SgtPappy

Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game than everyone else! In seriousness though, the CM rejection value did a lot on my end. Against AI, I found without a doubt that chaff at least is more effective against them and their chaff and flares are more effective against your missiles. They will spoof an AIM-9L/M no issues with a few flares and no maneuvers. AIM-9X would probably overpower this magic ability though. Notching speeds seem the same - AI or human. Testing the same exact maneuvers ad nauseum with chaff against friends (Jester in the back) showed that I had to work much harder to get the AIM-54s to bite chaff at the time, it felt like they weren't going for chaff at all. I would be hit by about 1/3 AIM-54s they fired. When the F-14A showed up, you could pop chaff whether the missile was looking up, down or whatever (even if you weren't notching quite perfectly) and the missile would bite it 99% of the time. So something certainly did change. Only was hit about 1/12 AIM-54s (be they A or C) and I didn't work anywhere near as hard (i.e. didn't fly under 450 kn to make an effective notch, could fly much higher, barely had to maneuver etc).

This is awesome - this should be made into a movie or a book! It's too bad that we cannot have anymore sophisticated jamming in DCS other than what we have now. Understandably so. If you are at liberty to say, what did you see on the TID screen if you switched to it while chaff was in the air? Did it create false contacts or does it only clutter the pulse mode if the target is beaming (which as I understand, you would not see from the pilot's seat directly and you'd ask the RIO)?

I find it kinda funny that you wouldn't even make an attempt at understanding why. Many of us "monkeys" are competitive gamers so we fly merge after merge, endlessly to learn more and become better. We try to simulate ridiculous situations most pilots and even fewer non-pilots would ever see - this is in essence the experience of simulation. Doing things we could not really do in real life. After all, no pilots who are alive died 15 times in a row just to respawn and try again at a merge. If there is an obvious difference in the flight model compared to the quantifiable charts, it's already proven beyond reasonable doubt which is all we can do if we didn't fly the thing in real life no matter the anecdote because anecdotes are subjective. Data is not. Of course the SME's have authority and their opinions are a gold mine of information but "bang on" is subjective whether you're a real pilot or not and quantifiable data simply can't be disproven once the source is verified as reliable. Back in the day, a real pilot might have called the FC2 F-15 spot on - but it's worlds away from what we have today. It isn't surprising if we have built a subconscious bias towards what we see realistically "simulate-able" given the technology available. Furthermore how you (or any of us) take the anecdotal information adds further uncertainty. I think other than the 0.1 - 0.5 G that the Tomcats are lacking, there's another thread showing that the Tomcats are highly discrepant in climb rates, especially making the F-14A very difficult to fly in the vertical. This argument in particular is a good example of anecdote vs. quantification. We've heard from many F-14 crew that the F-15A was stronger in the vertical than the F-14A, but others will not imply it as strongly. So what do we have to get a better idea? Quantifiable data. The issue that often occurs is when there is no data and ONLY anecdotes - how well do you think that goes? Yet if we have data and no anecdotes, well.. I think it's obvious which one you can actually use to create action. Yes, there's more to BFM but when you're playing a GAME (i.e. SIM whatever you call it) - numbers mean a lot. When you program or use a virtual airplane - numbers are literally all you have.

I'm sure GG can chime in, as I was told the way it works really is simply by "throwing dice", as you say. The target closure reduces to a very low speed and the defender pops chaff out will have some probability of having the missile go for the chaff like it was flares. Doing so over the ground will increase the probability of missile losing lock. In real life, the target's signal to background noise (including clutter) ratio will determine the probability of retaining lock on the target. This S/N ratio increases as you get closer to the target and so chaff would be less effective. In addition, the resolution cell - the smallest area your radar can resolve - is larger when you're further away so any chaff in that cell with the target decreases the radar sensitivity and causes an angular pull-off effect, seducing the radar to follow the chaff RCS centroid slightly more and more until the target is not being illuminated, thus breaking lock. The target would need to continue to drop chaff for this to work. As the radar gets closer, that cell gets tighter giving the chaff less time to bloom within it. None of this is modeled explicitly AFAIK in DCS.

Yes the missile certainly guides better than it did way back before the API update. Back then I could easily roll through 7G rather lazily and the AIM-54 would miss. Notching it seemed easier as well. Chaff appears to be the biggest enemy of the AIM-54 in the tests I did with a friend.

I'm pretty sure it is not 180 degrees. Right now it appears the AIM-54 is not reacquiring at all if there is chaff + beaming in the air. Before the CM resistance was readjusted to today's levels, it would certainly reacquire. I think my tacviews showed roughly 60 degrees in both azimuth and elevation directions (give or take). I have had it reacquire at the very last second and then turn really hard 180 degrees behind the target but I have never ever been shot down one of those if I was the target. Not sure how realistic that behaviour is. After all, the AIM-54 is supposed to fall back to datalink or SARH homing from the AWG-9 if it loses the target so perhaps it is following the datalink and turning around?

Heatblur and you all really nailed the classic Tomcat look. Good work!

Reading it again, I can see how that comes across. As always, text does not give an accurate representation of tone and most of us are liable to putting our own voice into it for better or for worse. What I want to make clear is certainly me saying "accidental cheating" is genuine guilt - not a shot on the complete inaccuracy or quality of the F-15 model. No sim does the F-15 better - but an unbreakable F-15 isn't something your opponents ignore. Thanks for the clarification, yet another thing I should practice - or should I? If it's not realistic I don't know if I want to create a bad habit!

Still happens to me clean. Also happened to a friend I was testing online with when he flew the same clean plane. I only thing I would qualify even remotely as mods that I have are skins.

I am in no way trying to shame anyone or anything so if that's how it came across, then I apologize. I think everyone just wants to see their favourite plane be the best it can be but I can see how this passion can sound like anger sometimes, I get that. That said, the purpose of the post was moreso me simply feeling bad about doing something my plane should likely not have been able to do. I think it is just as valid as your opinion for me to express that I simply felt bad doing this Since to me, enjoyment of the game is as important as my opponent's - except hopefully I win the fight! Therefore I do not appreciate this being called whining when the attempt here was made to be an expression of guilt rather than an insult. Furthermore having a wish for an ideal game is not an unfair or irrelevant thing - I never gave a timeline or said it was straight up wrong that ED hasn't got there yet... If you're bothered by the frequency this gets mentioned, that is one thing (totally valid btw) but it isn't my responsibility to cater to that trigger by shutting up. Moreover, I have tried time and time again against AI and friends online alike and I have intense difficulty pulling 7 G ortho rolls to defeat missiles. It has worked only against the S530 but I've had to over-G against the AIM-7 and have so far no luck against the new API AIM-54. Am I doing something wrong? Probably but maybe I'll leave that to another thread.

I admit I pulled a 14G orthogonal roll to dodge an AIM-7 online the other night while flying the F-15 and I feel horribly guilty! I really wish the F-15 and MiG-29 got their models fixed because that's insane! Maybe at least have the pilots pass out or something. The HB F-14 is really awe-inspiring in detail. I can only wish the FC3 planes could at least be a bit better because otherwise the detailed planes like the Tomcat have to fight the aforementioned physics-breakers (and when I fly my F-15, it doesn't exactly feel good to accidentally cheat).

Hands down my favourite servers. Though eventually, it would be nice if they allowed maybe a max of two AIM-54As (don't know if thats possible?) and limit the F-14A to AIM-9L's and AIM-7F's for balance but also still giving the Tomcat its premier weapon. I swear these threads pop up every week... it would be really good if people did a search first before posting this exact same question. To add to your point, Sideburns, it really is about time frame, historical significance, etc. Everyone seems to understand that something like the F8F or Spitfire Mk. 22 do not belong in a WW2 server because they saw no real action during that conflict despite actually entering service before its end. No questions asked. What seems to be forgotten is it's the exact same thing with the F-14A and F-14B during conflicts like the Iran-Iraq War. The F-14B did not score a single aerial victory and produced no aces; it saw no combat until Desert Storm AFAIK.

So I tested this online with a friend - I was flying with Jester against my buddy in the F/A-18C and he got warning but at 8 s TTI, not 16 s even though the 16 s TTI indicator started flashing. I fired from TWS from 30 nm. We repeated this several times while I was flying above or below my target and the same results happened. I have not yet tried the experiment while being a RIO or having a human RIO. I also have yet to see if the AIM-54 goes dumb if fired from TWS at a range > 16 TTI. It does against AI, that's for sure. However the F-14 AI do not give warning at all if they fire from beyond PAL range. Chaff seems to work very well against the AIM-54 unlike before the patch (don't know if the CM resistance has been dropped back to what it was or if it was updated so some other value since the patch notes say both those things happened somehow). However, we could not get it to reacquire once it went for chaff. It seems like a mixed bag but it certainly is not as horrible as it was several patches ago when beaming at all would cause a lost lock.

I think perhaps you misunderstood. It is supposed to show up as a "U", not an "M". It will be confusing but if that's what it's supposed to be, then you have to assume its a Phoenix. How do we know its not realistic? I assume if they did it on purpose then the "U" is realistic. But who really knows.

Sorry if it's been posted already but do we have a source for this? My understanding (though there is not a lot of info out there) is that the MiG-31's PESA radar has such an agile beam that it can guide four R-33's by rapidly illuminating the targets for which the R-33's home in (i.e. once they are in range and done with the midcourse update phase). Therefore, when the R-33 is close enough and midcourse updating is over, the targets should get a warning because to each of them, they are being as illuminated as rapidly as any other STT, non-CW radar would do (i.e. APG-63 in the F-15). If not, then the F-15 should also not give warning because it does not have a CW signal which I think is not true.

Hey I just posted that in the other AIM-54 thread :P

Yeah I wish I could find more info on this. I ordered that radar book by Stimson from Hughes to see what I can learn from there. Apologies, I should have clarified that I added the article for the pertinent parts which talk about the F-14/AWG-9/AIM-54. I forgot that it was also about the theoretical application of the AIM-54 to the F-15.

I just read this very interesting post on the AIM-54 - not sure about the person's credentials but he is certainly convincing! Link: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-US-Air-Forces-F-15-Eagle-fighter-carry-the-extremely-long-range-and-high-speed-AIM-54-Phoenix He mentions that the missile would sometimes have to fly in such a way as to arc back towards its own loft trajectory. Furthermore, BIO mentions that TWS had some issues with false contacts and I believe Heatblur stated that it is by design (or that it simply won't change) that TWS is not suitable for maneuvering targets. I expect the more targets that are being tracked, the easier it is for the TWS mode to drop accurate tracking.

A good strategy I find is to make the F-14 overshoot. Enter a high speed merge and try to force it into an overshoot in some dimension by maneuvering out of plane with it. Then take the opportunity to reverse with a high AoA 1 circle. Take advantage of the fact that it does not slow down easily nor can most F-14 pilots follow in a rolling scissors quite as well as a well-flown Hornet, Mirage or even Eagle. Grab some altitude, don't just merge at the deck and use the vertical. It might take a few tries to learn it, and don't feel like you can't just extend with speed and try again. I have met some terrible people with horrendous sportsmanship who will actually respawn and shoot you down with a missile if they think you're "running too much" but luckily they're the toxic ones and are fewer in number than those who want to learn.

Yesterday, I found that simply firing in either TWS or STT of any kind (all with Jester) at 10 nm or less, co-alt with the bandit and you will still have time to turn away from an AMRAAM. Unless they do the same, they'll get hit by the AIM-54C. I have rarely been able to trash this missile with an orthogonal roll since the update so it's actually very good real close. But I suppose this is a little besides the point of this thread.

Just remember UWBuRn that the AI countermeasures are far more potent in general than human countermeasures. You can see this by launching an AIM-9M for example at 2 nm head on and they can spoof with almost no maneuvering and maybe a few flares. Try this on a human and it would never work. Their missiles too may or may not be less resistant to countermeasures as well. I can notch even today's tougher AIM-54s from the AI flying right at the deck, firing in a look-up situation by forcing the missile to go up and then notching + chaff near the ground all the way to merge. However against my friend online, no chance of this at < 5nm.

This looks like the exact book I'm looking for! I think I too, will bite the bullet and get it!

That's exactly what I thought, but I still need to look into a basic calculation for the range binning that the AWG-9 and likely the AIM-54 will use - something tells me it's a lot smaller than 10,000 ft! Are there further API improvements meant to address this? And damn, I don't think I'd ever be brave enough to try what you did in the tacview!

Do you think this look down is accurate? I always believed that you really had to be close to clutter but it seems look down at all spoofs the missile even if you're 10,000 ft above the ground or water.

Apologies, perhaps I misremembered, but it appears you are right. I checked old tracks and found that whenever my buddy in the F-14 fired AIM-54s and AIM-7s, they were easily spoofed because he was higher than me, if even by a tiny amount. When we tested yesterday, he flew right at the deck and I could spoof them if and only if I climbed and then dove to force them into a look down state. After today's patch, the AIM-54 no longer gives a warning at all with its own radar but I guess that's a different discussion. I also checked other tracks and it appears that enemies who spoofed my APG-63 had mountains at a similar altitude. What I did not realize is just how far the spoofing occurred, that is, I thought one had to be very close to the ground, say 200 ft, for this ever to work, not a few thousand feet from terrain. However I am luckier than I thought then because I just tested the AIM-7s and S530 and found that I could indeed spoof them even at high altitude/look-up, however it happened a lot less than if I split-S'd towards the ground. The effect is far more pronounced for the AIM-54 where it will not at all eat chaff unless I really dive. So with the new API, it seems that the SARH missiles are still lagging behind the AIM-54 since I can never spoof the AIM-54 in a look up situation but can sometimes do so for an AIM-7 - both at very close, 3 or 4 nm range. I suppose this makes sense but I still don't know either way if chaff can be used per my previous posts .