Harlikwin

Yeah, there was no specificity to it, but yes I'm pretty sure we've all fallen to the guns of Roland the headless BMP-2 gunner. But I assume he meant the radar guided sams. As for the module choices/eras it depends but I'd say its a mix. Like the 21bis; its a good choice IMO saw tons of service, but its not the famous F-13 of either vietnam or the arab israeli wars. Similar story for the F14's we currently have, basically very late 80's versions or 90's versions. Minimal relevance to cold war F14's or the F14 that saw the most combat, the iranian ones (yes someday these are coming). ED's half swiss/half nellis halfbreed F5E, totally irrelevant in either context, or their F86 hybrid (too late for korea). F4E early/late, is a pretty goated decision as its super relevant to the 2nd half of the cold war, but its not a VN bird. The ED F-teens or the 10C, largely irrelevant aside from bombing mud huts, earlier "A" versions IMO would have sold just as well and people would pay for upgrades, it remains to be seen if they will pay for "downgrades".

Coming 2024 and BEYOND

I too would like a better SAM/IADS simulation in DCS... Amusingly in a recent interview Wags said the player base though the current sams are "too hard"... LOL...

Yeah, I think alot of the phoenix kills need context to go with it for the Iran Iraq war. The phoenix was a capable missile, but it was in fact designed for fleet defense first. It could be used against fighters as the Iranians repeatedly showed, but it was not exactly optimal. And the larger context there is the Iraqis didn't really have a good handle on the shortcomings of the missile or the AWG-9 like DCS players do at least initially. So they did well with the missile early on, and less well as the Iraqis learned how to deal with it. I'd say thats a pretty normal outcome of a protracted air war, the key word being protracted. In DCS MP, the good players know exactly how to deal with both the AWG-9 and the Phoenix so are relatively immune to it, which well, thats DCS. Meanwhile noobs will fly straight into a Phoenix fired at long range. I've seen plenty of both use cases in DCS MP. And its one of the unfortunate realities of DCS MP that people rapidly learn to min/max systems/missiles/etc. Its just what competitive gamers do. Like the whole DCS notching "meta" which IRL isn't really used because IRL you don't have perfect angular resolution on your RWR, and IRL modern radars have notch predictors. But in DCS its the gospel due it being the FC3 and even later radar models.

I suspect it was that guy that they tried to recruit to do the IADS module, and he/they bailed.

Cool, be nice if ED would get around to doing the same so we have some early missiles for MP.

I think this is one factor that in general is done super badly in DCS. Like IRL fighters would almost always have a connection back to GCI, its just basic radio planning stuff, but DCS doesn't simulate re-broadcast stations etc for datalink at this point and there would be tons of them around if you read anything about how IADS was done soviet style. I honestly hope ED and Razbam collaborate on this somehow because the mig23 will need it too.

It gets sorta complex, even stuff that uses optical tracking still uses a uplink to control the missile, which can be detected and jammed in some cases.

@Chizh Also any plans to improve the SAMs? Stuff like optical tracking and then of course the more obvious stuff like using non-PN tracking (3 point) when appropriate so you can't do silly things like fly the sam into the ground? Or you know stuff like IADS.

Last we heard ED nor other 3rd parties have plans to do a 16A, so the mig29 will have to snack on F4's. Yeah most likely the Poles didn't buy the 27T. As others have said it was "rare".

Which manual specifically. Cuz there are russian ones, polish ones, czech ones, Serbian ones etc. Yeah same thing as the ER/ET... The E. Germans were just cheap, never bought the missiles. Same thing with CZ migs, they never bought the R73, so they used R60M... But no one is gonna argue that the 9.12 couldn't use the R-73...

Yeah thats how it was done. Again, the US pilots flying the downgraded E. german ones talk about the IR seeker R27... So yes it was wired for it.

Yeah I'm curious to see what it will look like to be honest. The HB RWR stuff should be a pretty solid basis for ARM's/RWR's and other things. Frankly at this point I'd just love some AI units that can do OECM, and for DECM jammers to actually do DECM things vs OECM things.

Yup... Pretty standard thermal contrast things for IRST. Anything "warm" is gonna reduce the contrast/lock/detect range of the Mig29 IRST. And IR signals are absorbed by water molecules and atmosphere in general, so the less of it the better so it works better at high alt vs other high alt things. I'm sure the detect range vs a Mach3 SR71 is 100km+ or so.

Well, the next fun part is that IRST should detect clouds as "hot/warm"... And either see them as clutter, and/or reduce lock ranges if there is cloud behind the target.

How about giving us an Sa-7/14 and redeye or even Stinger basic, and an earlier version of chapperal... The overall unit mix in DCS is heavily skewed to the 90's which unfortunately leaves the 70s/80's scenarios/servers having to quite haphazardly try to figure how to make vaguely realistic scenarios. These relatively simple additions (wouldn't really have to even add 3d models as a guy with a tube on his shoulder is a guy with a tube on his shoulder) would be greatly appreciated by many DCS players.

no, SPO-15 is way more capable than that. But hawk and hercules were the major threats in Europe at the time. It had a programmable database. But just limited "lights".

Different propagation methods mostly. NVIS in particular. Helos used it, the Apache in particular since its quite useful for non line of sight stuff. Not that this is at all modeled in DCS, wouldn't be hard to do tho. Thanks for the clarification so I don't have to go dig it up out of a manual.

Yeah thats the other thing, how you simulate "doctrine" and good vs bad vs innovative crews/armies. The other thing that we also lack in DCS is sam site ARM countermeasures/decoys. Serbians lost very few sam sites to US forces despite 400 HARMs fired, both because they had good crews/doctrine and decoys/CM's. There is no "technology" for this. Its literal HS trig, and trust me SAM guys knew how to do trig. It was automated pretty quickly as well. Beyond that it was communication links that could be field telephones, or radios, or later microwave datalinks.

Yeah the early ones were, AFAIK the later ones could be remoted by at least a few km. And yes multiple EWR's cueing.

Yes, thats exactly what I'm saying, because I've done it. I'm just not 100% sure if the Russian DL's actually worked like that or not, but from the specs on the radios its certainly a possibility. Yeah, I know the chart and it got posted, given that its the 4th root of RCS in the radar equation its likely why I never noticed cuz there is no actual difference between a 3m and 5m target worth noticing its like a few %range wise. Anyhow the horse is now dead and we are now in the realm of sadonecroposting.

Oh I noticed the difference with bombers, but figured that was hard coded. But yeah I guess it makes sense they are just using the default RCS values and it isn't a huge difference. Yeah, and well doing the valley crawl in enemy territory is just asking to eat a manpad etc. As for comms, I assume soviet jets have those HF radios "for reasons", also interestingly the flanker DL at least also has a HF data radio, with very similar speeds to STANAG 4202.

For range on the 29 just fly high, just like any other jet. Also make sure you dump the tank before combat. Lots of limits with the tank. Tempests has been a bit dead lately but it will likely pick up after the holidays, usually euro nights and then US eves are somewhat populated, but its been variable lately. IDK if there are any major plans to change the map anytime soon. But there was a Syria scenario at some point. Most likely when the F4 drops pop will pick up. BF80's is mostly a Eurozone thing but generally well populated then, US eves its hit or miss. I doubt that ECW will ever really feature the 29 very heavily, its basically the 50 point thrill ride there.

P-12 is the EWR... It doesn't need to be co-located. And yes they did co-locate it early on, then they figured out, oh wait, this is a bad idea for exactly the reasons you laid out. And yes I'm well aware that we have like a mid/late 70's SA-2. Also my engagement flow was a bit satirized to what I see the average DCS guy doing online. But the problems with IADS modeling and SAM guidance are very real in addition to the various RWR issues. Various early RWR's couldn't even detect certain SAM radars due to frequency issues or PRF issues and so forth, so it was a constant game of catch up. Which is why these days you have planes and satellites hoovering up every erg of energy from the Ukraine or Israeli conflict looking for new things, old things, unknown things etc.

IRL RCS matters. FC3 radars don't model differences in detection ranges due to RCS, various FF modules do it differing standards, I.e. the Jeff has some generic aspect based model. While the F15E afaik does both aspect and even stores differences. That just means you fly low so you are hard to spot visually with your radar off usually in mountainous terrain. Its quite popular with flanker guys thinking they are stealthy doing it, with their EOS on to find high flying targets. It can work in DCS depending on the server. It just really wasn't done much IRL for millions of good reasons.