Noctrach

Thanks BIGNEWY. Here's a particularly egregious example that happened in singleplayer recently. Unfortunately I don't have the track anymore. P-STT lock never dropped during this engagement. Uploaded the tacview under this comment https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3985405&postcount=3

I could provide multiple tacviews for this as well in both singleplayer and multiplayer if needed. SARH and ARH missiles will eat chaff thats 5+ seconds old, with unbroken lock and in look-up scenarios. While chaff working as a "radar flare" is absolutely fine, it would be nice if the duration of effectiveness could be toned down a bit. SARH missiles that have been decoyed also seem to have zero chance of reacquiring once the chaff expires, even if the host radar continues tracking the correct target within their field of vision.

That said it, compared to what I've read in literature the STT notch gate in DCS seems significantly larger than what they had even dating back to the early 80s... before we even take into account the effects of radar memory on the effectiveness of any notching. I don't know if this is due to engine limitations or design choices but it does make a mockery of current SARH. (and ARH for that matter... AMRAAM is lightyears ahead of the Sparrow tech wise)

Nope, CW-Doppler and Pulse-Doppler are different variations on the same idea. The latter is the "natural evolution" of the former, getting rid of a lot of existing weaknesses. PD-STT is incredibly difficult to spoof due to the use of multiple doppler frequencies at the same time, combined with range-gating to filter out most false returns (background clutter, chaff). The "downside" is that the processing stage is very resource-intensive and therefore only became feasible once digital systems started being widespread. The more frequencies you can use, the better your filtering, the smaller your notch gate, but the longer the processing takes. It's logical that CW got phased out entirely with the advent of modern CPUs as there are no benefits to using it over PD.

True for DCS but shouldnt be happening for PD SARH as far as I'm aware, since the seeker can be slaved to a range-gated doppler return, which makes it nearly impossible to notch for longer periods of time. In DCS even a split-second notch will utterly spoof the missile, I've created another report on this last week. Even continuous wave guidance is already very sensitive to even small differences in doppler shift. The modeled doppler gate in DCS missiles seems unreasonably large. Vulnerable to chaff or the guidance radar getting notched, sure, but the problem with DCS is that a missile getting notched even momentarily is utterly wasted, with zero chance of reacquiring.

Thanks for the input guys, I get that P-STT is by no means unspoofable, however as I understand SARH homing works by illuminating the target with a flood of radar waves, with the seeker just homing onto reflection. Chaff will disrupt this reflection and therefore spoof a missile temporarily, but if the radar keeps tracking the original target, the missile should reacquire as soon as the chaff disperses or is no longer illuminated by the radar. This will in most cases cause the missile to be kinematically defeated (resulting intercept trajectory will cause the missile to pull significant extra G's) In DCS however I see chaff working like flares in a very egregious and jarring way. They spoof the missile directly, even for old bundles that have hundreds of feet of separation and are no longer being illuminated (so there's nothing for the SARH missile to home in on). Missiles that were chaffed also have no chance of ever reacquiring the original contact, even if the radar track is never lost. The chance that this happens seems extremely high in singleplayer, due to the AI's ability to instantaneously pull into a perfect notch (even in look-up somehow). The worst example of this is losing the missile to chaff spam on hot aspect engagements. Pulse mode would have a very high chance of getting its track broken by chaff, but that's not what's happening in the sim as the radar keeps tracking. I'd understand if this is something Heatblur has little influence over since missile guidance all happens on the side of ED, so I might as well throw a bug report on the pile in the hope something changes in the future.

Hey IronMike, thank you very much for your reply. Unfortunately the issue I'm seeing is not so much that the AIM-7 is running out of energy, as it would still make the intercept in excess of mach 1 with the shot parameters I was using. Rather it will radar lock onto chaff and guide to a collision course with that, rather than the airplane. I was under the impression that such a thing should not be possible in a P-STT look-up scenario, so long as the lock remains unbroken. I've attached the tacview recording of my last flight, both first two missiles are fired with the target at 2-3000 feet above my jet, against clear sky. However, halfway through intercept the AIM-7 locks onto an old bundle of chaff (5-6 seconds after it was dumped). The second missile I fire never even tracks and goes for the same bundle of chaff immediately off the rails. As you can see in the recording, it's not that the missiles run out of energy or don't track, it's that they specifically start tracking chaff, particularly in a look-up for the first two shots (the last one I can discount because it's look-down). Tacview-20190721-130453-DCS.zip.acmi.zip

So I'm noticing my AIM-7s in P-STT mode being consistently decoyed by AI jets in singleplayer in scenarios where this should be practically impossible. I'm firing between 7 and 12 miles in a look-up scenario against clear sky, yet despite the lock never breaking... almost all of my missiles will go for bundles of chaff. Some never even start tracking and just go for chaff off the rails. I'm even seeing 5 mile shots on hot aspect targets jink off-target and go for chaff instead. Is Jester doing something wrong with the radar? Is P-STT/CW illumination not implemented yet? Is SARH missile guidance just utterly broken? Am I missing something?

Honestly the main thing this campaign showcases right now is how badly DCS is in need of an AI overhaul :( Which is such a shame because it's a well made and immersive campaign setup with great voice acting and I'd love to actually enjoy flying it. However 1v1s in the F-5 demonstrate pretty much everything that's wrong with the current state of AI. The induced drag for having full fuel and the recording pod on my jet, contrasted with the absolute lack of even ballpark drag modeling, the absence of stalling behaviour and the lack of altitude performance degradation on the opposing jets means you're always at a huge energy disadvantage. I don't know if they changed anything to the AI but in no way is their behaviour in my training sessions even close to comparable to what I see in Sydy's video unless I lobotomize their skill setting. The only way of beating them for me is through high aspect snapshots or to wait for them to inevitably fly into the hard deck. Which is hardly reliable, or satisfying. Recently watched an interview with an F-14 and F-5 aggressor pilot, he asserted that the small size was it's main quality in DACT. "You see the F-5, you beat the F-5. You don't see the F-5, it's gonna get you." Works great against other players, not at all against AI unfortunately :/

Happens in-game as well, only in multiplayer though. I feel it might be caused by the server (GAW in this case) culling objects when there's too much going on. When there's only a few people on and performance is good the missiles will fly all the way to target, but when there's heavy server activity they will disappear once they reach a certain distance away from your aircraft (around half a mile). I notice this also happens with editor-placed static units, like factories and tanks. During peak hours they will only start showing up once you get within a particular distance (10-ish km).

Happened again on tonight's flight. Master mode ANF, selector set to MARK, trigger unsafe just prior to firing so as to not waste the RB-05s battery. Both flew about 3000 feet and disappeared into thin air.

Nope, I know they get destroyed when that happens ^^ I'm thinking I might've had the attack switch in a wrong setting though, not sure if that could do it

My RB-05s both just disappeared out of existence while flying on the GAW server. Both were still a good 400-600 feet above the ground and didn't explode or hit anything. They just sorta faded out. https://gfycat.com/ScornfulEnchantingAmericanquarterhorse Is this something I did wrong on my end? Is this a known issue?