Noctrach

The reality is that you cannot simply focus all the energy in a single spot. Even in locked mode the radar will still experience significant clutter from side-lobes. The "lock" means you have found a signal of interest that has a strong enough signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to keep track of it. This mainly brings different factors into play like velocity and range gating to keep distinguishing this identified signal as the object moves through your line of sight. However, the more its radial velocity drops to near-zero, the more that SNR will start dropping, increasing the risk of losing the lock to clutter. Yeah I getcha, but the reality is that it's just the nature of the physics involved. I do recommend you give the youtube lectures a watch. It's good to see how astronomically large the effect of all the different sources of clutter is on all the other signals. Frankly, I think it's more that DCS makes it seem like getting a good lock is much more straightforward than it is in real life. Modern radars have less inherent noise, better materials, better electronics, higher frequencies, larger power output, better signal processing techniques... and they still struggle in a lot of ways. Only once AESA gets involved and you can listen to an entire spectrum of frequencies at once can you really say things change fundamentally. Yep, very true. A target overflying at high altitude is treated the same in DCS as a target flying treetop level, even though the complexity of detecting the latter is in an entirely different league. Yeah they'd filter in different ways but I presume the concept is much the same. It's all SNR in the end

Yessir, they are closer to the ground than airborne radars, so the signal return from ground clutter in the sidelobes is exponentially stronger. Not to say it's a cakewalk for air-borne look-down radars because if the mainlobe is getting ground reflections that is an entire separate ballpark of pain in the behind. Merely saying, stationary ground-based radars have good reasons to have strong clutter filtering in place that they cannot easily turn off even in look-up mode.

A pulse radar would detect the target, but inherently suffers much more from clutter sources than the pulse-doppler one. Depending on the circumstances it would have its own struggles to deal with (clutter from, but not limited to: surroundings, weather effects, electronic warfare). As an example: while chaff is almost pointless against PD, it will royally screw up the picture quality of a pulse radar.

I'm no expert on the subject but a similar discussion popped up in the F-14 forum with regards to the MLC and ZDF functioning. I started looking a bit deeper into it and found this excellent MIT series on radar signal processing on youtube. A radar beam is not a perfect cone. While the main power output (the mainlobe) is directed as such, there is a ton of radiated power in all directions of the antenna (sidelobes) that will cause reflections by bouncing off of surrounding objects. Even a stationary radar will get ground reflections in the form of this "sidelobe clutter", so your 0-gate filter will not be as effective as you might think. Especially this close to the ground you will have a LOT of echoes from objects near the radar antenna (trees, buildings, rocks). Since the radar itself is stationary, there hardly any way to differentiate a notching target with near-zero relative closure from this clutter. Aside from that, if the antenna has a rotational motion this will also contribute to clutter. In any given timeframe, multiple pulses will be returning to a moving dish, causing a slight doppler shift at the receiver end. Your doppler filtering gates will have to take these echoes into account as well and will have to be broader as a result. As you can see, despite advantages in power output and antenna size, stationary radars have some inherent problems caused by environmental and mechanical clutter sources. They are not able to turn off their filters to mitigate this like a moving airborne radar would. As a result, I would say the ability to notch ground radar is very much realistic behaviour.

For me it's more the fact that chaff seems to have a huge chance of destroying a TWS track which causes the missile to go stupid, rather than the missile going for chaff. Head-on AI targets at co-alt or above dispensing their trademark endless stream of chaff will break tracks quite frequently. If the track doesn't break, my experience is that most shots end up hitting rather than getting decoyed.

I think I phrased it poorly. The intent was to clarify that the ZDF takes effect purely based on the relative closure between the two aircraft. Whether flying at 100 or 500 knots groundspeed, the effect is the same if closure is within +/- 100 knots. The keyword in this is closure, in first sentence and chased in the second. Naturally groundspeed is a crucial factor to calculating closure. However, geometry has an equally significant effect. The MLC on the other hand, can still take effect at closures well above +/-133 knots. Specifically, it filters at groundspeed +/- 133 knots. @Saber2243 's table illustrates this very well.

So an important distiction to make: - The MLC filters out targets +/- 133 knots of F-14 groundspeed. The target's true closure is only relevant if its flying away from the F-14. - The ZDF filters out targets +/- 100 knots of true closure. The F-14's groundspeed is not considered in this. Let's look at the following scenarios: Target flying perpendicular to the F-14's radar: This target has a closure similar to the F-14's groundspeed. If this target were to be flying at low altitude, its closure would be identical to the closure of the ground relative to the F-14. Let's say the F-14 is flying 400 knots. The target is filtered out by MLC, even though its closure falls well outside of the ZDF. Disabling MLC will reveal this target, as its closure is 400 knots and falls outside of the ZDF. Although it might be hard to find in the surrounding ground clutter. Target flying away from the F-14: Consider the F-14 flying at 400 knots, but its target is running away at 450 knots. The resulting closure of -50 knots will bring it inside BOTH the MLC and the ZDF. Disabling the MLC will reveal ground clutter at 400 knots closure, but will not reveal the target as it is still inside the ZDF. This target is moving slightly away from the F-14, but the same would happen if it were flying 350 knots with the F-14 slowly overtaking. The true closure is just too low for the radar to process. Three things can be done to reveal it: Keep MLC enabled and change speed to get more than +/- 133 knots of closure Disable MLC and change speed to get more than +/- 100 knots of closure Use Pulse mode As you can see, the MLC will reveal aircraft in scenarios where closure is much higher than +/-100 knots, but still hidden within other clutter sources. The ZDF will only hide targets at very low positive or negative closure rates. The rule of thumb here would be: If a target is flying towards you but you can't see it on radar, turn off MLC. If a target is flying away from you and you can't see it on radar, change speed or use pulse.

"Yes." Really, it all depends on the purpose of the shot (threaten, kill), the threat type (bomber, fighter), your kinetic state (altitude, speed), target parameters (altitude, heading), radar mode (TWS, STT)... the list goes on. There is no single answer for any situation. I've seen failed shots at 10 miles and successful hits at 80. Best advice I can give you is to just go out and try a bunch of things. Mission editor with targets doing different things at different speeds and altitude. Better yet, get a friend on multiplayer and just shoot stuff at one another, get a feel for the missile. Learn to make these decisions on the spot by judging the situation will help you so much more than any kind of theoretical advice.

Your own aircraft is still moving relative to the stationary object, so its radar is still detecting a doppler shift. While this signal is unlikely to be very far above surrounding noise levels, a metal airframe will absolutely give a stronger doppler reflection than an airfield tarmac or bunch of shrubberies. Air-to-ground radar can distinguish stationary vehicles from surrounding forest thanks to this. It's again the analogy of the metal object in the brush. It will just provide a stronger reflection, which can be filtered out of the surrounding noise. It's unlikely a radar would do this in air-to-air mode because it'd be looking for different things. But it's by no means impossible.

The answer to the first question is yes, thought with the caveat that the doppler shift of multiple large blades advancing and retreating simultaneously generates an effect similar to noise jamming and was a huge challenge for radars in the 80s. Modern radars have filtering techniques to work around this to varying degrees (and AESA is black magic). For the second question, this is exactly why doppler gates exist, particularly in air-to-air search modes. Traffic moving along the highway with 80+ kph, trees moving in the wind, it all generates a noticeable doppler shift. The point that @GGTharos, @nighthawk2174, others and myself try to make in threads like these is that this kind of filtering immediately shifts once a target is locked. Once you've verified that the signal you are receiving is not noise (i.e. when you commit to a lock), you can close your range and doppler gates to exclude everything that's not your target. The variables you are left to compensate for are target acceleration, closure and range. All the rest is the physics of wavelength. Air-to-ground mode in Hornets and Vipers will be able to see and lock traffic moving on the highway, because it's not filtering/compensating in the same way air-to-air modes do. Heck, you can try this in the Tomcat right now with MLC off. But once a target is locked, it'd have to be flying at the same speed and within a couple hundred feet to get highway traffic into the signal gates.

Bugs exist to get reported. Besides, I feel it might be a difficult reality for people to accept that real world missiles and radars, if anything, are a lot better than they are in DCS. Kinda the result of missiles in DCS being a scripted object in a game that players use to shoot down other players in a manner that's somewhat believable. You're processing one projectile in a huge simulation, where the real deal is using all its available processing capacity just to hit the thing it's supposed to hit. This is why DCS is a fun experience where you can push the limits of what the simulation can do, while real life is both terrifying and boring because all your tactics revolve around coming home in one piece.

In simple terms: Aircraft AND ground closure within speed gate, ground outside of range gate: lock unaffected Ground closure outside of speed gate, aircraft AND ground within range gate: lock unaffected Aircraft AND ground closure within speed gate AND range gate: now we're getting into possible lock-affecting territory Note that the more advanced a radar is (F-16, F-18) the better the filtering is. As a result, the gates get smaller as radars get more advanced. Where an F-14 radar might have a range gate of a couple hundres of feet and a speed gate of tens of knots, the F-16 radar might reduce this to a couple tens of feet and a couple knots. Furthermore, as @nighthawk2174 mentions: as the missile gets closer, the radar return from your aircraft gets stronger. As a result, the gates get even smaller. Within 5-10 miles, your radar return might be so powerful that there's physically no way to hide it from the sensor (which is where electronic warfare comes into the picture). Think of it like tossing a metal object into a forest at night, and shining a flashlight in the direction you tossed it. The closer you get, the stronger the reflection will become and the more the metal plate will stand out amidst the twigs, leaves and stones. Only the speed-gate is partially simulated within DCS.

I'm 90% confident Jester uses 40 deg/2B or 20 deg/4B since he only uses the TWS volumes, even in RWS. (Frequent cause of his "No can do" inside 30 miles) These are pretty awful settings for sanitization and limit your combat SA significantly, due to very limited altitude or azimuth coverage. Using Jester and losing DDD information already highlights the more outdated aspects of the AWG-9. Right now solo pilots have almost no way to leverage any of its strenghts. Some mitigation would be to add more azimuth/bar options to the interface, along with better functionality to lock up specific targets. I realise this is actually quite a huge request from a development perspective, which is why I feel direct keybinds would be a good compromise. A RIO-less pilot is quite handicapped as is: Worse SA Higher workload Painfully reduced crew handsomeness No internal communication

I think the confused emoji is because some people are very hung up on forcing the Jester interaction, even for tasks a RIO should be doing completely autonomously. As I keep saying: Jester is an interface, not a RIO. The best answer is to fly with a RIO. The second best answer is to streamline the interface for elevation, azimuth and cone width. Keybinds make sense because the current interface would require you to dig 3-4 layers deep to perform actions you need to do almost continuously. In that regard I second the requests made by OP. Pilot's workload without a RIO is high enough without making the most basic radar tasks needlessly complicated. This would drastically improve the solo experience.

Hence why I advocate for having elevation, azimuth, bars and width as pilot controls. As a RIO 20 mile pickups are absolute peanuts in PD-SRCH or RWS, it doesnt get difficult until about 5-10 miles from the target at which point you will either go VSL or call pilot radar and switch to PAL. Jester only works with "TWS-like" settings. So 40/2 or 20/4. This is a poor setting for sanitization, but its simply dreadful for combat picking up on manoeuvring bandits at any range below 30 miles. People generally like to tell others to fly RIO themselves to see why Jester says "unable" so often. I fly almost exclusively RIO and the conclusion, unfortunately, is simply that Jester doesn't actually do any sensible RIO things. A mediocre human RIO is already miles ahead of Jester when it comes to radar utilization. I don't mind Jester. I think he's amazing for the extent that it's possible to create such a complex support tool. But for combat purposes, the single pilot experience is really lacking. You already lose out on the DDD which comprises the vast majority of the important target data. You have no MLC control, no PD-SRCH and no P-SRCH beyond PAL. I'm fine leaving most of it in Jester's hands. But it's complex enough trying to handle a seat and a half by yourself, so at least give us the tools to do the few most critical things that Jester simply can't.

Not entirely true, you can hit "next target" to reset prioritization of TID targets, which will force the selected target to be the one that it fires on. This means the selected target becomes the absolute first target launched on, while all the others can still be prioritised by the WCS. BIO even mentions this in one of his youtube videos, irl it was mandatory to hit that button before firing any missile to prevent WCS re-prioritizing just before launching. I'd be a little more on board with this stance if Jester was capable of performing any RIO duties. He's an exceptionally refined interface to the backseat, nothing more, nothing less. Some functionality of said interface is just either a bit too janky (selecting specific targets) or a bit too clunky (elevation/azimuth) to be combat-effective.

Duplicate, new forum is confusing to me.

Jester can work the systems, he can lock, he can release CMS, he can set the radio, he can do navigation stuff to an extent that's mind-bogglingly impressive and for which I can only commend Heatblur. However, I agree he just cannot do proper combat support. As someone who's primarily in the RIO seat, there are some "basic radar things" that are a bit too clunky through the Jester menu. From the pilot's seat I would highly prefer to have control over elevation/azimuth/bars/width. These are the primary RIO controls, which Jester does not seem to actively manipulate during a fight. How could he... he's an interface to the backseat and has no actual knowledge of what I want him to do, since I can't talk to him. Asking him to scan at a certain altitude and distance "works", but it's a lot of steps through the menu. Considering the speed at which intercepts take place, even with a highly optimised Voice-Attack profile, it's not fast enough to keep up with manoeuvring contacts in a target-rich environment. It's simply not a flexible enough tool for proper target selection. TWS-A is not a valid alternative, considering it's limited use-case against fighter-sized targest over land. My main "issue" flying with Jester is that from a RIOs perspective, the actual radar information is in the DDD, which is invisible to the pilot anyway. The TID merely combines multiple data sources in a single picture. This is why in a 2-man crew, the RIO does his job autonomously and informs the pilot of what's going on. It's true that you really shouldn't be flying the F-14 solo, because you're missing your most powerful SA tools. The DDD, a second brain and two more eyes. (Also RIOs are much more handsome by nature, so there's an aesthetic argument to be made) As a pilot I'm not seeing the DDD but also not having Jester consistently support me in SA. This is further exacerbated by the difficulty he has on selecting specific targets on the TID (seriously HB, this feature just doesn't work at all). This means I spend most of my combat time staring at the TID trying to get him to point the radar at the right things. What I really should be doing as a pilot, is keeping my eyes out and watching for threats/cranking/evading. At that stage, where I'm essentially doing a significant part of what my RIO would be doing autonomously, I'd much rather just control elevation/azimuth/bars/width while telling Jester to go to TWS-M/RWS. I can understand if there's difficulties/risks for implementing pilot "reachback controls" in a multicrew plane. But I'd really like to ask Heatblur to provide control of at least these core tools, as it'll make the life of single pilots so much easier.

I think he means optimal parameters or something? Phrased like this it's a really ambiguous question. Probably nobody going to be able to really answer without some additional details because for every type of missile shot the answer is basically "It depends" Altitude, speed, target type, closure, range etc.

On this note, do you know if there's any unclassified material on running a good intercept for a jet like the Tomcat beyond P-825? The 40K separation intercept timeline is a very nice starting point with good FQ engagement options and easy target aspect benchmarks to follow for a stern conversion turn. Is there anything that goes more in depth?

I mean... it's an old radar so sure, newer ones will have more refined filtering, better range, less drawbacks etc. But to say it was a bad radar is rather pushing it... there's some clear advantages to having "unfiltered" results and manual operations when it comes to defeating ECM that digital radars would only start scratching decades later. It's a lot harder to fool a person than a computer. As you may have noticed, there's an entire unsimulated section of the AWG-9 panel dedicated to doppler gates and noise control... that's the kind of place where the actual magic happens. Much as HB has given us a refined simulation of an old P/PD radar system, don't forget you're only seeing a part of the real RIO seat. So yes, the Hornet's radar is a lot more user friendly, but I would never outright state "it's a better radar" because there's so much more to radar than output power and doppler gates. This is all FIRMLY in the realm of DCS-ism.

Or to paraphrase slightly, some of us train like we fight, others of us fly poor BFM... :music_whistling: Not getting back to the boat because of flap/slat lockout sounds like a case of "dead" to me. I suggest unless people have something substantial to add, these threads get locked and we move on.

Yup, our testing confirmed the same. If a false track is created during missile flight, the missile stops guiding altogether and just goes stupid. This happens a lot. Head-on target, over sea, 3+ degrees lookup, light crank or some chaff et voilá, false track and consequently a lost missile. Most of the time this false track is flying side-by-side with the real contact, so the missile seeker should still be pointing at the right piece of sky when going active. I'm led to believe it never goes active, considering TTI 16 currently flashes when the missile goes active in game, which doesn't happen on these shots. AWG-9 will also be stuck in TWS until manually forced into another mode since the missile never times out. Phoenixes fired in TWS also don't give RWR warnings. Do we know if they actually go active at all or if they just home using DCS INS shenanigans? Beyond that they seem to be working fine.

From my own testing, above 230-240 KIAS and/or 3-ish G they tend to start breaking, so pretty much as per NATOPS

Yeah, upon further testing I noticed waypoints and similar actually do give BRG so I started to figure it was intended :) Thanks for your input