ShuRugal

Yes. It even says this on the store page for the standalone FC3 planes.

yes, because published manufacturer specifications are purely theoretical. No manufacturer has ever once tested their equipment before selling it. Especially not to the military.

account. one small-scale conflict is insufficiently large to warrant the plural. That account also lacks critical data which would be required to determine whether or not the number represent practical performance values. For instance, if any of those 24 launches were made at retreating targets already beyond 16km, then the pK for that shot drops of rapidly. If the pilots chose not to support their missiles through to splash (they are, after all, mercenaries. Getting dead doesn't pay.), then the pK is 0. Perhaps the one shot that hit was the only shot launched within valid parameters and fully supported to splash? If that were the case, then we could use this single example to state that. when correctly employed, the R-27R has a 100% probability of splash. But that would be ridiculous, because we would be making broad, generalized assumptions based on incomplete information and a tiny sample size. Oh wait...

I've cited that page to him in the past, he doesn't care for it because the source is "biased".

What's with all the gravedigs this week? Halloween was last month...

Since your ability to understand compound sentence structure is clearly lacking, let me break this down for you into simple, declarative sentences: 1) There are multiple sources of information on R-27 performance 2) Some of these sources claim effective range values as low as 60 km 3) Other sources claim effective ranges as high as 120km 4) I notice that you often use Wikipedia for your citations. 5) Wikipedia states the following information: <Block quote from Wiki follows> Now, tell me again where I contradicted myself?

in the video, he didn't cobra-launch the missile. He launched before merge, the missile began a maximum-G loop as the target passed above it, and it regained lock as it went over the top.

yes, but i'm bored.

I'm only using it because kamikaze insists. If it's a good enough source for him to quote, he can bloody well accept it back. Yes, i did. And then I supported the claim with a source that you find perfectly adequate for supporting your own claims. My mind, position, and arguments have not changed the entire course of this discussion. Also, source? Is that so? could you please enlighten me as to which piece of literature i have incorrectly understood? I never said any such thing. Wiki is a perfectly good source for you, so I'm using it as well. I linked you that source. Twice. Over a week ago. Glad you finally got around to reading it. Did you get to the bit where the author concluded that western military planning has not made sufficient allowance for russian tactics, and that if russian tactics in an air war were applied to australia, they would get run over flat?

Hah, if you tried that the way the picture shows it (pulling up before merging) you'd find an R-73 or AIM-9 in your belly mighty quick. Now, what you might be able to do is kick back and use HMS to lock target after passing and throw a missile that way, but that kind of trick shooting puts you in a very bad position if it fails.

Your reading comprehension requires improvement: "Effective kill range for a target at same altitude: 2 to 65.5 km head-on" This one is not kinematic range. "Maximum range: 117 km" This one is kinematic range. Also, from your same highly-valued source: So, if we apply the rule of 1/9 maximum kinematic range == actual combat usefulness range, then the in-game 120B should have a maximum effective range of 6-8km, and the 120C should have a maximum effective range of 12km. Sure thing bub, whatever you say. Not at all fanboying here, are you?

However, your continued argument in support of the current implementation of missile guidance suggests that you believe that the missile should have a useful range that is 1/5 of what published literature states is its effective range, and 1/9 of its published maximum range. On multiple occasions, you have posted that because people are arguing in favor of increasing the R-27 family performance to match published performance figures, that we are not truly interested in simulation, and only want "balance with the F-15". Based on your insistence, in the face of a mountain of contrary evidence, that the R-27 should be a worthless PoS, I believe that I would not be alone in saying that you give off the appearance of a certain piece of kitchenware making disparaging comments regarding the observed hue of another piece of kitchenware.

There is a link to an old article in this thread where the chief editor of Aviation Weekly got to fly a Su-27 in 1990. He states that "There is only an up and down button on the flaps, with no intermediate settings".

The keybindings are probably in error: the real Su-27 only has two positions available to the pilot for flaps. If you look under the throttle, you will see a blue button in front of an orange one. the blue is "flaps up" and the orange is "flaps down". That said, the ACS has more selective use of the flaps based on airspeed. I never deploy the flaps manually for takeoff, I just let the ACS set the appropriate angle.

Yes, this is an existing issue that has been ongoing since at least 1.2. Can a dev confirm whether this bug is being tracked internally?

Have just done some skim-reading, and it does seem that the dipole behavior makes the most sense after all for providing an efficient reflector. I suppose that the energy a non-dipole fails to reflect (or even absorb) is so much greater than what is lost due to being a zero-gain radiator that it does make sense in hindsight. So, i guess the real question for solving this problem is going to be what does the actual radiation pattern of your typical fighter radar set look like? How sharply does the intensity drop off from the center of the main lobe? So, it is a known issue, it just hasn't been touched since LOMAC because it wasn't a significant problem before we started getting fancy with missile flight models? So, it sounds like a good intermediate solution (since ED presumably won't have time in the near future to draft a full-blown radar simulator, not to mention the damage running it would do to my wallet in terms of hardware upgrades) would be to add one more variable to that equation: angle of offset between the chaff bundle and the locked target. If this variable was applied to the chaff "seduction factor" after all the rest, it would solve the problem of close-range shots going right instead of left, while leaving medium to long range shots relative unaffected.

While side-lobes are a factor to consider, at any range outside a few hundred meters (if the minimum AGL to operate radar is any indicator), side-lobe emissions are inconsequential in comparison to the main-lobe. Points 1 and 2 both carry a degree of merit, but only when the chaff is illuminated. in WVR combat against a flanking bandit locked in STT, the chaff is simply not going to stay in the illumination cone long enough to be a factor, unless the target begins to release a continuous stream of chaff. As ///Rage points out, even at a relative sedate mach 0.7, the target will be outdistancing his chaff release by over 200 m/s Assuming that the resonant-dipole behavior you describe is correct (I'm not fully prepared to believe that it is, but feel free to show me your source if I'm wrong), this may not be as useful as you might expect. The chaff cannot radiate/reflect more energy than what strikes it from the radar. If the chaff is perfectly tuned to collect and re-transmit the radar energy as a dipole antenna, it will be doing so in a nearly spherical pattern. While this spreads the energy out to make it visible evenly from all directions, it reduces gain on the reflection to zero. This would result in the reflected energy being much more diffuse than the energy input to the chaff. Now, whether that is significant when compared against the total area/volume over which the chaff is absorbing and returning radar energy, I cannot say. Unless the chaff burst is within a few hundred meters of the radar, side lobe illumination would be negligible. Dipole resonator or not, the chaff cannot return more energy than it receives. Side lobe suppression applies to the transmitting end: the goal is to reduce undirected emissions so as to avoid detection by hostile E-War equipment not being directly illuminated. Smaller beam width also works in favor of the missile, as the launching/directing aircraft focuses much greater energy onto the target than any spillage which might be picked up by chaff. Clutter rejection and signal:noise ratio really only comes into play for the radar tracking side of the house. A SARH missile is fairly dumb, it will go for the brightest radar return it can see. The bottom line is, if it's not in the primary focused zone of the radar beam, the missile won't be able to see it, because that beam is (at a conservative estimate) an order of magnitude brighter than any of the side-lobes.

But only if the chaff is illuminated by the radar. If you look at the picture Apocom posted on the first page of the thread, you can see a scenario from Tacview where the F-15 and its chaff were so far apart (relative to how close the Su-27 was) that the radar on the flanker was looking to its right to see the F-15, but the chaff was to the left side of the flanker. Nevertheless, his first three missiles took off after the chaff. This is, clearly, impossible behavior: That chaff burst was no longer within the radar illumination cone, and would therefore be completely invisible to the chaff. While this is true as you said, at long ranges, when fighting a WVR engagement, a flanking target won't stay close to its chaff long enough for the radar to keep the chaff illuminated.

Necro thread or not, persistent airframes in campaigns would be a handy feature.

When did this become a toggle instead of a "press and hold" function? I have the command bound to the slider switch on my X55 throttle, I like having a physical toggle for it instead of a software toggle...

+1

The problem with this is that 10-20 km is so far inside the missile's designed operational range that it's practically a joke. The average stated effective range against a head-on target i can find online for the ER is better than 80 km (quick google search reveals claims between 60 and 150 km, with most tending towards 70-100). It is neither "proper tactics" nor "appropriate use" to hold fire on a missile until you are 1/8th its designed engagement range from the target. At 10-20 km, you should already have switched to R-73 and fired one, forget about R-27.

I get really tired of hearing this particular cop out, because it's complete BS. If they had classified info, they would not be able to model it into the game, as the information could be extracted from the game, either through analysis of game performance or by ripping it straight out of the code. Either their sources are not of a sensitive nature, or they're going off purely internal decisions.

while the freq you are using will have some effect on how the radar signal interacts with the target and atmospheric conditions, changing freqs does not change the way the signal itself propagates. I believe that the point he was trying to make is that Pk statistics, taken out of context from the operational conditions they were observed in, are meaningless.

While radar technology itself is not my direct area of expertise, I maintain satcom and other radio-communication gear for my day-job. My training includes a good deal of radio propagation theory, and, if you want (serious offer, not trying to condescend), I could break down the bare physics for you of why no radar set in the world produces a collimated beam. What it basically boils down to is that there is no such thing as "partialy collimated" (that's literally saying "partially parallel"). All rado/microwave transmissions diverge. Because the outgoing beam diverges, it is subject to the inverse square law. Being tightly focused only means that a greater percentage of the radar's power is going into the same signal. The reflected energy off the target is pure, unfocused, spherical radiation, and is also subject to the inverse square law. since we are applying the inverse square law twice for the same signal (two effective emitters in series) we are performing a multiplication operation, which simplifies out to reflected return signal dropping off with the fourth power of range. Now, yes, there are other factors which effect how much of the original radar energy returns to the seeker. Dish diameter plays an important role in this, but the only factor with an exponential influence is range dropoff, and nothing else in the equation can compare to the effect of a fourth-power exponent. As I stated previously, even if my original numbers (which ignore dish size) for 15kw fighter at 40km and 1kw missile at 10km (17x advantage to missile) are wrong by a full order of magnitude, the missile still would have a 1.7x advantage in captured energy from the target. Even if my numbers are even further off (they're not), we still have the fact that ARH missiles are more effective than SARH missiles, even when both are fully supported to impact. If it were not the case that the radar on the missile gets better return as it closes, then there would be no benefit from putting one there. This. We may not have any reliable sources on missile seeker/tracking performance (this applies to US missiles as well) but it is a reasonable assumption that the air-combat tactics developed around those missiles exist for a reason.