Noctrach

This is only true if we take the Big Book of BVR and throw concepts like MAR/Rtr and manoeuvres like the crank or split-S out of the window in favour of last minute break turn gambling. No offense but I recommend studying how kinematic missile defence works, as it has nothing to do with your endgame turn potential. The missile is going to win that regardless, plus it involves actually visually picking up a small, extremely fast object far after the motor burnt out. If the missile gets to your tail at a range where you can't defeat it kinematically anymore with a high speed snaking manoeuvre, you have already made some pretty humongous mistakes and willfully ignored all air-to-air doctrine from the last 30 years. At this point your only option is to dive to the deck and try to break the radar lock, then manoeuvre to avoid the predictive search re-acquisition. This would probably work for SARH and SAM, but against an ARH you are most likely better off just ejecting. Now of course none of this matters in DCS because the notch is laughably powerful and any missile can be decoyed with a lazy turn and some chaff. This is a sim after all, not reality. Genuinely dude, out of nothing but friendliness and well-wishes. Educate yourself on BVR combat, this is not how any of this works. (Maybe look into APN guidance as well)

I'd probably lose. I have no difficulty admitting I'm not a very experienced Tomcat pilot. Would absolutely be up for it, sounds like fun. The real pilots made it work without breaking their jet though and I've dueled squaddies that beat me without going for any these gimmicks, so I'm rather convinced it's possible. That's why at the end of the day it's about pilot skill. The numbers give you your gameplan, the pilot provides the execution. Ignoring the numbers is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They provide you hints as to which elements of your jet you should play to and what errors you should avoid making. This is how they brief these kinds of fights in real life and the reason these diagrams exist... Not playing to your jet's strengths for the sake of staying unpredictable kinda defeats the purpose. I'd get rather thrown off by watching my adversary lawndart at 200 knots, but I'm not sure if that is the kind of "element of surprise" he should be aiming for. :P About the Viper numbers, this is where it peaks. However, you can fly 400-450 KCAS (which is still fast) and only reduce your rate to 14 deg/s and as a result the pilot has to pull only 6.5-7G (doesnt matter in sim but definitely more pleasant irl) and has a speed that allows for better instantaneous turns. Again, it's about pilot execution, the numbers allow you to make up your gameplan. It's true that most fights end up slow, that's why the Tomcat and Hornet are such insane dogfighting jets. However, you can definitely make sure you have the edge in the fight before getting there.

Both taken at 5000 feet, standard day. F-16C block 50, gross weight: 28,000 pounds, drag index 38 (full A2A config) F-14B, gross weight: 60,000 pounds, 4x AIM-7, 4x AIM-9, CADC on automatic. Sources: EM-charts from HFFM manual provided by "the other sim" and official F-14B performance charts (01-F14AAP-1.1). The Viper might not be the official documentation, but given the reputation of the flight model it's close enough to give you an idea. The Viper's sustained rate at this altitude shows as a plateau between Mach 0.8 and 0.9 (490-550 KCAS) at 8.5G. Here it sustains slightly over 15.1 deg/s Viper's minimum radius is 1841 feet at Mach 0.35 (210 KCAS) Viper's max instantaneous is 19.7 deg/s at Mach 0.7 (425 KCAS) pulling 8.5G. The Tomcat's sustained rate spikes between Mach 0.52 and 0.6 (315-365 KCAS), peaking at roughly 16.1 deg/s (Mach 0.56. 340 KCAS). Tomcat's minimum radius is around 1400 feet at Mach 0.26 (160 KCAS), basically landing speed. Tomcat's max measured instantaneous rate is an eye-watering 22 deg/s at Mach 6.5G. Note that 6.5G was it's peace-time limitation, wartime limit is up at 7.5G but there is no data for this. Instantaneous rate in the sim might therefore be higher in some circumstances. The higher the fight goes, the better the Viper performs comparatively to the Tomcat in sustained rate. The Viper has the better thrust-to-weight in general. So the takeaways here are: The Viper should keep the fight fast, prefer vertical manoeuvres to preserve energy and don't try to follow the Tomcat in horizontal bat turns. Stay fast, stay high. By whatever deity you prefer, don't let the Tomcat drag you into a low-speed scissors on the deck. Prefer 2C geometry and out-of-plane manoeuvring. Use that roll rate! The Tomcat should try to bleed the Viper's energy and go for a low horizontal turning fight. Don't try to beat the Viper at fast, high-G shenanigans. Use that insane lifting body.

That's exactly it, CADC does this for you. There might be a couple edge cases, but honestly your mind should be on other things than wing sweep. Against a Tomcat, probably the energy fighter. At high speed the F-16 has the better rate, at low speed it can't compete, thrust to weight is better for the F-16. As the Viper you should be taking the fight uphill and use your thrust and vertical manoeuvering to maintain a high energy state, before using the high G rating to pounce. As the Tomcat, you should be aiming to get the fight low, slow and horizontal, like how the Hornet would. You don't have his FBW so you can keep turning tighter and slower than his jet allows.

Generally speaking, the CADC program will always give you the best wingsweep for your current speed. There's very little reason to ever mess with manual sweep as the gains are either negligible (manual back for acceleration) or potentially harmful for the aircraft (manual forward at high speed to increase instant turnrate). The instruments you want to be watching is your AoA indicator and airspeed. Proper throttle management and BFM skills will go far further than any gimmicks with flaps or wing sweep. Everything seen in the video can be accomplished without exceeding 8G or touching the sweep controls, if you keep the turnrate in the optimal regime. Focusing on that will not only help you win ACM engagements, but will also translate to other jets and make you a better virtual pilot in general. At the end of the day this is a sim, what works for you works for you, just saying there's ways about this that don't wreck the jet.

Not gonna say what he's doing doesn't work absolutely phenomenally in DCS, he's clearly a very skilled pilot. He's also absolutely breaking that jet though... overstressing flaps and slats, overpulling almost every high speed turn... No doubt its very effective, but hardly an elegant way of fighting. Each his own I guess.

I was wondering if there's a particular reason for the choice of available chaff programs for Jester? For missile evasion in DCS it's best to dump between 6-8 bundles of chaff in a reasonable short timespan while at the same time weaving through the notch. Jester's default setting (single) and most of the programs have a long delay, which makes saturation far from ideal. I've been finding the 2*0.12, 4x4 to work pretty well, but I find the rest of them to have flaws making them pretty ineffective. Most of them have either very long delays between chaff releases, or release chaff in such a volume that Jester will burn through the entire supply in a very short amount of time. This is exacerbated by the fact that he continues running the program without interruption as long as any missile is spiking the RWR, even long after a missile has been defeated. (You know how they are, especially in multipalyer...) I think it's safe to say that improving this would be an extremely non-trivial change to his AI, so if at all possible I'd like to see some more "DCS-ized" chaff programming options.

Yep, the problem with our AMRAAM is that it has only a guidance mode resembling something like high PRF, which means the notch is along the lines of +/- 36 knots closure, even when it's within a mile of your jet. This makes it incredibly easy to notch and force it to lock onto any of the juicy chaff bundles that are still floating within a 5000 or so feet radius. On the SARH end, at least in multiplayer, even momentary loss of lock will cause all FC3 radars in DCS to go completely dumb, since they don't save track information and therefore don't go into memory mode. Active missiles appear to have a scripted behaviour that will pull X amount of lead in the last known direction of the target in a way that bleeds all its energy and almost guarantees it will never reacquire. I see a lot of people shoving forth their favourite missile as proof that it needs an update or rework, but the simple fact of the matter is that, when it comes to guidance and countermeasures, all missiles are roughly equally easy to spoof. (Chaff resistance really doesn't do much if all it can see is chaff...) However, as that's not the topic of this thread, let's stick to discussing drag/lift models. ED has admitted a bunch of times that there's improvements to be made for all missiles and that they're working on it, so idk what the purpose of the rest of this thread could possibly be. Two Weeks™...

This is a myth that keeps being repeated like so many other fallacies on this topic. Chaff hasn't been a serious issue since reasonably sophisticated pulse-doppler radars became available in the 80s. To pulse radars, chaff willl indeed provide serious obstruction until full dissipation. However, with a doppler filter only the initial expansion of chaff will provide a significant return. The reason its not used is because it absolutely murders the effectiveness of pulse-based technology, like air traffic and weather radars over a rather large area (aside from obvious environmental issues). The interaction between chaff and radiation isn't like a solid screen. It will create a large diffuse area of variable reflections, while the radiation just happily continues on to illuminate whatever is behind the chaff cloud. Somewhat modern notch filters will remove this noise just the same way it does ground returns, like the fluttering leaves on trees. For pulse radars this will indeed look like a massive blob of return, for pulse-doppler, all it does is pose a problem of signal-to-noise ratios as all these returns reduce the effective sensitivity of the radar in that area. Radars were already very good at defeating this in the late 80s (range gating, signal enhancement techniques) and have only gotten better in the digital era. As you yourself stated, this is why electronic warfare, stealth and aspect-reducing manoeuvres are so important. Reduce the signal-to-noise ratio as much as possible. Chaff in isolation is almost pointless with modern filtering algorithms and electronics and has been that way since the late 80s. Chaff-as-flares as it's simulated in DCS is a pretty reasonable simplification. The main problem here is that aircraft radars are not simulated to get confused by it. Another problem is that chaff itself is effective for far too long (3+ seconds) and seeker cone limits are not simulated. This makes notching missiles trivial, as it pretty much negates the importance of timing.

They're consistently falling short for me as well, on top of that. Between M0.80 and M0.90 I still get fragmentation and arming warnings in the HUD when flying between 100 and 150m AGL. (Vertical lines and release cue are both flashing) Impact following above release point is about 1000 feet short. No wind, standard weather.

Everything was working fine for about 2 weeks and then suddenly it stopped spawning any client slots and I'm getting this error. I cleaned out every registry file I could find, wiped every trace of Liberation but it keeps doing the same thing. Extremely confusing [color=#4F5660][font=SourceCodePro]INFO:root:DCS Libration None INFO:root:Using C:\Users\<user>\Saved Games\DCS as userdata folder ERROR:root:Didn't find ground position (Point(-298009.41779309534, 768129.9178403418))! ERROR:root:<class 'userdata.logging.ShowLogsException'> Traceback (most recent call last): File "tkinter\__init__.py", line 1702, in __call__ File "ui\configurationmenu.py", line 122, in display_logs userdata.logging.ShowLogsException[/font][/color]

Hey, the AKAN sight is consistently resulting in rounds flying over target on NTTR (standard conditions). This is with master mode ANF, targeting mode ATTACK w/ NORM/SERIES, radar ranging used, trigger down when "wings" appear. Rounds will overshoot with every dive angle or QFE setting. Doing the same on Caucasus results in correct placement.

Just wanted to report, since last patch the emergency wing sweep lever has stopped moving with the automated wing sweep schedule when pushed in. Wing sweep works as normal and it seems to be a visual bug only. :)

The MiG-31 with R-33 has a number of issues The MiG-31 drops launch warning and goes back into search mode while still guiding the missile. This is more noticeable with jets that have a "deadzone" on their RWR, as you will at times not get any warning that a missile is in the air if you were coming out of a turn at this point. The MiG-31 is almost impervious to notching, the missile can be easily chaffed or spoofed but the MiG-31 never drops lock. The notch gate appears to be less than +/-10 knots. The missile will lose track if sitting perfectly in the notch, but both the jet and the missile will instantly reacquire from any aspect the second the player leaves the notch again. The Georgian War campaign, mission 14, is impacted significantly by this issue. Mig31_R33.trk Mig31_R33_2.trk

It's a DCS difference in that players don't generally consider a "mission kill" sufficient (on either side). Real life pilots generally won't turn a badly wounded bird back into the fight to get a sneaky AIM-9 off at the risk of being utterly fireballed and never getting home again. Vice versa, nobody wants to be a killer... so if a hostile jet turns and runs, that's it, job well done. DCS pilots will chase that to hell and back for a kill credit. Meanwhile modern missiles do most of their damage through fragmentation, piercing the jets internal systems with shrapnel in a million places, while the blast rips off the vulnerable control surfaces. In that sense I'd say the Tomcat has pretty believable damage modeling, though it could really do with better visual feedback. Personally I feel control surface damage could really benefit from some looking at though. So far I've mostly lost jets due to hydraulic failures, with most of the softer bits still very much operational otherwise.

Not sure what would upset people more, getting shot down by a 25 mile Phoenix because the silly jammed-until-23-mile-auto-burnthrough wasn't implemented... or getting hit by a 25 mile Phoenix they did not hear because it was guided in through HOJ.

So instead of showing a hugely biased video with a rather suspicious angle, why not show us the tacview overlays between the server and pilot tacview if you want to prove something. Show us where the missile was for the pilot and where it was according to the server. Why point at the tacview explosion lag, something that's widely known to be a tacview specific issue, to try to prove a point. Why point to bits of circumstantial evidence to try and make a case. I'm very well aware of what the problem is and how much more excessive it is with the Phoenix compared to the AIM-120. However, regardless of where the missile was, this was a poor defensive manoeuvre and not particular to the AIM-54. For every shot that hits me due to desync, there's at least 5 more that hit because I just flew poorly. It's just not as big a deal as people pretend and a really easy thing to blame.

Exactly my point, but most of what I see in here is just people flying with poor tactics and complaining about different outcomes than they expected. Against an F-14 you have to start the fight lower and with less teeth than you could against an F-15, such is the nature of the jets. Against a Mirage 2000 you have to constantly be aware of the skies above because they're flying too high and fast for your missiles to track. Even if that might not be realistic, that's the DCS you're flying. Different jets force you to play the game in a different way. Don't complain about and learn how to fly against it. I feel people have a legitimate complaint when it comes to the INS memory situation allowing the missile to pull AIM-9X type stunts and get into a good position even after lock is broken. (Might I remind folks that all the semi-actives currently do the same) So just keep the pressure on ED to get this fixed instead.

Looking at the tacview instead of a video angle that obfuscates what really happens... That jet was nowhere near the notch at any time during missile flight, missile had enough speed available to pull with it all the way. Jet was pulling above the horizon into the missile's flight path for crying out loud, just made it easier to connect. Slammer or R-27 would've hit there all the same, it's just poor flying. You didn't lose that match because of the AIM-54, you lost that match because your guys flew worse than their guys. This kind of lag happens literally all the time in TacView, with every missile, we've accepted that. Yes missile guidance has serious issues, yes this is very pronounced with the AIM-54, yes it's frustrating as **** to deal with, but this is just pure pilot error. People should stop blaming their own mistakes onto the AIM-54 desync and I guarantee they're going to be better pilots for it

What GGTharos means is that irl the targeting and search parameters from a non-maddogged amraam are tight enough that the chance of accidentally going for a friendly is about equivalent to the host aircraft losing lock and accidentally relocking a buddy instead. The DCSism is pretending the AIM-120 is not a smarter, safer and more accurate missile than the AIM-7 in every conceivable scenario.

Flying DCS in a highly competitive setting as well, I totally share where people's frustrations come from... HOWEVER Bugs pertaining to desync and INS are provably as frequent in other missiles in DCS, among other issues pertaining to radar tracking and radar memory in a multiplayer environment. There's not a single training or scrim where TacView overlays will not show significant amounts of desynchronization for every single missile fired. The only reason people focus on the AIM-54 is because it's just a really, exceptionally long range missile... meaning: a) It's incredibly lethal within "regular" DCS ranges b) Any multiplayer-induced issues get amplified significantly due to time of flight and speed. All of the issues I've seen described also happen with the AIM-7, but nobody complains about that one because it only has an effective range of about 10 miles and is purely SARH (you know... barring the Hornet glitch where radar memory can keep guiding upwards of 20+ seconds while flying cold away from your target...) Rather than trying to get the Phoenix (and thereby most of the A2A capability of this module) neutered, just hope ED quickly starts applying fixes on their end.

I guess you mean in terms of FM? Because I meant purely the amount of drag they generate on the pylons.

I put in a bug report the other day because F-14's Sparrows will go for chaff 4 out of 5 times and received a reply that they are currently being looked at. Generally speaking in DCS: when fired form an F-15 or Hornet they are excellent close-in missiles to support friendlies with. Current iteration has a very good probability of kill at around 7-10 miles from 15000 feet or above (and are nearly immune to chaff while doing so). The modeling used on the Tomcat is way too sensitive to chaff so loading them is a bit of a waste. Then again AIM-9's have absurd drag values currently so pick your poison :P

Alright. Thanks for the heads up, IronMike!

For SARH missile being look-down doesn't matter, since it just guides onto the "beacon" of reflected radar waves. It doesn't look at a doppler shift, but rather at a frequency band. It's like lighting up a butterfly with a flashlight in the dark, only when you move the light away can you not see the butterfly anymore. F-15 as it stands is modeling this correctly, as long as the STT lock remains unbroken, the radar will continue flooding the target with guidance radiation.