for this era of combat.

I would think that the velocity search was an older school tool that predated the 80s TWS right? I don't see myself using it today if we had it over TWS which I'm guessing is only an approximation to what an actual F-15 of the time could do. The TWS in the F-14 is much more limited (and a fun experience in and of itself) so I will often use velocity search there just to build a picture but I dont think you'd need to in the F-15. I'd really like supersearch, sniff (maybe if it could be used like a sneaky way of finding targets) on top of the proper detection range increase. Some have mentioned the "notchability" of the radar being too easy but that I feel is too hard to verify.

Would be fun to change it back then

+1 If possible it would be nice for all the old missiles to be added to any plane that carried them for some fun old school scenarios!

I think there's a bit of miscommunication/misunderstanding here. the damage model and flight model are separate things. And I can appreciate the idea of a plane being "gamey" if it doesn't break as it should or if the stores drag isn't modeled right. Trust me, I wish I could over stress the thing too because I don't like pulling 13 G and then facing Eagle flyers who choose to do so (it's all fair but I'm not a fan of doing it myself). When the -1/NASA data is being referenced, we're talking about the FM of the jet - what G's it sustains, what AoA it can pull, what its TFSA is like, acceleration and climb rates, etc. and these match closely to the manuals. Are there disparities? Yes, but I don't believe they're any more off than any other plane and I dare anyone to find a plane that perfectly matches every part of the flight envelope. Back to the radar, it's great that it's being investigated/reported! If the MiG-29 can get some love, I hope the F-15 will soon too

Thanks BIGNEWY! I noticed this bug as well when my friend tested the Mk 20s the other night in the Harrier on a bunch of infantry and none of them died even though they were completely enveloped by the explosions at each attempt. The APCs were also barely damaged though they used to explode every time a few patches ago. I'll see if I can get a track with this happening.

Same issue here. Second time the F-14 loads in, I freeze almost every time at least on MP servers (including my own). Thanks for looking into it, Cobra.

Yeah I'm basically only thinking about beaming while chaff as usual in these kinds of discussions. There are too many ways to break a target out if it has radial velocity relative to the targeting radar even before PD... crazy creative solutions even in Vietnam. Other than that one video where the RAAF Hornets are dogfighting and their HUDs are going crazy plus some info I got from retired fighter pilots, I still believe it should do something more but my suspicions more revolve around the S530 which is an 80s missile that seems super resistance to being trashed. Which Max1mus talked about below. This is very interesting and unexpected! I wonder if it should be so capable. Hard to say.

I noticed a few things here and would like your opinions/corrections/clarifications to the following: From what I understand so far, if your aircraft is in a resolution cell large enough, has a very small radial velocity relative to the targeting radar and is dropping chaff while maneuvering, there should be generally a great chance of break lock. This would usually happen further out where the res cell is larger. Ground clutter doesn't come into the requirement for break lock here. Pilot's I've talked to have mentioned chaff in the beam will have an effect in the typical ranges you'd expect to either merge or run even at high altitudes - no look down required. Testing in MP with others, it appears some radar and missiles have more of a problem with look-up, beaming chaff-popping targets than others. The M2k for example with the S530 seemed impossible to spoof in look-up 12 nm or less. We did not test beyond that range. Is notching and chaff up high a little nerfed in its effect in DCS in this specific scenario? Not sure, but I didn't expect not to be able to break lock at all. Any FC3 aircraft, and sometimes the Hornet and Tomcat will have their locks broken in the same situation. If you are close to the ground, then the ground clutter plays multiple roles. For one, it might be in the res cell while the target aircraft is beaming with very little radial velocity (you'd have to be but a few meters from ground clutter for the typical res cell's range size). Another factor of lookdown is all the sidelobe clutter return the targeting radar could get if it's flying close to the ground as well. Right now as GG mentioned earlier, either the attack radar or the missile itself in DCS has to look down for the break-lock/notch logic to function (can't remember which one or is it both?). This behaviour isn't correct because it's basically ignoring the range gating which all radars have nowadays to ignore the ground beyond the target aircraft. So here, the notching meta is overpowered in its effect. In the case of the AIM-120 (which might even use Ku band for targeting, FFTs, rejection of high-scintillation RCS returns, MPRF processing etc.) I can see that chaff and beaming would have a very tiny if not negligible effect but I'm not so sure for the older radar types. One thing is for sure is that the logic for look-down creating high chance of spoofing a missile is a bit inaccurate today. Thoughts?

I confirm also had this problem with my RX580 but I have not seen them since upgrading to a 1070.

I read about the low altitude error being introduced into the AIM-7 and AIM-120 logic. I was very pleased to read that! It seems very interesting but I do not exactly know what it does. Is it supposed to simulate the sidelobe clutter interference at low altitude from the illuminating radar? It appears that ED's efforts at improvement since there is now a distinction with low altitude missile guidance vs. older missile logic which seemed to just go for chaff when looking down in situations that range-gating should solve. This is a positive step in the direction toward realism. While your points are valid, I can't shake the feeling that you may have missed the point or did not read through the whole thread and are dismissing the posts based on the conclusion that the posters don't know what they're talking about (it's a lot of pages to get through, understandably). The issue which has been posted in the many tracks and videos here, it is undeniable that there is something wrong with blinking ECM + chaff when it comes to missile guidance. I fly almost exclusively air to air in the 80s servers and have witnessed many AIM-7's simply miss a hot aspect F-14 that's just popping chaff and banking/turning a bit from side to side from 3 nm away, hot, looking up. This is consistent, reproduceable and the same exact thing happens for the AIM-120's, SD-10s, etc. But maybe that's not exactly what you're arguing against. If so, I apologize but would like some clarification.

Absolutely stunning... there's so much new content to discover, both in ME and visually. ED did a great job! Can't wait to make new missions with all our new options

I just checked, it seems I still cannot detect a MiG-29A at anything less than ~70 nm out, hot, look up. Very quick and dirty so let's see what others have experienced.

No, just MiG-29 changes (unrelated to radar). Yet I still have hope because now they are fixing the R-27R and ER per the change log. So maybe one day, radar ranges will get a revamp too? It's a bit more of a problem now that the higher fidelity aircraft completely out perform the FC3 planes in detection range.

Can anyone confirm that these RCS figures are taken into account for FC3 aircraft? I have been told that fighters/helos are basically all the same to the FC3 radars and large aircraft are another - i.e. it's binary. But that's only a rumour I heard so I don't know for sure.

I'm naive but I still have hope... the thread says it's being investigated after all! Fingers are crossed that this gets addressed!

I'm talking specifically about missiles pulling G's toward chaff far away from the res cell while the target is correctly beaming/notching. I'm fairly sure I've read multiple threads of this but maybe my memory is fuzzy in terms of when. As for the issue of this thread itself (missiles spoofed by close range hot or cold target with blinking jammer + chaff), that is certainly new.

Yea, the AI has special a capability to spoof missiles far more easily, I guess since they are AI and can't fight like we do. But yes, missiles being affected by chaff far outside the resolution cell and also pulling crazy G's toward said chaff have always been a thing in DCS. Also, I could have sworn the AIM-120 used to pick targets up again if they immediately recommitted but I can't be sure since I'm usually on 1960s-80s servers. For sure, there was a time when the AIM-54's could pick you back up again but I haven't tested if that capability has returned.

Monopulse Processing for Tracking Unresolved Targets by W. D. Blair published by the USN's Naval Surface Research Center in 1997 goes into using the complex/quadrature measurements for monopulse signals as mentioned earlier. So far, I haven't heard of any other monopulse technique in other articles other than using this portion of the signal. I haven't completed the whole thing yet but a brief excerpt here so far suggests that there still is some difficulty in tracking a given target when there's more than one in the res cell, especially if the RCS fluctuates as it would for a maneuvering target. Figure 1.3 shows two closely-spaced helicopters moving apart in both x and y dimensions (top down view) and the resulting in-phase signals stop fluctuating wildly and manage to find the accurate position of each chopper. As they move apart and time passes, the quadrature signal starts to fluctuate from the initial value of 0 for target 1 (since AFAIK, when it sees the targets as one, there is no quadrature return) - suggesting the presence of multiple targets. Tracking one over the other is another matter as the text below describes: Edit: I should also add that reference [1.4] mentioned just above is a 1965 paper proposing resolving or achieving "at least recognition of the number of targets present". This paper is COMPLEX INDICATED ANGLES IN MONOPULSE RADAR - by S. Sherman, University of Pennsylvania.

This is what I'm thinking as well and some texts support that this the case but none explicitly prove it. The research continues

Yea I have the same text, it's a very good book. and yes, the angular portion of the res cell is determined by the wavelength size to the aperture ratio. The excerpt from the book shows an engagement range of 6 km = 3.23 nm - that's a very very short range and one which, as you said, would probably not be affected by chaff of a fast beaming target. At longer ranges, say, 8 nm or more (maybe as short as 5 nm), an X-band radar with an aperture of ~0.85 m would give an angular resolution in the order of ~2.5 degrees. At 5 nm, the crossing range in the cell is ~404 m and at 8 nm it's ~646 m. Not huge of course, but seeing as how rapid bloom chaff spreads to max RCS between 0.2-0.5 seconds, maneuvering while notching and adding chaff could have some effect. I'm not convinced that it would do much against the AIM-120C, but we have real world accounts of an F-15 pilot firing an AIM-120A and having it get notched by a MiG-29 between 12 and 7 nm or something like that. I'm still doing my research but as I understand, the quadrature component of the monopulse signals (historically only the in=phase was taken) need to be integrated in order to resolve targets that are closely spaced. Monopulse of course has a great capability to track an RCS centroid within values much smaller than the radar res cell, but I believe if the RCS is scintillating, this is made more difficult from what I've read so far. A maneuvering fighter will not have a constant RCS and neither will the chaff. Older radars would likely have issues with this but I'm thinking the AMRAAM may have this quadrature integration capability.

I would think angular resolution is the toughest one right? Range resolution especially with pulse compression from what I understand appears to give very good range resolution in the order of a few m. Meanwhile for A-A radars with fixed shape main lobes, I expect a beaming target being tracked would have a larger angular resolution cell in the order of 100's of m (I think) at a given range, especially for further ranges. Would you be at liberty to discuss your ideal modulation type here? I'm very curious. The ability of modern pulse radar processors to integrate pulse quadrature returns allows then to separate closely-spaced targets at separation distances smaller than the res cell angular spacing which is something I would think AMRAAMs and the like can do, but I am unsure that older radars would have had this ability since it is greatly enhanced by multiple (usually medium) PRFs that are usually present in modern digital MPRF modes. I would think this is why a fighter must maneuver in the beaming plane to spread chaff which has to be spammed to make it look like the rapid-blooming chaff is a part of the aircraft. Have I got the right idea? No idea how effective that would be these days.