SgtPappy

Just a nitpick here, but I think that probability it expressed in decimals - not percent in this graph where probability, P(bl) = 1.0 is 100% probability. It's convention and I don't see why they'd make a graph where the maximum is 1% while showing an asymptotic rise in probability. So P(bl) = 0.01 is 1%. Much larger than 0.01%, but yes your point still stands. It looks like the break lock probability is tiny. I think I may have this very paper somewhere in my files but didn't really look into it since it's about conscan radars. I believe that the leading edge and trailing edge tracking techniques work in non-PD systems. You just cut the start or end of the pulse return so you reject chaff (depending on if the target is leaving or coming toward the radar while dropping chaff). This, I imagine, would significantly decrease SNR to a prohibitive value if applied to the smaller airborne radars in fighters. This is tough one, because I'm not confident that anyone can really prove that the AMRAAM was "too resistant" but then again I barely play on modern servers often so I don't know what others have experienced. As Nighthawk mentioned, the advancements in tech could really explain the AMRAAM's chaff resistance. Yes chaff will always have an effect on radar but would you actually be able to spoof AMRAAMs from 3 nm by spamming chaff and beaming? I'm inclined to believe no.

Thanks, Victory for the in-depth insight. This is the kind of thing that makes aviation so rich is the stories people have to share and the real world tactics that we don't get to see in games. The MP environment in DCS is interesting and airquake is fun in some aspects. Luckily there's a lot of diversity and a bunch of servers are dedicating more mission design to teamwork where 1v1's will get you shot down. Maybe one day far into the future planes like the EA-6 will play a large role in the simulation gaming world.

Only the F-4J radar system (AWG-10) had Doppler filter banks but I think GGTharos may be referring to SAMs which used edge tracking techniques. I am not aware if radars in the F-14, F-15, F/A-18 etc. use this technique to reject chaff. I think the F-15 and F/A-18 for example have very good Doppler sensitivity since they had RAM mode which (AFAIK) uses fine Doppler shifts to discriminate close targets that would usually be too fine for the resolution cell.

Not sure if it's widely understood yet, but chaff MP results will be a bit different from SP results. AI in SP will spoof missiles far more easily and their missiles will also be spoofed a bit more easily. A little weird, but this seems consistent when I tested spoofing AIM-54s, especially back when the chaff rejection of the AIM-54s was at AMRAAM levels.

This is such a great story, I can't get enough! It's so great to hear what aircraft transitions were like and how fiercely loyal people are with their favourite jets. Truth is the F-4s and the F-14 (especially the A) have so much history and endless combat accolades with both the US and other countries who used them in combat (i.e. Iran and Israel). They are ace makers. @Victory205 I am curious about something based on your post - maybe it's been asked before but how easy/hard was it to keep track of these low fighters in TWS? In DCS, I've understood that it's quite realistic for the AWG-9 to lose track fairly easily against a beaming target near the ground and that the RIO had to be good with Pulse to pick anything up (which I assume is very susceptible to chaff). Do you feel that meta is reflected well in DCS where AIM-54s are spoofed fairly regularly by a low closure targets?

I think these early A's also don't have the TF30-P-414A, they'd be the -412 - not sure if the differences are enough to model though.

I can't confirm if the F-14 blinking ECM was recent (I think it always blinked, TBH) but what is recent and has been stated a couple times is the missile API upgrade. In combination with blinking ECM and chaff, the API-upgraded missile effectively become duds. Therefore, exploiting this is new and this is why it's only popping up in servers now. And yes, the warmup time indeed is one proposal.

A bit of a tangent: Do I understand correctly that every single F-15C built except the final 43 (APG-70) had the APG-63 with PSP? Are these referred to now as the APG-63(v)0? Had a little trouble patching together what information I could google.

Yeah the F/A-18 recent ECM update gives me some hope that there may be an ECM/ECCM update eventually. Though I've got my fingers crossed, I surely don't want to be the conductor for that hype train just yet!

As mentioned earlier, the missile guidance logic/API whatever you want to call it appears to have coincided with this bug's emergence at least when it comes to the AIM-120's, AIM-7's etc. but not the R-77, R-27ER which were not affected by the guidance update. Since this bug only happens when the jammers blink (causing the affected missiles to go from HoJ to losing lock completely even at very short WVR combat), it makes sense to make the manually-blinked jammers (i.e. Mirage 2000, F-14, and F/A-18 now?) to be unable to blink at any rate that would affect the missiles. This would be the 15 sec warmup time was done to the FC3 planes' ECM which prevented another lock-related bug back in the day and that worked as intended. However I think the problem may not be completely solved and I'm just thinking out loud here: I would think if the 15 sec warmup is implemented, the jammer will trash one missile upon turning off (so whatever missile is on the way will lose lock) but 15 sec later, any other missile on the way will likely hit whether the jammer turns on or not. However some missiles can be launched past 15 sec TTI, and those ones will be affected if the jammer then turns off again. Maybe the warmup time should be longer? Or maybe I've got something backwards.

Actually as I understand, the reason it was actually never noticed before in addition to what yaga mentioned is that this bug did not come into effect until the missile API update which was last year I think. EDIT: and now I read above that the Hornets can do this too, further adding to the FF modules that can do this. The intercept geometry of the AIM-120's, AIM-7 and AIM-54s all changed and maybe even a few more missiles were affected. I can't remember. At any rate, I tested this a bit (my original thread here) and found that indeed, some missiles were NOT affected at all and these happened to not get the API update as I understand (i.e. R-27ER, correct me if I'm wrong). Since that time, I saw 1 guy in an F-14B simply fly hot, wagging side to side with some chaff and his jammer on spoof all my AIM-7s launched from 8, 6 and 4 nm. The tracks and videos provided in my old post then show my testing online with a buddy and the AMRAAMs.

Is evidence still being collected? I have this flashing issue on every map whenever there's smoke from an aircraft explosion. I've been flying almost exclusively jets. It's been happening since as long as I can remember, but it's true that it seems to happen more often when there are clouds.. honestly I've lost track. I've tried turning of MSAA as some have pointed out but it hasn't worked. Here are some clips: Right when he gets hit around 3:18 - 3:19, there's a flash (slightly older version of OB on Syria): My graphics settings (I'm using an RX580, 16G RAM, windows 10 x64):

I've had something like this happen to me once where I lost lock a target (M2k) in my F-15 for the rest of the fight and he got shot down. We messaged each other in the chat and he thought I killed him but then I checked the tacview and my AIM-7MH hit from something like ~15 nm near sea level even though I turned away at one point while terrain masking. Need to find the tacview later if I still have it. I've only observed it once unfortunately, cannot reproduce so far.

It might be a lot more involved than we think, hard to tell unless we were the ones actually working on the code.

I'm not 100% sure if this is a bug or is currently simply a limitation. I do not remember any missile flying towards a last known position during any patch. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Interesting discussion. Is there public knowledge out there stating what frequencies the AMRAAM uses? If using the high end of the X-band or even Ku band, it will achieve finer res cell resolution in sacrifice for higher signal attenuation (not as much of a concern if the active range is pretty close). More advanced modern systems might even be performing FFT's to analyze the spectrum of the return and reject the wide bandwidth that chaff returns at very close ranges, thereby rejecting chaff more. Any one have good sources for these possible CCM techniques?

I can confirm that steady jamming transmission in the F-15 does not have the same effect.

Well that's not exactly correct. Gaming inherently has limitations so one would need to work within those limitations to have the desired effect. The assumption here is that the missiles cannot lose lock or do other unintentional maneuvers at close range on a hot target. If that is fulfilled, what does it matter if the Blackbox workings aren't known to the player? ECM today is limited and is so classified that it would be difficult to implement, but ED is working on it regardless. After all we can't feel real blackouts at 9G while sitting in our gaming chair so the blackout we have in the game is manufactured to simulate that within limitations of the game and today's commercially available technology.

This is interesting and I'm not surprised it is actually quite a simple message. Good to know. All we know is that is experimentally shown that a target with blinking ECM that is dropping chaff coincides with missiles missing at that target. The inner workings aren't known well but these appear to be cause and effect.

Thanks dundun. It's nice to see that the bug i reported originally is getting lots of attention. I thank ED for the missiles API updates which makes their intercept geometry far more realistic and challenging to trash. It does seem however this bug is related to said update unfortunately. Though a lot is classified for jammers, it is unlikely that what we're seeing today is the intent especially since the missiles are affected all the way to Rmin when one would expect jamming to be effective primarily at BVR ranges.

This is the same bug I've reported in This thread where I tested it online and it is unfortunately difficult to fight anyone in the F-14 as a result. R-77 and R-27ER are unaffected by this bug. It happens with the F-14 since the jammer automatically blinks unlike the other jammers but is otherwise the same as the other jammers. The issue appears to be all the missiles which have had a recent API update which still affects them past burn through. Of course it happens vs AI as well but AI missiles and countermeasures work differently. EDIT: I found that the R-27R is affected but the ER is not. I'll have to look at OP's tracks after work.

Good work, Hummingbird, Captain_Dalan and Victory205!

I think this needs to be in everyone's heads before they post an angry retort. I am no exception. As HB has said many times, we are all passionate and sometimes it comes out as angry. Still I think sometimes it's easy to see things like sarcasm and direct insults which is definitely not productive and sometimes pop up which in the grand scheme of things aren't justified for something as "trivial" as our hobby. We are playing a game after all - a masterpiece and work of art but no need to rage over a game.

Ah you're right, sorry, ECM is all I think about these days You did however quote DCS Fighter Pilot above who is complaining about 1 chaff with beaming which is probably not too accurate. Without sufficient clutter, (ground or chaff), beaming shouldn't do a thing for a valid lock since lock-on sets up range, azimuth and in PD radars, Doppler gates. The Tomcat will use Pulse mode when its Doppler mode loses sufficient return. Clutter outside these gates will be rejected which is why you need to introduce clutter into your res cell by being very close to the ground while beaming and/or introducing chaff. The issue here IIRC, is that some people are having the issue where a simple beam and 1 chaff pop will break AIM-54 lock within visual range, even far from ground clutter (which needs to be only tens of metres away from a plane, not thousands of feet looking down).

While you are correct, there is much more to this than you imply. Most people in these forums already know this. For one thing, the resolution cell size is a big factor in whether the chaff will truly shift the RCS centroid by enough to create the angle tracking error needed to break lock. As you get closer, the resolution cell becomes smaller and it becomes less likely for chaff to expand in time while within the same cell as the aircraft for the radar lock to see the chaff return as a part of the aircraft return. Furthermore, the closer you get, the easier it is to come out of the notch since the defending aircraft more quickly has an angle off the attacking radar to no longer offer a below minimum Doppler return. In this case, even old radars will attempt to look for you again by scanning in the direction of your last known trajectory to pick you up once there is strong enough of a return. This is why it is necessary to maneuver, so as to throw off any predictive scan. Finally, though DCS does not model this directly, newer radars (like those in the AIM-120 most likely, I'd be surprised if not) can perform chaff rejection using things like FFT's to discern the wide broadband return that chaff gives among other techniques that lead to better CCM. In game, this is modeled by simple chaff rejection probability. So while it is *possible* that something like an AIM-54A is very similar to the analog AWG-9 which, according to reputable sources does not have such FFT capability or fine azimuth resolution and therefore has worse CCM, it is also not extremely likely that a single bundle of chaff will shift the RCS centroid by enough at close ranges to force a break-lock per the reasons above. For what it's worth, I have been unable to spoof an AIM-54A with 1 piece of chaff in the beam in recent tests - maybe only others are having this issue. I always have to pull at least 5G while in the beaming plane and popping more than 1 piece of chaff (maybe only 3 or 4).