BlackPixxel

How can it create a screen when it is not a solid object? The particles will spread out in the air and leave plenty of room for radiation to pass through to the target and back. The reflected radiation from the chaff will be filtered out by the notch filter, and radiation that passes through will be used for guiding. The R-27ER will easily track the target thanks to its doppler return that differs alot from the chaff that has the same speed as the ground. If it is really that 100% solid screen, then why does the AIM-120 need SIGNIFICANTLY more chaff to be defeated in this situation? A newer seeker makes no difference when the target is invisible behind a solid wall. Plus the Flankers stronger radar should give the R-27ER a big advantage, as the reflected radiation from the target that passes through the chaff will be much stronger than the return of the small AIM-120 radar.

Is this the expected behaviour? Does the R-27ER not have a notch filter to filter out the chaffs when engaging hot or cold targes? https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=254501

When chasing a target with enough speed difference to have a solid radar lock and firing a R-27ER at that target, there is a high chance that the R-27ER will stop tracking completely and fly straight if that target deploys very few chaffs. The R-27ER is not even turning into the chaff, so it is different than the chaff mechanism when the target is notching. The R-27ER will simply stop guiding and fly straight instead of maneuvering towards the target. In the following example, the first R-27ER is defeated with a handfull of chaffs. The second R-27ER loses the target to a single old chaff that was dropped long before and dissapeared 3 seconds after the missile launch. Only the third missile is able to hit. When the target deploys chaffs in a regular interval it is able to defeat any incoming R-27ER in a tailchase scenario. This does not make any sense. The chaff should be filtered out by the notch filter, and the chaff is not a solid object. The reflective elements of the chaff have enough room for radiation from the target to pass through, so the missile should not have any issues hitting the target.

ED is aware https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4092722&postcount=6949 The F-14 now got the updated Aim-7 from the F-15C/F-18, which has this bug. It was written in the Aim-7 thread that the Aim-7 is not chaffable and the tests in the thread showed that it does not go for chaff, but it got the new Aim-7 anyway.

When inverted <1500 m radar does not work at all in BVR mode. But it still does work in close combat modes (vertical scan, helmet, ...) with one limitation: The target has to be within 5 km (the aspect does not matter) in order to be able to lock and track it. This 5 km range is the same for all three planes - MiG-29, Su-27 and Su-33. Why does the radar work within this limitation in a close combat mode, but not in BVR mode? Why is there no radar memory when you are inverted below 1500 m at longer range? (The lock will not start to fade with the symbol blinking, the lock will INSTANTLY disapear.) Why is the Sukhoi unable to lock a head on bandit in BVR mode when inverted? The radar has a notch filter to deal with the ground clutter, so the head on bandit will stand out from anything else. Why does the notch filter work when a bandit is notching (bandit will disapear), but not when a bandit is hot+inverted (bandit disapears again, even though all the clutter should disapear)? A hot bandit in the ground clutter is the perfect situation for the notch filter. Nothing except for the bandit has a high closure speed, and all the terrain clutter + the even slower sideobe clutter will be ignored. But not with the DCS Sukhoi/MiG. When inverted below 1500 m a the radar should be able to at least pick up got bandits without any impact on range.

Here is a track for the Su-33 g-limiter issue. I have 2 ECM pods, 2 ET and 2 R-27ER below the belly and 25% fuel. When I dive down and pull without g limiter overwrite the plane pulls over 10g and after short time snaps its wings. I do not understand why stress damage is implemented on all modern russian birds (Su-27, Su-33, MiG-29) but not on any modern american plane (F-15C, F-16, F-18 ) from ED. At least the F-15C has existed long enough that such a feature could have been added. It can pull 12.5g forever with full external tanks + full weapon load. su_33_snap.trk

Here is a video showing the bug: The missiles all track perfectly until I turn off my radar. The expected behaviour for the missile is to keep flying towards the last known intercept point. What the missiles do instead is they do a hard turn into a chaff that the target deployed earlier. This is impossible, as I have turned off my radar. Nothing is illuminating that chaff. And still the R-27ER leave the intercept heading and go for the chaffs AFTER I turned off radar. This bug is a big problem when engaging targets. If the target notches briefly in a look down situation, the radar of the Flanker will lose lock and it switches to IRST backup. In this moment, the R-27ER should keep flying towards the last known intercept heading. When the target turns back in quickly and the Flanker regains radar lock, the missile might still be able to reacquire him and kill him. But due to this bug as soon as the radar turns off and switches to IRST backup, the missile will make a hard turn into a chaff that the target has deployed earlier. Even though there is no radiation illuminating that chaff. It is now trashed and unable to reacquire the bandit. Same happens when a bandit turns cold and drops 1 chaff. The radar will lose lock briefly, and due to the bug the missile will go for the chaff as soon as the radar is off. As a result it has no chance of reacquiring and hitting the target. Another situation where the bug is killing the R-27ER is when you exceed the radar gimbal limits for a splitsecond. When you turn back in and the target is above your nose and hot enough, the Flanker will automatically switch to an IRST lock. This means radar is off, and if there is a chaff in the air the missile will leave the last known intercept heading and turn into the chaff due to the bug. The correct behaviour for the missile would be to stay on the last known intercept heading, and when the Flanker switches from EO to radar lock quick enough it should be able to reacquire the target. I hope this will be fixed.

Chizh maybe it was not clear what I meant from the text and the trackfile, so here is a video: You say that if the launch platform turns radar off or loses radar lock the missile will go for the last calculated intercept point. They do not, as I show in this video. If there is a chaff in the air, they will turn into the chaff AFTER radar was turned off, which is physically impossible. They fly straight through that chaff that they did not even know was there when radar was still on, as all of them were going for the target before I turned radar off. I am here intentionally provoking the issue by switching radar off. But the same bug will occur when fighting a bandit without turning radar off intentionally, such as a bandit notching for a short moment (as soon as radar lock is lost the missile will turn towards a chaff due to the bug) or exceeding radar gimbal limits for a second (when you turn back in and the target is above you, it will switch to EO only lock on its own if the IR signature is strong enough. This means radar is off again and the missile goes instantly towards a chaff and is trashed due to this bug). Under these situations when reacquiring radar lock quick enough the R-27ER should still have a chance to hit the target, as it should go for the last known intercept point and be somewhat in the direction of the target. But due to the bug chances are about 0%, as it flies into a chaff as soon as radar is lost. I hope that this issue can be fixed soon.

Another trackfile and tacview file to show the issue. As soon as I turn radar off, the missiles that were tracking perfectly before jump onto a chaff instead of going towards the last intercept point. SARH+CHAFF+UNLOCK BUG.zip

Please take a close look at the trackfile or at the tacview. The missiles track the target , but I intentionally turn off radar. Then - AFTER - radar is turned of, the missiles turn away from the intercept point into a chaff that the target dropped earlier. This is the wrong behaviour. A SARH missile cannot switch from target to a chaff AFTER the launch platform turns off radar illumination because then it is blind. All it can do is fly to the last known intercept point, as you wrote, hoping that the launch platform regains STT lock on the target soon. But this is not what happens in DCS when there are chaffs in the air.

R-27ER / SARH BUG There is a major bug with the R-27ER and maybe with all SARH missiles that are using the old code: When a target is engaged with R-27ER and radar lock is dropped (either intentionally or because of radar limitations) the R-27ER that were flying towards the target will instantly turn into a nearby chaff. This should not happen at all, since switching off the radar means that there is no more radiation that could reflect of the chaff. The missile should have no clue where a chaff could be. The correct behaviour for a R-27ER when radar is switched of would be to keep going in the current direction or towards the last known target, but not to find a chaff and turn into it. I added both a trackfile and a tacview file. You can see that the R-27ER's are tracking nicely, but as soon as I intentionally unlock the target they turn away into a chaff each time. This is a huge problem, as it is currently enough to drop one chaff and turn cold when fighting vs the R-27ER. When the target turns cold, he is 90° to the radar for a brief moment, so radar turns off and the plane switches to IRST. This will cause the bug to happen, where the R-27ER will suddenly change direction into the chaff even though there is no radar illuination. When the target is >90° and cold the radar will switch back on, but the R-27ER is already trashed due to this bug. I already reported this and the AIM-7 chaff resistance in the "Bugs and Probles -> Weapon Issues" section of the forum, but maybe not much attention is paid to this section. SARH+CHAFF+UNLOCK.trk SARH+CHAFF+UNLOCK.zip

It is a good staring point to adjust the two IR signature valies in comparison to existing ED modules, as they achieve quite realistic results: The Su-27SK manual states a head on (PPS) detection range of afterburning targets with 90-100 km. It also says that the lock on range is about 70% of the detection range. It is very likely that the OLS-27 (IRST of Su-27) was tested against other russian fighters, which would be other Su-27 or MiG-29, to come up with the values in the manual. The Su-27 in DCS can find and track another afterburning Su-27 in a head on aspect at 65 km, which is pretty much the 70% of 90-100 km. So this value is spot on. The F-14B can now be adjusted relative to the Su-27 value. Depending on how much power (not temperature) the afterburning F-14 is estimated to radiate in the IR spectrum compared to the Su-27 the IR signature values can be chosen. I don't want the F-14 to be "nerfed", I just want to be able to have realistic tracking ranges when engaging the F-14. The current IR-coefficient with afterburner suggests that the F-14 emitts about 1/4 of the, as I explained, pretty realistic Su-27 radiation, which does not seem correct.

The ER is so easy to defeat with chaff that it is often not possible to use the kinetic advantage. The R-77 is much harder to notch/chaff.

One Su-33 for me please!

Just a little update: With the latest Open Beta patch the F-18 IR signature got adjusted. The head on detection range in EOS is now 55 km with afterburner. The very low F-14 head on detection range with afterburner (35 km) is now even stranger.

You may want to do some more tests to see if the new AIM-7 will ever go for a chaff. Right now it seems that chaff is not implemented for the new ED AIM-7, no matter which one. Even the old CW AIM-7E never goes for a chaff on a notching + chaffing bandit.

There is unfortunately no sharing of flight member targets, not even of the flight member positions in multiplayer.

Thank you for taking a look at the issue! I uploaded two trackfiles that provoke the wing snap by going very fast and pulling without overwriting the g limiter. Still the Su-33 pulls more g than it can handle and loses its "paperwings". I see two issues here: The limiter should not allow the Su-33 to pull more g than the airframe can handle, and the stress damage seems overdone. Especially compared to other ED DCS modules that are able to pull 12.5g with full weapon loadout and full external tanks forever. Su-33.trk Su-33_2.trk

The current Aim-7 (at least when fired from the F-15C or the F/A-18C) has complete chaff & notch resistance. This can not be intentional and has to be a bug. The following tacviews show the issue. 4 Aim-7E never lose the chaffing target even for a moment, while from 6 R-27ER 3 are chaffed. The R-27ER is a ~1985 missile with monopulse seeker, while the Aim-7E is from 1963 and if I remember correctly it has cw illumination. The R-27ER should have a big advantage when it comes to chaff rejection. All variants of the Aim-7 familiy seem to be unaffected by chaffs (but apparently not the ones fired from the F-14B). I hope this issue will be fixed :thumbup: Aim-7 chaff.zip R-27ER chaff.zip

When engaging a target with the R-27ER and you either intentionally unlock it or lose lock when the target starts to notch, then there is a high chance that the missile will turn away from the target into a chaff that the target deployed earlier. This is completely incorrect, as when unlocking or losing lock there is no more radar illumination. As a result, the missile is physically unable to find the chaff that has been deployed earlier. This is a significant issue, as the radar in most cases loses lock when the target turns around and switches to EO backup. During this moment, the missile will, even tough there is no radiation, turn towards a chaff and will be trashed. The Tacview-File shows what is happening: I fire 4 R-27ER and unlock. As soon as I unlock, the first R-27ER suddenly switches its direction and flies towards a chaff, without any radar lock. Then I lock the target again. One R-27ER gets chaffed while the target is locked even though the target is not even close to a notch (another issue). Then I unlock again, and the two remaining R-27ER turn away from the correct intercept heading towards a chaff. The correct behaviour for the missile when the lock is lost is to fly to the last known intercept point. I hope this bug will be fixed. R-27ER issue.zip

Does the Hornet Aim-7M have the same behaviour as the Aim-7MH, where it cannot be chaffed at all? It looks like this from the table on the first page, so the missile may not be working correct either.

Ironmike already said they will take a second look into it, and none of you have anything to add as you don't have any data either. End of story.

IR signature directly affects the ability of an IR missile to track the target. The current IR missile sensitivities are in DCS are designed for the current IR coefficients to have realistic lock on ranges. The F-14 needs an IR coefficient that is in line with all the other modules (IF it emitts more radiation than the hornet, then its IR coefficient needs to be bigger) so that the missile has a realistic tracking ability. Also, are you all saying that ED or any other module developer has done no research to come to the values that they currently have in DCS?

But there is a big problem: The radar still uses doppler to find targets. Ground clutter received from side lobes does not matter for a hot bandit. It should be basically impossible for the radar to lose a hot bandit as all the other radar returns from the ground have a very different closure speed, and the sidelobe returns even having the lowest closure speed in a head on engagement. The current implementation with complete loss of radar below 1500 m is way to generalized and under the most important condition, which is when you are fighting a head on bandit, the radar just fails for no reason. For the same reason (doppler return) a R-27R/ER should not go for a chaff against a head on bandit, which it currently does unfortunately. The proper way of implementing the inverted radar behavior would be to make it have no effect on bandits that are directly hot, and make it have the highest effect on bandits that are cold (As cold bandits have the closest speed to sidelobe returns).

But that only means that the antenna is stabilized when the aircraft flies within those limits. When the roll limit is exceeded it should still be able to point towards the target in the correct azimut and elevation, only that the roll angle will no longer be aligned with the horizon. The roll angle of the antenna when exceeding 110-120° will no longer be level to the horizon, which could degrade tracking a bit as the polarisation may not be perfect anymore. But this is no reason for the radar to give up completely (unless this is exactly stated in the manual).