BlackPixxel

Continuing discussion started in a different threat: Only that the ground clutter will be filtered out when a target that is flying towards you, because the doppler shift of the ground is far less than the doppler shift of the target. They are in completely different spectra that do not overlap. This is even said in some MiG-29 document. Using Yandex OCR: Even the DCS F-15C manual says that. It is talking about targets that are flying away where the reduced sidelobe compensation can break a lock. But in no MiG-29 document I have seen anything about the inability of the radar to work at all when <1500m and inverted. How are radar guided missiles engaging targets in look down situations without a compensation antenna? Is the seeker of a R-23R missile better than the radar of a MiG-29/Su-27?

Let's go back to the correct threat for this radar behaviour https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=245181&page=5

The look down range is of course less, and that is the case in DCS even for FC3 radars. But the look down range becomes zero as soon as you are inverted.

Against a incoming target the frequencies of the ground return are in a different spectrum than the frequencies of the targets return. When the incoming target is already locked there is no way that it will get lost in the increased ground clutter when going inverted, because the radar filters out all frequencies that are not within the frequency range of the current target.

The radar does not need to be aligned with the horizon on roll to track a target. In all the modes except for the BVR mode the radar is locked on roll, so there it is never aligned as soon as you roll slightly. And the F-15C manual clearly says that the sidelobe issue is only for cold bandits. When the targets is hot the compensation antenna can be wherever it wants, because the frequency range of the targets return will always be out of the frequency range of the ground return in this case. In BVR the R27ER should hit the target before the AMRAAM it fired even goes actve. But we are drifting away from the topic a little..

CFD cannot explain why Fox 1 go for a chaff when the lock is lost for a splitsecond or the radar switches OFF for a moment CFD cannot explain why Fox 3 will always find their initial target when they are 15km from it even without any support. CFD cannot explain how smart or dumb a missile seeker is. CFD cannot explain why the radar of the DCS Flanker/Fulcrum shuts off when flying inverted at lower altitudes. Missile kinematics are the least problem, and they are propably not what Falcon wrote about. Plus a R-27ER/ET with the correct kinematic peformance would be a very nasty surprise for any AIM-120C carrier.

In the attached tackview and trackfile you see: -me flying with an AI wingman trailing me with a distance of 800m with the same speed, altitude and heading -an F-15 that fires an Aim-120C at me and then gets deleted when the missile is 65 km from me -I will maneuver after the F-15 has been deleted to be below and behind my wingman -the AI will not change its initial course What is the expected behaviour of the missile in this case? -as the F-15 is deleted, the missile is no longer receiving updates via datalink -the missile should predict the target movement based on the known data and fly to the last known intercept point -this last known intercept point would be the point if I flew straight ahead without changing my speed, altitude and heading, because I flew straight when the missile was still supported by the F-15 -the missile would go active 15km from the last known intercept point and try to find me But I am maneuvering away from my initial course. What should the missile continue to do? -the wingman did not change its course, so it flies exactly where I would have flown if I did not change my course -the missile would not find me, but it would find my wingman at the expected interception point -as the wingman has exactly the same parameters that I would have had if I did not maneuver, the missile would not have been able to tell the difference and should happily detect and track my wingman What is happening in DCS when the datalink support is dropped? -the missile completely ignores my wingman, even though it flies almost straight towards him -the missile "goes active" exactly 15km from my location and instantly finds me, even though I am far away from the expected point of intercept -the missile is tracking me now Conclusion: In DCS the missiles always know where the target is even when radar support is dropped. They will track the target movements very slightly due to this bug: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=258817. As soon as their distance to the assigned target is less than 15km (and the target is inside the seekers large FOV), they go active and instantly track the target. No matter how much the target maneuvered away from the last known intercept point. No matter if there is another target that is much closer to the last known intercept point. Another important aspect that is completely ignored due to this bug: The radar gimbal speed of the missile seeker is not affecting the missile. Right now the seeker points directly to the target once it goes active due to the missile knowing exactly where the target is. But when the target is not exactly on the expected intercept point, then the seeker should have to start searching. Like a radar on a fighter it would do a scan pattern. For example close to the expected intercept point first and then wider and wider. As the angular speed of the seeker and radar processing power are limited, the missile needs needs more time to find the target the more angular separation it has to the expected point of intercept. And even more, there could even be the ability of the target to not be acquired by the seeker at all even when it is within the seekers FOV when it maneuvers in such a way that it is never hit by the actual radar beam. While SARH missiles in DCS propably have the same issue, they do not benefit from this issue due to another bug (will it ever get fixed?): https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=253434 They will always go for the chaff at the movement the lock has been lost, and then they are trashed forever. Tacview-20200125-121128-DCS-radarMissile.zip.zip radarGuidedMissileBug.trk

The changes where not that big. It still only has 50% of the IR radiation of a Flanker when flying without afterburner With afterburner the difference is not as big, but it still has a 20% lower detection range. Who knows what the AI is doing. Maybe going afterburner in the hornet and not in the Flanker.

F-18 has a significantly lower IR signature in the game. Maybe the flares are of a different type and less effective? But I highly doubt that the 9x fired on a Flanker is worse than a 73 fired on a hornet. The test does not tell much. Maybe the Hornet AI fired less flares than the Flanker AI because it has less in its inventory.

Be glad that it works so well with the Amraam. With the R-27ER 5 out of 6 missiles miss in most cases, and you have to keep the lock on the target until the missile hits while the RWR is screaming...

Use [RCTRL and +] or [RCTRL and -] to adjust the targeting box size. With a smaller target box it should no longer track large structures.

Noone is asking for the R-27R/ER to be a completely notch proof and chaff resistant missile. But the current behaviour is really poor. Take a look at this: A plane with huge RCS is engaged. The targets aspect is 40° different than the shooters heading. The target is engaged by the R-27ER, and the R-27ER goes for the second!! chaff as soon as it was deployed. How is this possible? The target flies faster than 756 km/h. With the 40° heading difference the targets radial closure speed compared to the ground is -480km/h. When the chaff is deployed, it will rapidly slow down and present a stationary reflector. The missile will not see it, as it filters out all doppler returns that are outside of the targets doppler frequency. For the chaff to be within the same frequency band as the targets doppler return, the bandpass (bank?) in the missile would have to be so wide that it allows for both frequencies to pass. Even a 10 years old could create a bandpass that is narrow enough to only have the targets doppler return by reading 5 minutes in a book. But somehow ED seems to think that soviet/russian engineers are unable to do so? For the chaff to work, the target should at least somewhat try to reduce its radial closure speed compared to the ground, so that the doppler returns of chaff and target fall within the same frequency bin. This is absolutely not the case in this example. In this case the target can also not be hidden behind the chaff, as the missile is coming from the 40° offset. R-27R/ER may not have a digital computer, but that does not mean that there is no sophisticated signal processing at all.

MiG-29A please!

Looks like it is not a true tracking, the missile just follows changes in the targets flight path. So if the target starts to turn left, the missile will also turn left. But it will not go for the actual target object, it will just go left as long as the target is still turning. It also affects Fox1, not just Fox3. Still, this is not a realistic behaviour. When the target is unocked, the missile should not follow any target movement unless it is already using its own seeker.

I see, the ER unlocked will "track" the target, but it will only do 1.5g (including countering gravity). It does not really follow the target, it just turns whenever the target turns. But still the missile will never hit the target. I tried firing an R-27ER, watched the missile in F6 going directly to the maneuvering target. Moments before the imact I turned the radar off and watched the missile instantly turn away from the intercept hitting and flying far in front of the target. This non-radar ER guidance is nothing but a "visual effect". It is not actually going for the target as a object in 3d space, but somehow its movement correlates with the target movement. In fact all Fox 1 in DCS are plagued by this bug, which means that in almost all cases losing lock even for a split second will mean that the missile will magically turn away from its last intercept course into a chaff: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=253434 So on a server where players use chaff you should never see ER's "guiding" without lock, as without lock they are instantly trashed due to the bug. Tacview-20200107-193155-DCS-ins.zip.zip Tacview-20200107-194418-DCS.zip.zip

Odd, I never had such a thing happening to me. Maybe some AI thing? Is the missile able to kill you or will it just track you without ever proximity fuzing?

You mean homing on a jammer? ER will never guide on a target that is not locked in STT unless it is a HOJ shot.

I wonder if the targets that we see in regular scan modes on the HDD are realistic, or if it will only show them when the scan is done in TWS/SNP in the real Flanker?

I think the targets from the "TWS" are not accurate enough. At least that is said in some MiG-29 document. There it is said that the coordiantes from TWS/SNP are not accurate enough to guide a weapon (via radio correction/datalink).

Ok, got you! Just for fun: Your and the targets altitude is about 1750m (width of the speed line equals about 500m, your altitude line looks slightly less than 4 times as long, hard to tell as it looks like it is a photo taken from the screen. May as well be 2000m because the 500m/width is just a rough approximation) The length of the line on the bottom left of the display equals the length for the speed of the plane at 1500 km/h. But it is a little harder to judge the speed because you have to rotate the line in your head and also ignore the IFF mark. Looks like around 1000 km/h for the target.

Now go into a stall and you will see that the lengths of the lines of the target do not change. But yours do. In other words: If you would sit in the cockpit you could take a ruler and meassure the length of the lines, and from these lengths you would be able to calculate the target parameters (if you knew the factors that you woud have to multiply the lengths with). But maybe we mean the same thing. One could meassure at what altitude and speed the lines equal the length of the bottom left range scale (it never changes size). Then you can read the line length relative to the range scale for "absolute" numbers. For very low altitudes it may be better to read the altitude in "widths" of the speed line, if you know what altitude the one width of the speed line equals to.

What the display shows is not relative, it is absolute. A certain width or length could be translated into a certain altitude or speed. But you can of course use the bandits line lengths in relation to the line length of your own plane to judge altitude/speed.

Su-27 pitches down, Su-33 pitches up when disabling ACS.

It still has a PFM (professional flight model). So flight model wise it is on the same level as full fidelity planes. But with autothrust and keeping the big circle directly in the center of the crosshair the Su-33 can be landed very well.

Is this topic about carrier landings? If yes - try autothrust! It is incredible easy with autothrust + ILS to land on the carrier.