TLTeo

I vaguely remember reading that the worry/idea was simply that Soviet naval aviation would have been able to have such large bomber groups that a fair number of them were almost guaranteed to get a missile launch off (even assuming they would go up against every Tomcat on the boat, each carrying 6 AIM-54s), hence the need to shoot down both bombers and ASMs. I don't have a source so I could easily be completely wrong though

LOL Wikipedia. Wow.

His original title literally had "turn rate" in the title though. Besides, more available g (for a given airspeed) equals higher turn rate and all that...

> complains about sustained turn rate > does not know what an excess power chart is Peak DCS forum right there.

This would greatly amuse me, and it would make for an excellent social experiment too

Do you have any proof of that? The RWR is supposed to talk to the HARM in SP/PB mode (which indeed is missing in the Viper), not in TOO. That's supposed to be exclusively the HARM seeker head afaik.

I kind of agree that they are more of the same, but also, the other 4th gen jets have a2g capability so they are arguably less "same-y", the French -5F does not

Maybe they adjusted the TOO scan time to be more in line with the Viper's HAS mode (ie, much worse)?

RCS is a single value hard-coded in DCS .lua files, no more, no less. Afaik the radars in the game all take it into account in the same consistent manner through the radar equation Harlikwin posted in that thread, so you're basically claiming that every radar in DCS is wrong. Personally, I'm very skeptical of that claim. As the radar equation shows, detection range scales roughly as the fourth root of the RCS (ie, it's not as sensitive to it as you would imagine - that is why stealth aircraft need extremely low RCS to be effective for instance), meaning that if you change your RCS from 5.5 to 80 detection range will increase by a factor (80/5.5)^(1/4) = 1.95, given identical conditions otherwise. Knowing how far we can detect a Flanker, and assuming equal closure rate (which is not great - I would imagine in your case it was less than the 970 knots, reducing detection range somewhat), the detection range of your A-380 should be 48*1.95 = 93 nm for HPRF, 26*1.95 = 50.7 for MPRF. I would expect interleaved to be in between those two, which is exactly what you are finding. Per the same data I posted, in previous versions, in RWS on a 20 bar scan, you would find 97*1.95 = 189nm in HPRF, 34*1.95 = 66 nm in MPRF, and somewhere in between in interleaved, which is what you're claiming should happen, more or less. Again, considering that the Hornet's radar in 2.5.6 was known to over-perform grossly, and that now it's where we would expect it to be, it is highly, highly unlikely that there is any bug for higher RCS targets. If you want to test it more thoroughly, I suggest you a) get your closure up to 970 knots at the point when you detect the target and b) use HPRF only.

Alright I'm just confused now. We really, really need to start comparing apples to apples, which we clearly are not doing.

That would still make the -68 considerably better than the -73 and RDI though, which is every bit as suspicious.

I also doubt that the module most DCS player want is an upgraded version of an airframe that is already in the game. I suspect the return on investment on, say, the Strike Eagle, will be way way higher than a new Mirage 2000, even factoring in re-using the external model and FM.

Medium PRF hasn't really changed going into 2.7, so I doubt that's the case (assuming the change tflash mentioned is real, and not a weird placebo effect). Also, I forgot to reply to this: Sure, but range scales as ~fourth root of power, so increasing power by a factor 4 should increase your range by ~35% if I did the math right. That is not nearly enough to account for the current performance of the APG-68 compared to the APG-73.

The JA-37 also had a fighter to fighter datalink a few years before the Flanker was introduced iirc. And obviously, GCI to fighter datlinks had been around since the late 50s/early 60s on both sides.

It's not a bug. The APG-73 was grossly over-performing before 2.7, and is now more in line with what one would expect (at least in high PRF - it's pretty bad in medium PRF) from a radar in its class, e.g.

That's like asking if the Viggen can somehow be turned into a Draken. They are completely different aircraft, and if they ever come to DCS, it will be as a wholly separate module.

That's included in that equation in the S/N and T_s terms.

Yea my point was for the test to be as model-independent as possible. Obviously that comes with more caveats, but I figured I would leave the details of how radars work to those who know more than me

Disclaimer: this post is written as if it was a dry and boring scientific article. If you can't be bothered to read it all, I put a TLDR at the end. I suggest you look at the plots though. A lot of discussion has gone into radar performance recently, whether that be because the Hornet A/A radar was made worse, the Viper has very long detection ranges, or your odd complaint about the Jeff's radar. The simplest arguments possible are "the antenna size is the most important factor in determining radar performance", and "radar X is more modern than radar Y, therefore it should perform better". Recently, someone on Reddit tested the performance of all a/a radars in the game, with the basic picture being that the pre 2.7 Hornet and Viper are grossly outperforming, the Jeff being a bit on the edge, and the FC3 modules under-performing (as one would expect from a non-FF module, really): In this post I thought I would try to chip in the argument, by comparing the data provided in that graph as a function of radar year of introduction and reported antenna size. There are a few caveats here. First, I couldn't find the Jeff's KLJ-7 antenna size anywhere, so I estimated it to be identical to the Viper's, and the Mig 21's, for which I took the F-5E's. Assume some ~10% uncertainty on that data. Second, for the entry in service I took the date when the specific block of the aircraft we have in DCS was first delivered, rather than when the very first variant of the aircraft was delivered, with the exception of the Viper, where I chose the delivery of the first MSIP Block 50 as reported by Wikipedia. This puts the Mirage, Hornet and Viper all between the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s. I disregarded FC3 radar performance because we know it's borked anyway. Finally, I included the Hornet both pre and post 2.7, to estimate whether the change to its radar performance may have been too harsh or not. I plotted detection range, as reported in the plot above, against both year of introduction and antenna size, with the goal of estimating which one is the most important factor in radar performance. I also only considered RWS radar modes, and divided the sample in a high-PRF sample (consisting of the F-14, F-18, Mirage and JF-17) and mid/low-PRF sample (consisting of the F-18, JF-17 in medium and interleaved modes, F-16, Mig-21 and F-5). First, let's consider the case of high PRF radars. The data is as follows: Antenna size correlates very strongly with performance, year of introduction does not. This strongly supports the argument that a more modern radar may have better e.g. ECCM, or trackfile-buliding algorithms, but these things are not represented very well in DCS, while raw range performance (which is what does matter in our simplified world) is mainly set by the size of the antenna. The JF-17 is somewhat an outlier in this picture, but it's not too far from the trend in the rest of the data. As a side note, this also shows why the premier air dominance platforms of their time like the Tomcat, Eagle, Flanker, F-22 et al, all carry huge radars. Second, let's consider the medium and low PRF radars/modes: [ The same general picture applies here, with two caveats. First, the APG-68 is way, way better than every other radar. To some extent it makes sense given that's how the radar is designed in the first place, but I find it strongly suspicious that it could be *that* much better than anything else. Second, the APG-73 in medium PRF looks pretty mediocre both pre and post nerf. Finally, let's remove the two radars that we know to be performing too well: the 2.5.6. era APG-73, and the APG-68, and check the data again: This further strengthens how mediocre the medium-PRF APG-73 currently is. Additionally, there does seem to be some trend of improving performance over time, but it's kind of a circular argument. If you believe the Jeff is not over-performing, then you can justify its detection ranges by saying it's a more modern radar, and that will show up in the data. If instead you believe that age has nothing to do nothing to do with radar performance, declare the KLJ-7 to be over-performing like the APG-68 and pre 2.7 APG-73, and remove it from the sample, then the data will confirm your hypothesis. This basically means we don't have enough modern radars for comparison to really tell which scenario is correct. I feel like the only way to really tell in the intermediate future will be whenever we get the Typhoon. TLDR: I compared the detection range data for all full fidelity modules in DCS. The main trends that appear are 1) the Viper's radar is grossly over-performing, 2) the Hornet's radar performance seems fine in high PRF, but seems to under-perform in low PRF, and always has, and 3) it's hard to tell whether the JF-17's radar is over-performing or not.

More importantly, it can carry triple Mav racks right?

To be fair, the G91R (which is the size of a ww2 fighter and weights ~6800 lb empty) was indeed designed to fly from relatively unprepared fields, so on paper it should do better than say a Viper there, and it would be neat if DCS could reflect that capability. There's even a whole section in the flight manual describing how landing distance changes if you're landing on ice, a wet or dry hard surface, wet or dry grass, and with or without emergency breaks. Depending on conditions you get something in the range of ~500 to 800 meters on a normal surface, plus a factor ~2-3 times more than that on ice, ~0.7 lower with emergency breaks, and ~1.5 times worse with no drag chute. It's no Harrier, but it's not terribly different from e.g. a Viggen either.

Isn't that just an M1117?

Hooray for mini RB-05s! I imagine many/all will be already done for the MB-339, right?

And there is your problem. You are trying to get the radar to do something it's not designed to do (although on occasion it's possible - at short ranges the Viggen's radar is semi-decent for it but you need to really tweak the gain control for it to work well, and that's less annoying to do than in the Hornet). A2G modes are not for finding individual vehicles, especially if they are not moving. Any sort of TV or IR sensor will always be better for that because that's just how the laws of physics work. Requiring VID is not the issue - it's not like it wasn't a problem during Desert Storm for instance. The A2G radar is there (mostly) as an aid to navigation if you need to hit a larger strategic object like a bunker, runway, shipyard, etc, especially in bad weather. For obvious reasons, that is not something that has been relevant in the last 20 years of COIN operations. What it's not there for, is plinking individual vehicles with LGBs and Mavericks, that's just a weird misconception that the DCS community has about how air to ground missions actually work. edit: to further clarify, kev2go's post reports the imaging resolution of highest resolution mode in the Strike Eagle, arguably one of the better non-AESA a2g radars in the world, as ~5ft. That means that a BTR, which has a size of 10x25x8ft, would be ~10-15 pixels in size total - say, 3x5. Looking at Tomcat footage on YT, I would estimate that imaging resolution to be roughly ~10 times worse than even a LANTIRN pod, nevermind comparing the much better Litening or ATFLIR with the much worse APG 73.

Uh, I didn't know. Trying it now on my stick (without running DCS or anything), that doesn't seem to be the case, but I also didn't mess with any driver or VKB software, just plugged the stick in and that was it. Also, I don't really feel like an extra push button would be useful, between my T16000m throttle, the Gladiator, an extra button box and a tablet I'm pretty much set.