HubMan

:yes: Hub

On the other hand, if you look carefully (see you schema edited below), you will see that -there is- a deceleration around 1200FPS ie right at the beginning of the transonic ;) I'm not especially suprised, as I don't think a missile slowing down through the transonic area is experiencing the same troubles than one trying to push through, especially if it is and unguided one... :) Anyway, the more I think about your Sidewinder example, the more I think that the geometry of the missiles and way they are launched ie rail vs ejector is related : - the AIM-9 is launched straight from a rail - the AIM-120 can be fired as well from a rail, but you will find it mostly used on downward ejectors for the F-15, the F-22... And that's what Rhen was refering to :) I'm curious about what happens will the missile is violently going down and then fire it's engine, going through the transonic regime, either with a downward momentum or trying to manoeuver to get into an horizontal or lofted trajectory.... :D And I may be wrong of course, but I think that the Sidewinder model is not really applicable to the AMRAAM :D Cheers :) Hub.

44% more of speed at launch for 40% of total range is very, very nice :) As it's not 44% of maximum top speed at the end of the boost phase, but merely mach 0.4 more for a missile that can reach mach 3 / mach 4... The "44%" are actually only a bit more that 10% of the top speed of the missile, it is not the same :) You get a lot more than what you put in... :) As minizap does not correctly modelize to my opinion what happens when the missile goes through the transonic regime, there is no surprise that going through it is so little energy consuming :) Maybe :) It's also maybe just something more to add to what I understood :D Hub.

Swingkid, :) Rhen said: It's pretty clear : "range is effectively increased by 40% (or more) when accelerating from M0.9 to M1.3 before release of the Slammer". What do we have between mach 0.9 and mach 1.3 ? Transonic drag rise and transonic issues !!! And if an increase of speed of roughly 40% causes an increase of range of 40% (or more), when your computation showed that an increase of 33% in speed causes only an increase in range of only 9%, either Rhen or the way minizap simulates the transonic regime is wrong :D It's not a matter of "eating your words" or pride : you did an astounding job with minizap and you did it on your free time. But as you said, you are not an aerodynamist, and taking in account the transonic part of the flight is incredibly difficult, especially with so few elements available on the behavior of the AIM-120 :) What I wanted to do is point out some parameters that you probably did not take in account, because they are discarded in most of the accessible models as they are just to complicated to modelize :) Minizap is a great tool, I mean it :) But you cannot dissociate it from the tactical use of the weapons : if you fire a Fox 1, you must do it at quite close range as it will raise a big spike alarm on any decent SPO and your opponent will be able to defend itself. And you may be able to notch during the inertial part of the flight of your missile if it has a datalink like the AIM-7P, but you will have to have your nose pointed at your opponent for the end game. Fox 3 are of a different kind : you can : - fire them, eventually support them and then break of the fight (Brevity code tactic "Skate" ("Informative call/directive to execute launch and leave tactics.") - fire them, eventually support them and then go to the notch (Brevity code tactic "Banzai" "Informative call or directive to execute launch and decide tactics."). By the way going to the notch is not always synonymous of breaking the radar lock, especially at high altitude : you do it also because it will make the enemy missiles run a long way and manoeuver almost constantly while improving a little bit the efficiency of your chaffs. - fire them and go to the merge, but it's probably not the safest way to fight :) I'm sorry, I should have defined the postulates myself : - at least 30% or range increase for a missile fired between M 0.9 and M 1.4 - the AMRAAM has to be fired at ~45km - it will go active at 15km, at which time you notch or pump :) Anyway, if we are talking about contemporary BVR, cranking and such is almost not relevant anymore as missiles are supported by wingmen flying out of the opponent missile range or AWACS with the Link 16. It improves even more the tactical advantage of firing a missile at high speed :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : if you crank at really high speed and support your missile all the way, you will perhaps get a smaller F-Pole, as you will end up being closer to the opponent, but the missiles launched at you will have to run a longer trajectory as well and alter their course all the way. But to do so, you will need an antenna with a large gimball limit like the one of the Eurofighter (+70°) :D

+1 :) We are already struggling on the Jaguar cockpit :) But the SUE / SEM will get a cockpit one day, it's a promise :) Hub.

The standard one : put the contact at radar gimbal limits. Going to 60° will take five more seconds at mach 1.2 than at mach 0.9, that's more than acceptable in a BVR engagement, provided firing supersonically is worth it :D :no_sad: Sorry, your scenario is not relevant to illustrate the mechanism of supersonic BVR : - your AIM-120 will probably be active at the time you fire it or a couple of seconds after : there is -no- need to support it, instead, the decent tactic will be either to go to the notch or push (anyway, at ~20km ie ~10nm there is a fair chance that you should be commited to the merge and in pure pursuit) - you should be faster than mach 1.2. I have the feeling that minizap does not modelize the transonic regime : it's an outstanding piece of software, but as I said : if simulating the subsonic and supersonic is quite feasible, simulating the transonic is extremely complicated... As a result, you get a mere 9% when you need something like 20/30% that you can get in real life, provided you fly high and fast enough (mach 1.4...) - supersonic BVR is interesting for long range shots : you are talking about 20km, but it should be at least -20nm-. The idea is to fire missiles before your opponent and use your speed to crank / notch / pump to make it's missiles enveloppe shrink. - 20km would have been a decent range for a Fox 1 engagement against targets at low altitude, forcing them to defend (beam) and then pushing and going to the CAC, but if it's a Fox 3 fight, you simply do not want to get within this distance, because its a "two widows" scenario : both sides fire missiles that are immediatly active, well within the enveloppe, best way to get everybody killed ;) What you are demonstrating, is that, despite not having the extra range that a supersonically launched amraam should have, the F-Poles are almost identical ;) Anyway, as I said, F-Pole is not as relevant than A-Pole compared to E-Pole : if the A-Pole is larger enough than the E-Pole, you are winning :D If you get something like 10 or 15km of extra range due to missile launch over the mach, you will realize that this extra range you will get is enough to crank a lot, considered that in addition you do not need to crank all the way but only until you achieve A-Pole, you should have the upper hand :) And in addition to that, if your aircraft can sustain a large amout of supersonic / transonic Gs like the F-15, you can manoeuver at supersonic speed, exhausting the missiles that may have been launched at you, because you are running fast and far from the target :) Finally, if you have Fox 3 and are fighting in a multi target environment, you better like to use your radar in TWS mode firing multiple missiles from far away, because the closer you will be to the targets, the more difficult it will be for your radar to keep them all in the scanning volume it can handle... The problem with Lockon, is almost -all- the mechanism that could make that kind of real life Fox 3 BVR technic works were not correctly modelized, mostly for the sake or gameplay and partly because it would have been too complicated / time consuming to do it :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : I have the feeling you analyse too much a modern BVR fight as if it would be a Fox 1 environment only and that you really do not want to admit that flying fast and firing at high speed may be a big advantage in BVR :) I found an old post from Rhen here : http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=391265&postcount=36 you may find it interesting ;)

Hi Swingkid :) I finally found the time to answer you : It's hard to use you chart to estimate precisely the total drag coefficient, but 1.5 is probably a good estimate :) Anyway, your chart being about zero lift drag only, the drag induced by -lift- is not displayed. I know that the drag induced by lift tends to be negligible at high supersonic speed, but for a missile fired at subsonic speed, I think that this is not the case. Besides, missiles fired at "slow speed" (under the mach) will tend to start with a nice angle of attack, that means some extra drag to fight at the beginning of the boost phase. Finally the transonic regime being the mess it is, it is higly possible that missiles may suffer buffeting or other effects that would alter their trajectory and require the missile to correct it's course once supersonic, especially if it entered the transonic region with some AoA. Firing a missile over the mach would avoid that kind of problems :) No, sorry :D If you get a 25% range advantage, if you are cranking, you are winning : the extra range and the fact that you can pump / notch as soon as your missile is active should do the magic :D (you are using Fox 3, it's the A-Pole and the E-Pole that matter... ;) ) Just do the maths... :D Cheers :) Hub.

Ok :) Thanks for pointing out the differences between the AIM-9 and a generic aircraft, that may explain a lot of things :) I need some time to properly think about it and I'll try to come with a decent answer :D About flying at supersonic speed to engage fighters, I always heard that it's a standard tactic, at least for long shots and even more since the aircrafts of the last generation like the Raptor or the Eurofighter can accelerate fast enough, and sustain high Gs while at the supersonic / transonic speeds :) I'm french and it hurts a little bit my nationale pride to point you to a link like this one : http://www.eurofighter.com/et_sr_as_bv.asp But it may give some ideas of how modern BVR is fought :) (just don't pay too much attention to the marketing / propaganda that can be found on the site... :D) Cheers :) Hub.

Should look like something like that. Ideally, drag should decrease after Mach 1.2, but the idea is there : - there is a (small) transonic "bump" that peaks at mach 1. - the drag tends to decrease after the transonic regime. - it would have been very nice to have mach 1.2 instead of mach 1.5 on the schema, but I won't complain :D Hub. PS : thanks for taking the time to plot the schema :thumbup:

No :) "Squared function" does not always outperform constant / linear functions : it's only true for large enough values (f(x) = x^2 is smaller than g(x) = x for x = 0.5) ;) Actually, total drag will -decrease- after the transonic area is cleared but it will increase again after a while, because, as you said, the v^2 will finally overcome the drop in the drag coefficient value as the mach is going up. I agree on the fact that the gain will not be as spectacular as on the Figure 86, as the "squared" speed will limitate the drop, but nevertheless, the total drag should be lower at Mach 1.4 than at Mach 1 :) And what is beautifull is that you don't need the drag to be extremely lower at higher speed, just being the -same- than at slower speed is enough (mach 1.4 vs mach 0.9) : the weapon would be traveling faster but at the cost of the same thrust / energy :) Swingkid, if you want to go over a bump, you need more power, thus if dry thrust is not enough, you need to crank the A/B. In some cases, military power would be enough to do the work, but if you are right on the limit, you will need the extra power of the A/B to get you over the mach and then you will be able to stay there without A/B :) Anyway,you coud perhaps have a look at papers like those ones : http://www.ssdl.gatech.edu/Papers/Masters/APAS_Transonic_Drag_Miller.pdf page 5 you will find : Or again here : http://history.nasa.gov/SP-367/chapt5.htm#f86 just before our old friend Figure 86, you will clearly read : I'm sorry, but as I told you, firing a missile over the mach is common practice and gives you a nice range bonus :) If the Raptor and the Eurofighter are -designed- to fight at very high speed (and high altitude) it's for a very good reason : you want to fire your missile at at least mach 1.4... Incidently, the design of the russian MiG-29 is not absolutely foreign to this principle : if you have a very high T/W ratio and look down shoot down capability (even not a perfect one), you can take off, climb, go supersonic, fire your missiles and then go home, while staying out of reach of enemy fighters forced to fly -lower- because of the density of long / middle range SAMs or at least not figthing with an altitude / speed disavandtage on a GAI mission :) Cheers :) Hub.

I don't think this is true. Do you have a source for it? I'm not an aerodynamicist, but my understanding is that Mach 1 is an inefficient cruising speed, not a "bump" in the way you describe. That is - for a little extra energy, you could be cruising at Mach 1.3 instead of just Mach 1, thus making supersonic flight more cost-effective than transonic flight. But it's still extra energy, not less energy. If it was less draggy at Mach 1.3 than at Mach 1, then aircraft would quickly accelerate past the sound barrier on their own, even while the pilot was reducing the throttle. This doesn't happen, AFAIK. You still need to increase throttle all the way through transonic speed. Of course, missiles don't cruise at transonic speed at all, but rather just accelerate through it to supersonic speeds, where they encounter the levels of drag that affect their range much more. Hi Swingkid, :) You can get some very good information on the wave drag principle here : http://history.nasa.gov/SP-367/chapt5.htm#f86 If you look at the text above Figure 86, you can read : And the Figure 86 itself is pretty clear : Actually, if you google : "transonic+drag" the 4 first links will agree : http://aerodyn.org/Drag/speed-drag.html http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/q0104.shtml http://history.nasa.gov/SP-367/chapt5.htm http://www.adl.gatech.edu/classes/hispd/hispd04/Transonic_Drag_Rise.html To anwser your post : there is a mach / transonic "bump", and recent fighters like the Rafale equiped with a "light" loadout will have to use the afterburner to go mach 1.2, but should be able to stay supersonic with military power only :) To my opinion, there is no reason it should be different for missiles :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : I wish I could help you to modelize the transonic regime for minizap, but it's beyond my competence :unsure: I'm sorry :) PPS : would be nice though, to have supersonic missile shot vs subsonic ones correctly modelized in Lockon 1.13. Flying high would get a better incentive bonus :) PPPS : I know... Sweet dreams :D

Hi cool_t, :) Your assumption is right if you consider you are flying straight toward the threat, but not completely right otherwise. If you can crank enough and if you have a good radar gimball limit, you will make a missile shot a you run a longer way and make more corrections than if you were flying at lower speed. High speed crank is another tactic used by the F-22 or Eurofighter to "exhaust" weapons (eventually) launched at them :) Cheers :) Hub.

Hi SwingKid :) No :) As you know, you are usually supposed to get more drag when the speed increases :smilewink: But you will probably get more drag at mach 1 than at mach 1.3 :) (wave drag / shock-induced boundary-layer separation ) What I was trying to say, is that firing a missile over the mach, gives you a nice energy bonus, because going through the mach is quite energy consuming for everything that flies. I shouldn't have mislead you and use in a wrong manner the word "drag" but talk about energy. My bad :) Anyway, the transonic regime is not an 'efficient' one and until you clear mach 1.2, you are in a very specific area where you need more energy to accelerate than in low supersonic. To my opinion, it's definitly harder to modelize missile cinematic if the weapon is fired at subsonic speed because you need to take in account the transonic part of the flight, which modelization is an extremely tricky one :) And if as you said, flying below mach 1 is less energy consuming than over mach 1, provided you fly high enough and use the good steering algorithm, I'm sure that, going from mach 0.8 to mach 2.8 will cost more energy to a missile than going from mach 1.4 to mach 3.4 :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : Congratulations for Minizap, quite an achievement :) And I mean it :yes:

Hi Pilotasso :) I agree the Thrust control of the R-73 is almost useless, but on the other hand it gives a decent chance in a CAC if you are merging a MiG-29 with a F-15 :) I would say, that low PK with the Fox 2, to the exception of the R-27ET which is largely outperforming, is the best way to end up going in for guns :D And I wouldn't be surprised if it would be voluntary from ED : guns kills are the sweetest :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : besides AIM-9M were biting very, very easily on russian flares during the first Gulf War :)

Hi SwingKid, :) At launch, you want to fire your missile largely above the mach, because, going through the mach costs it's fair amount of energy : a missile is just a sleeker aircraft with short endurance and no way to land by itself :D The advantage is more than just giving a good initial velocity to the missile : it's saving him all the energy he would have spent otherwise to go through the transonic / mach 1.1 region :) About maximizing the A-Pole, F-Pole, you can always crank and slow down after launch. But and if you are cranking at really high speed fast (provided if you have a good gimball limit / large maximum angle to point your radar antenna) you will have a bit bonus, even though the A/F-Pole will be shorter than if you slow down : the E-Pole of the weapons fired at you will be definitl y smaller too, because you will make the missiles your opponent may have fired correct their course on a -longer- way. Of course, the minimum A/F-Pole is is better larger than the Fox 2 range of your target :D +10000 :) Hub.

Hi Yoda :) I agree with you : I don't see too many problems for a real AMRAAM launched at mach 1.4 at 30 000ft to reach mach 4. What I was willing to say is that you have to get quite high and fast to be able to do that : firing an AMRAAM at mach 0.8, 10 000ft will not give the same result. But unfortunatly, going supersonic in Lockon before firing your missile is not modelized. It's as if all the shots are considered taken at the same subsonic speed (remember the way the NEZ is computed ? ;)) As a result, top speed is not what educated guesses could suggest, but overall range seems just under under what it should be. About the 30nm range, I was thinking about AIM-120A/B, not an AIM-120C-5 that should have a far longer reach :) Concerning the 0 AoA, lofting the missile optimally by pointing the nose of your plane at the exact required angle is a good way to have the optimal AoA to start with, but the way the autopilot is optimized is making all the difference, because lofting is also a very good way to reduce the lift the the missile wings must produce, and less lift means... less induced drag. That's the hardest part to modelize, as the software algorithms must be now quite sophisticated and totally top secret :) Another issue is friction and the temperature the missile will have to sustain : it is probably possible to make an A/A missile go mach 6, but I wonder about the kind of materials to use for the tip / leading edges and mostly how to dissipate the heat, as heat is producing thermal noise, always a bad thing for a radar receiver :) Finally, I still wonder is the propellant is not conceived in such a way that it gives longer burn and less peak thrust at high altitude :) Like something burning slower, colder, producing less energy at there is less drag on a longer period :) That's just and idea I got and I may be completely wrong, but I wanted to share :) Thanks for your long post by the way, always good to swap ideas :) Cheers :) Hub.

/AUTO BUMP :D Hub.

Thanks a lot, but I'm afraid you just postponed the release of the AdA MOd v2 by at least a couple of weeks : I don't think anyone in our team will be able to do any serious modding while they can -play- with your new A-10 :D Sorry, but I had to say it :D Hub. PS : good for me that I played the A-10 a couple of hours last week, I won't lose any play time this evening after installing your mod :thumbup:

Finally !!! Thanks for your amazing work and thinking about the compatibility with the AdA Mod, you guys are monsters !!! :D This is truly beautifull :) Hub. PS : about the dynamic markings etc... we did the same thing for the AdA Mod V2 a couple of months ago : like you, all aircraft numbers / insignia etc... are available outside the main texture and can be chosen separatly :) This principle just rocks !!! :) *EDIT* : typo :)

Hi You have the museum "Le Bourget" (see here : http://www.mae.org/index.php?id=36), it's a bit far away from the center of Paris and most of the displays are civilian planes / old french aircraft (no Mirage 2000 or recent fighters), but it's alway nice to spend some time there :) You should come next year : there will be the big Airshow (every 2 years, this year should be in Farnborough) :) Cheers :) Hub.

The Jaguar Gr will not be forgotten :) We still don't know if it will make it in the AdA Mod V2, but it will fly in Lockon sooner or later :) No problem theGozr :) Just tell us when you are back in business :) Thanks a lot Yeniceri :) You are too kind :) Cheers all :) Hub.

Hi Teknetium :) It depends :) It would say, Fox 2 in Lockon are just too good, Fox 1 are more or less ok (chaff modelization vs pulse doppler radar is just revolting...) and Fox 3 are not up to what they are supposed to do :) It's only my personnal opinion, but I think, ED did it purposefully, to have some balance in the game between the Fox 3 fighters (F-15, MiG-29S) and the others and "help" the players to go to the merge, where the real fun is :D It has to be this way in a game :) Personnaly I would have prefered to have to "pay" for the missile I use, on line or during the mission (Fox 3 = expensive = do not waste them, you won't get many of them) like in the old game like Strike Commander or ATF / US Navy Fighter, but it seems that the "mid core" way does not interest the game editors anymore (hardcore seems to be the future, like BS or Fighter Ops, a shame, as the "casual" gamer will perhaps buy the sim, but probably play it or enjoy it much...) :) Cheers :) Hub.

Hi Goya :) For a RWR / SPO in use at the time frame of LO (mid 90s) : - firing a Fox 1 should not raise a different alert than a radar lock, considered that the missiles are guided by the same monopulse emission than the one used for tracking a target. As a result, in real life, most of the time, you had to notch preventively, because you never really knew if a missile was fired or not. Getting spiked should make you -really- think about it... :) - firing a Fox 3 should not raise any alarm than a TWS scan. It was only when the missile was really close to its targer (different from when it goes active), that the RWR would start raising an alert (ie at best, just enought time to pull the black and yellow magic handle...) :) Bye bye barrel roll, orthogonal roll, ninja pull up etc... Fox 3 would be far more lethal, as they would hit you without warning... - there are no false alerts (friendly ECM), all warnings are raised almost always immediatly - the range estimation to the emitter is just too perfect ! It makes possible to know exactly at what distance the radar is, and in the case of the Fox 3, to time perfectly your defensive manoeuvers. That's spoiling the "realism", but brings as well a lot of fun for people who likes stunts and going to the merge :) Making the RWR / SPO less godlike would give the opportunity to make long range kills with the R-27ER and medium range kills with the AIM-120, without changing the way the missile are modelized :) The balance of the game could be preserved, but people that plays Lockon for its "mid core" modelization would be probably disappointed : fighting without knowing if you were shot at or not and exploding suddenly without warnings would probably be too much of a frustration for them :) (and me probably : as I have spent recently far more time modding than playing the game :D and the easiness is easy :D ) Cheers :) Hub.

Hi Yoda :) I finally found the time to post something : +10 000. :) The RWR really does not have much advantages : - the radar antenna is really optimized for the central frequency it uses - a radar can integrate its own signal almost perfectly, because even though it is jumping in frequency, it knows the exact bandwith to process. - like you precised as well, a RWR must cover a large bandwith and does not have the advantage of being very directionnal Word for word : "The range of the missile is approximately 30 miles with a cruising speed of approximately Mach 4". :) 30 nm sounds to me more like the RAERO than the Rmax1 :) ("The RAERO cue represents the maximum kinematic range of the AMRAAM and is the longestrange shot that a pilot can take a shot and have a chance of hitting the target. RAERO assumes that the target will not maneuver; that the missile is perfect; and optimum loft conditions are achieved.") As a result, I would tend to think that Mach 4 is more a maximum than a nominal speed.(and if the missile is fired during a CAC at low altitude on a target that is coming hot, I doubt it would use a lofted trajectory and reach a mach 4 speed :) ) About your missile behavior analysis : thanks a lot for your nice schema :) I (and a couple of buddies of mine) reached the same kind of conclusion :) I do agree with you about the general principles, as the tests I / we ran were against a target running hot (and not cold) like in your schema :) By the way, the high drag value of the AMRAAM under 1500km/h is probably related to the fact that the missile is beginning to run out of speed and not that far from its stall speed : with very small aerodynamic surfaces, optimized for supersonic manoeuvring, it does not sound like such a bad idea to me :) Cheers :) Hub. PS : sorry for answering you kind of late, my life has been just too busy those last weeks :)

Hi Yeniceri :) Thanks for the update, that's just great !!! :thumbup: Hub. PS : a few remarks : We spent as well, among other things, some time on a new number system for the AdA Mod v2 :) There is a fair chance that we did the same thing actually :D If it is the case, you would have some very little issues with the shadow under the number :) Thanks a lot for thinking about it and especially to Highwayman for working on the compatibility with the AdA Mod. PPS : you are guys are just doing a wonderfull job !!! :thumbup: