GGTharos

I'm sure they're incredibly realistic too.

You'd probably be searching for F-5E climb technique or F-5E flight manuals (they may include a flight technique there). At those altitudes it's going to be over M1 ... M1.4+ for 50000'. Less than mach 1 is not enough, as you noticed your indicated speed drops with altitude and engines need airflow to provide thrust. So climb to best acceleration altitude (probably between 30000 and 40000), get moving at M1.3 at least and then climb, maintaining that mach number. Every 0.1 Mach is +60kts.

Good work! Note that the ceiling is usually defined as still being able to climb at some small rate. So if you're not managing this, then you need to maintain higher speed before you begin your climb - ie. the reason you're at 200KIAS at 50000 is because you didn't start the climb with enough speed. At these altitudes you'll need to maintain a mach number, I gave you the KIAS as an easy example to follow and you did good - now you can try to fine tune ... unfortunately I don't recall the climbing techniques for this aircraft so you might have to experiment, but the basic idea is always get to a mach number and try to keep it as you climb

It was changed? Edit: Yes it was changed. Shame on me for assuming. Ok, I know what I must do then. I shall be eating my hat. Thanks for this change ED! @BIGNEWY thanks for bringing it to the devs.

No, no changes are made. If you're not picking up a flanker 95nm away in look-up/co-alt, this radar's range capability has not been corrected.

Have you tried turning off ice halos? I got bad results with that on.

Yes there is. Get up to 400 and keep 400 in the climb. Reduce pitch as required. I don't recall if 400 is the right speed, but try to keep M1.5 if you can get it up there.

The video is meaningless as are most equipment-free comparisons. These aircraft would never be in fight without equipment (pylons etc) which not only add drag, but importantly they destroy lift. I don't know how well this is represented in DCS, and perhaps even on a module-by-module basis, but overall all of this means nothing. Besides, this video doesn't demonstrate anything other than someone in a very light aircraft staying in a controlling position which let's face it, if you're not flying something that's completely inferior, isn't exactly a huge accomplishment. There's no chart being produced or shown here, and any 'comparison' in which you run yourself out of gas is silly. But I get it, people want to get their BFM on and nothing else matters. The point though is simple: The scenario does not reflect reality and therefore questions about realism do not apply. Besides the M2K FM is more of a guess than most other modules; RAZBAM have done their best with the available information and there's basically nothing to complain about unless, as pointed out, someone brings solid numbers into this.

In theory if the target is still inside the missile seeker's FoV, and you illuminate it again, it should start guiding. Unfortunately all the caveats of doing things this way are not modeled (ie. preferring large clouds of chaff to lock onto after a loss of signal etc)

It must never receive any link commands after lock is dropped, but if the target is still in the FoV it may still guide on it after radar illumination is restored. ... It shouldn't even have a good chance to hit the original target, but I guess Maestro will eventually get to that.

Thank You Maestro, I am reading the paper and I have a couple of comments regarding how it is interpreted - like beauty I guess, it is in the eye of the beholder because: 1) They do not quantify what 'bad enough data' means ... how far off do you have to be? ECM can produce target information that is well outside of the target's physical maneuver capability 2) They are concerned with ECM, not a maneuvering target. Targets maneuver, so if the command link is lost, I would expect the missile to attempt to find an exact parameter match and then open up the parameters if it does not, based on the amount of time it was flying in inertial mode 3) Do you more some ability of the missile to select different targets in unresolved groups? (I know this doesn't completely apply to DCS, but if you were to shoot 120's without DL at a close group, they should have a good change of picking a different target. My guess, the 'seed' would be the datalink channel and the decision would be taken at the moment the missile's search mode can resolve the group when close enough) 4) The DCS F-15C TWS mode drops the track the moment a target sneezes through the notch. Given how you've implemented the AMRAAM, could you guys please fix this TWS mode? I know it's an FC3 bird but I don't think this is an unreasonable request. I'll summarize how I interpret this: I think the paper is concerned with ECM which can produce Vc and Range (and possibly other effects) that varies quite extremely compared to what an aircraft can physically do. The paper does not seem to concern itself with maneuvering and does mention what happens when DL is lost, but rather it is concerned with the type of information the DL provides to the 120 before the missile goes active. Consider here how TWS builds an 'oval' to consider the next hit for a track - this would be your uncertainty volume and you need about 1 sec to correctly capture a 12g target, 2 sec interval for 6g etc. If the interval is 10 sec, the volume becomes very large and it becomes much more likely to capture the wrong target. But here we do not consider ECM, only maneuvering and so the parameters/logic would be different between 'I have uncertainty due to target maneuver' and 'I have uncertainty due to ECM' which could easily place target data as being 'outside of the capture volume'.

Yep, will do in a couple of hours. I don't know if I can find the research paper again but I'll try to do that as well (although it was for different types of radar, it at least quantifies the return with numbers, which is applicable anywhere)

This is wrong implementation. There is solid combat evidence as well as just plain research showing the rotor return is visible for 40-50nm, and this is while sitting on the ground with the rotor spinning. ED should fix this, or say that they're doing this to protect helis in an MP environment, or that separating the rotor and body return is in the pipeline (or tech-based radar capability to deal with locking into a rotor which would not be a problem for the F-15/16/18 modeled in game) or whatever else they have going on, but just saying that 'the lock would be difficult' is simply not correct for a modern radar.

MIM-23 uses HIPAR for guidance, there's nothing AESA about it. Likewise, PATRIOT and S300 is PESA, and AESA isn't some some form of magical 'never miss' potion.

All you need to understand is that ED will not be taking that risk. The reason is very clear; the law regarding this is broad and can be used at any time, for any reason and with no real recourse.

Same thing applies, although maybe, just maybe the current parameters are enough to differentiate the HAWKs with anti-heli capability and the ones without.

PAC-2 wasn't dodgy, as long as it targeted aircraft and (until the problem was corrected) you reset the system every so often to correct clock drift. It was later enhanced to better deal with ballistic missiles as opposed to the rushed ABM role it was put into. Further, while PATRIOT was the big kid on the block, it was supplemented by other NATO SAMs. Conversely, PAC-3 isn't appropriate to be used against ABTs. You can, but the PAC-2s do better. There are other SAMs available, like NASAMs, other NATOs SAMs and of course the stinger platforms, whether shoulder-fired or mounted. What is the mod for? It's not like there's going to be a huge difference in DCS between these missile variants, DCS is simply not capable of representing a bunch of it right now. Proper representation requires additional guidance models, especially for ABMs.

Thanks for the reply. Is this research paper available publicly? In any case, the 120 does something IRL if not changing gates, otherwise IRL experience cannot be reconciled.

Maestro, even the old sparrow would open up the doppler gates if it couldn't detect a target using pre-launch information. This is the real problem with dropped tracks, the missile will drop certain constraints and you may have unexpected results, ie. it now gets to choose what it locks onto - with enough intelligence it may be able to choose one among many targets that best fits the criteria, or just the first thing it sees. AIM-120 has a search mode; I know it's not represented in the game, but I want to point out that CHEAPSHOT tactics are real, and they have a place (maybe not quite how DCS players use them, but they exist). In addition, there is an 'infamous' British experiment where they did not want to buy the data-link for the 120, and the Pk ended up being about the same as sparrow. With datalink it is twice as good as sparrow (this is 120A/B era). I know Pk is pretty nebulous but at least it gives an idea that something more is going on in there, so I think any target in a 120's search basket should be in danger. Let me know if you need the relevant info as proof - again I just have sparrow docs, not 120 ... but we're talking old sparrow (7F) and you might imagine a 120 would do much better.

When you say sunk, do you mean they've slipped below water?

Your work is appreciated, I think it's pretty awesome how you constructed the rocket motor using available information and knowledge.

This isn't the AIM-260. AIM-120 info isn't always easily forthcoming but contracts for new rocket motors usually show up in certain industry publications, and sometimes in other sources. Such sources were used for the rocket motor formulation in DCS right now, so why are you trying to tell me what I know and what I don't? If I had clearance, how would you know what it covers or doesn't? There was also an air-breathing AIM-120 tested in '96 or '97, and was later shelved.

I do/had, but it'll been a long time and I don't feel like re-doing the research Currently the only thing known about the D is that the two-way datalink and essentially what you said is what gives it extra range - this is a 'system' thing, where the AESA radars also help use it to the best of its abilities. There was supposed to be a new motor for the D (the C5 is, IIRC, and do not quote me on this, known as the +10 inch motor, and I believe the C7/8/D was supposed to get the +15 but again..I forget) but the motor upgrade didn't actually happen for the D.

A, B, C1-4 use the original rocket motor. C5 to some version of D use a different all-boost rocket motor, and there's been no news that I recall that it has been changed since. All other performance relates to electronics, guidance, target detection, ECM rejection etc.

Thank You Maestro, I appreciate the reponse. I understand the choices for #2, but I think it is a reasonable argument to use simple PN - either you can guide with all the benefits of PN (like a heat seeker) or you cannot guide at all. Maybe ECM increases scintillation effects. I know you won't be making a lot of changes to ECM so may I make one suggestion to the missile guidance in HoJ: 1) Assume Vc is available, because we are only jamming range. Instead, make all range information invalid (eg. feed the missile 'range is 1km or 10km, whatever works best as a default) if the missile is launched without initial range knowledge (ie. launched in HoJ to begin with). This would get rid of maneuvering optimizations for long range shots. 2) You have a scintillation parameter for the miss distance which you increase when the target gets close to ground etc. Please increase it in the presence of ECM, even in 'burn through' range. Ideally more modern missiles should be less affected (less miss distance) and more ideally this should also depend on the ECM technology level, which means some sort of 'tech level' attribute would have to added to missiles and ECM systems - this without modeling different ECM techniques. 3) Actually, increasing miss distance in the presence of chaff would also be good ... no need for the missile to completely change targets.