Naquaii

Comparing a figher radar guiding a SARH missile to an ARH missile with it's own built in radar is not that straight forward as it might seem at first. The radar equation in regards to returned power has both the range from the transmitter to the target and the range from the target to receiver squared. This means that effect of the distance from the fighter to the missile isn't just a linear advantage in favor of the ARH missile but it's squared, in addition in an ARH missile both ranges will decrease as the missile approaches the target while with a SARH missile likely only the range from target to receiver will decrease. Or at least the range from the transmitter to the receiver will not decrease as much. This means that the fighter radar guiding the SARH missile will have to have a transmitter much more powerful than the missile to even have a received power even to the ARH missile's. Adding to that the AIM-54 has a twíce as large seeker antenna which give it an advantage over the AIM-7 even in the SARH case. It is true though that the AIM-7M seeker is much newer than the AIM-54A age-wise but to hold that as an advantage we'd need to know in what ways it is better than the AIM-54A and in which situations it holds an advantage. I'd wager a guess that the advantage is little in a non-jammed advantage while it will probably be greater when in a heavy ECM environment. But as to how much anyone's guess is equally as good as long as we're only able to discuss non classified information. Added to that an opponent is much more likely to have seen the STT mode of a fighter radar and been able to design ways to counter that than a missile that they've never seen used against them and thus never seen the radar of in action and how it behaves. The tl:dr, at least for me, is that in regards to power a SARH missile will always be a step behind and even in the SARH case the much larger antenna in the AIM-54 is a massive advantage, esp coupled with the powerful AWG-9. The ECM and ECCM/logic discussion is kinda moot as any representation will be guesswork at best.

As have been mentioned after your post, comparing the missile seeker to the AWG-9 is an unfair comparison for the AWG-9. The AIM-54 seeker has an entirely different job to do and the AWG-9 holds its hand for the majority of the engagement so to speak. When the seekerhead in the AIM-54 has to take over and do it's job it's always at fairly short range and already pointed at the correct target (unless ACM) and even then it can fall back to look for pointers from the AWG-9. That the seeker would be bad at that job is not something I've ever seen mentioned. Being bad against much more modern ECMs is a given but also not really relevant in this discussion as nearly no information is available publicly and not modelled in DCS anyway. As for the missile being bad against fighters that's a point of view I've seen a lot but I've never ever seen anyone back that theory up with anything but speculation, hearsay or other vague evidence. Our information about the AIM-54 does not agree, in fact it kinda points towards it being perfectly fine against fighters as well. Everyone is of course welcome and encouraged to have their own point of view but without anything resembling actual facts it's nothing we'll take into account or use as a reason for eventual changes to the module.

We'll have a look as soon as we can. What version are you using? Open beta or stable and are you using the newest version of them?

You're right, I just tested it and there seems to be a bug with the datalink waypoint which does not allow a correct hook. They become highlighted but the TID still says OWN A/C. I'll add a tracker for this internally so we'll have a look at it. They should work just like normal waypoints. I mentioned how you do it in my post above. You can only enter them via the mission editor. You will find it detailed here in the manual: http://heatblur.se/F-14Manual/dcs.html#f-14-waypoints-in-the-mission-editor .

The modelled behavior is as it is in the real aircraft afaik. The datalinked waypoints are sent via Link 4 and can be updated from the controller, ship or awacs, but as we don't have a way of implementing that in DCS we included the ability for them to be preset in the ME to allow some use of them. The only way to get data from them is to hook them and use the CAP, you can get bearing/distance using the prefix buttons. What sometimes get mixed up with this is that the normal waypoints that aren't called datalink waypoints can also be set by the datalink but only when on ship while aligning, this is currently modelled so that the RIO doesn't manually have to enter them in that specific case. If the manual says somewhere that you can use the DEST mode to navigate to a datalink waypoint, that is in error and if you can point me to the location I can fix that.

You need to keep in mind that the AWG-9 does not have a roll gimbal so when you roll the WCS will still point the antenna using only the elevation and azimuth gimbals. This means that if you roll away from the target when it's already at 45 degrees the antenna will now have to add even more azimuth as in effect your translating some of the elevation into azimuth from the radar's perspective. To me it looks like this is what's happening in your images. Having the target at 45 degrees and rolling away means you're perilously close to the azimuth gimbal limits. The difference between MLC on/off might be radar seeing something to stop at or not and might be as intended, in STT the radar does not correlate anything, it wants to track a single return and will follow the one it sees. We'll have a look on our side though but this might not be a bug at all.

In a way yes, but like you say it we would need to do a lot of work on our side unless it's just gonna be that same "dice roll" to break STT. As DCS doesn't model the actual countermeasures as their own entities apart from visuals we'd need to somehow simulate all other effect on our side as chaff would show up on scopes and have the radar follow them and so on. We would in effect have to keep track of chaff and where it is internally in our module. In short it would be a lot of work for something that we might need to throw away if the DCS modelling of chaff changes down the line. And just adding a chance for the chaff to break an STT wouldn't be that realistic anyway as there are so many factors in a situation like that.

Yeah, unfortunately spamming chaff currently gives the aircraft more "dice rolls" to negate the missile while IRL the cumulative effect would be much less. Tactics about how to release chaff and when is just inferior to spamming the chaff as each bundle give the aircraft a new "saving throw".

Just to clarify. I'm not saying that the Tomcat or the AIM-54 are bad against fighters and that's certainly not how we've modelled it. What I'm saying is that the TWS in the AWG-9 isn't good enough to work reliably against small maneuvering fighter-sized targets and afaik that is more or less correct with real life. What I was trying to say was that the percieved lack of performance against fighters likely stem from this imho while in reality the missile and STT were perfectly fine against fighters. Nothing we have points towards the AIM-54 in itself being unsuited for use against fighters.

Yes and no. Using range-rate isn't as good as it leaves the radar more susceptible to the described errors above as the AWG-9 might be unable to tell which return to use for the range-rate calculation. Velocity gating on the other hand would be better as it'd use the actual measured doppler so you would get rid of some of the false tracks. You kinda need to remember that the AWG-9 was one of the absolute first examples of TWS and is a quite basic TWS system.

Range-rate is calculated from positional updates, kinda like how a GPS works. Velocity gating on the other hand would use the speed directly, from doppler readings. Edit: So to clarify, by specifying that it's range-rate it indicates that it's rate calculated from range updates, not velocity from doppler.

According to our information the AWG-9 does not use velocity gating. It uses range-rate instead which is calculated from track position updates. This is what we've modelled in DCS. I'm inclined to say that the weakness of the AWG-9/AIM-54 combo against fighters was the AWG-9 in TWS, not the missile itself.

Afaik that's not available for 3rd parties yet. Don't quote me on that though! So it's a bit hard atm to give any estimates.

At 14NM you wouldn't get an rwr warning. In DCS all active missiles have a seeker range of 10NM and if outside of that you will not get a warning until the missile is within 10NM. This is the same for all active missiles, even the AIM-120 unless ED changed something with it recently. This we can't change and is set in DCS afaik.

The missile can't go active on it's own unless launched active from the rail. If there is a delay from active until RWR indication it is a delay due to either lag or that there is some sort of short delay in DCS from active indication until the RWR catches is. The missile in the air is entirely out of our hands. The only thing we tell it is when to go active but we are not controlling what the missile does besides that. We wouldn't be able to add a delay there even if we wanted to. And no, we haven't changed the way the missile works. Do you really think we would've changed something like that without telling the community?

Like I've said repeatedly, the RWR in an aircraft in DCS looks for messages from a radar or missile that tells it what is emitting. There is no way it can tell you that there is an incoming missile unless DCS is telling the F-14 that there is an incoming missile and that has to come from the missile itself. The RWR just can't invent that on it's own, it's not looking for the missile, it's looking for the message from DCS that it should show the missile on the RWR. If this is a bug it can't be on the F-14 RWR side.

We have enough documentation to be pretty sure about our current -A implementation. This is why I'm much more willing to lean on the -C being similar to the -A than changing it because of supposed similarities with the -C.

Yeah, that's more or less it. We don't really know what that means for the missile in DCS. Having command-intertial guidance does not automatically infer it should be able to go active on it's own. It could also have a lot in common with the AIM-120 in regards to hardware and software design and still work differently.

I actually disagree. Because atm we model it off of the data we have on the -A but with logical improvements. Modelling it of off the -120 would be more speculative than what it is now. Even if I do agree with it not being implausible. You are kinda comparing the facts with have for the -A with a speculative connection to the -120. If you look at the facts there really aren't much about the -C and it's -120 connection apart from speculations on forums and people making statements in articles.

Yeah, I totally agree and we will continue to tune the chaff resistance towards that goal. Fixing the ability for the AI to magically know when you've fired a TWS shot would also help a lot.

Well, yes and no. The AIM-7 is out of our hands as that's entirely ED. The AIM-54A we do have a bit of info on as that's what allowed us to implement what we have. And I do agree that there needs to be a distinction between the -A and the -C, that's why we've been adamant that the -C need better chaff resistance. The fact that the AIM-54C is likely to have a lot in common with the early AIM-120c might mean that it can go active on its own but then again, it might not. We don't even know the reasoning behind the design of the seeker logic in the AIM-54A, just a bit of insight into how it actually did work. When designing our AIM-54A we did so according to to the information we have and we're quite certain it's implemented according to that within the limitations of DCS. When implementing the -C we made the decision to make it work the same way as the -A but improve the chaff resistance (apart from rocket motor values). So in that way it's based on the information we have but improved slightly. To say that we should change the way it works because of a likely similarity to a later missile which we in itself do not know that much about to be fair, would be speculation. What if the reason for the seeker active logic being the accuracy of the IFF and long range performance of the AWG-9? Maybe the -C even worked differently with the AN/APG-71? I'm not saying it did, but it might've. In the end, I'm not saying that it couldn't go active without a command but I'm also not saying that it could. We've based our -C on our -A because that's the information we have and as it currently stands my opinion is that we do not have enough data on the missiles to make a change. I hope that do change but I'm not certain it will in the near future.

That's mostly a no-go area. Problem is that the fact that there's likely much in common with the early AIM-120s also likely mean that it'll be a long time till we see the F-14 manuals containing AIM-54C info unclassified. So the same reason we're discussing this is also likely the reason there's very little information available if I'd wager a guess.

Take an example, the lowest hanging fruit code-wise would be to allow the AIM-54C to go active without explicitly being told to do so via the link from the AWG-9. Do I think that would've been technologically possible? Yes. Do I think that would've been technologically possible for the -A as well? Yes! The problem is that we do not have the full picture, we do not know why the decision to have the -A only go active after getting the command was made. Maybe the same decision was reached for the -C? Without having the full picture it would still be only guesses and all decisions are not always made because of technological limitations.

Yeah, I hear you and I've seen a lot of those sources before. Problem is that it's a lot of "probably", "maybe" and assumptions from sources that are either not in the know or prohibited from giving the whole picture. In the end we still lack any sort of hard evidence which makes it really hard to draw any solid conclusions.

Would surprise me if there weren't but we can't model something that we don't have information about.