Leatherneck Q1 Development Update - Part I

[GaryIKILLYOU]

I would just like to point out that probad did end his post with the :P smiley. I understand it's semantical, however it should have been an indication of sarcasm to Beamscanner who then went from 0-60 with a "you have no idea what you're talking about" post. That's all I'll say.

 

Meanwhile, back with things that have a semblance of relevance. LN will we be able to use the 4x4 Sparrow config on the Cat using the semi-recessed Sparrow hardpoints?

[Cobra847]

I would just like to point out that probad did end his post with the :P smiley. I understand it's semantical, however it should have been an indication of sarcasm to Beamscanner who then went from 0-60 with a "you have no idea what you're talking about" post. That's all I'll say.

 

Meanwhile, back with things that have a semblance of relevance. LN will we be able to use the 4x4 Sparrow config on the Cat using the semi-recessed Sparrow hardpoints?

 

Yup. Any centerline pylons can be removed.

[Beamscanner]

I would just like to point out that probad did end his post with the :P smiley. I understand it's semantical, however it should have been an indication of sarcasm to Beamscanner who then went from 0-60 with a "you have no idea what you're talking about" post. That's all I'll say.

 

As we all know, smileys are used in conjunction with a lot of different things. So no, it alone did not indicate sarcasm to me. If anything it looked like a playful poke (tongue out and all) from a MIG-21 fan..

 

Also, him starting his post with a fact,"fishbed is multirole too", then rolling into his 2nd statement with "and the f-14.." indicated that he was carrying on from his previous statement(the factual one..) and not starting a new thought. It can be difficult to convey sarcasm when you start your thought out with a fact.

 

Hindsight is 20/20, so it may be easy to say 'yea that could have been interpreted as sarcasm' once you've already been told that it was..

 

But I agree, we should stay on topic.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Beamscanner

[Tirak]

Meanwhile, back with things that have a semblance of relevance. LN will we be able to use the 4x4 Sparrow config on the Cat using the semi-recessed Sparrow hardpoints?

 

Well if you wanted, you could roll with 6 sparrows, 4 on the belly, two on the wing gloves, and 2 sidewinders. I'll be interested to see though, if Phoenix's aren't banned from servers, if we'll see all Phoenix loadouts, or mixes like 4 PH 2SP 2SW, or 2PH 4SP 2SW.

[Cool Breeze]

Well if you wanted, you could roll with 6 sparrows, 4 on the belly, two on the wing gloves, and 2 sidewinders. I'll be interested to see though, if Phoenix's aren't banned from servers, if we'll see all Phoenix loadouts, or mixes like 4 PH 2SP 2SW, or 2PH 4SP 2SW.

 

It will be interesting indeed to see the Phoenix's in MP servers! My personal favorite load for the 'Cat would be the 4 Sparrows, 2 Phoenix, and 2 Sidewinders.

 

When a RIO powers up that big AWG-9! I think aircraft are going to be imitating ground hogs. :lol:

 

Since Leatherneck are making their own AIM-54. Are we going to see the Leatherneck Phoenix models superseding the -54s in game now for the AI Tomcats?

I'm very interested in seeing the performance differences between theirs missiles and the DCS standard Phoenix.

[Muppetlord]

I actually hope they make the Aim-54 as unreliable as it was in real life. From what I've seen the ones in game hit their mark pretty often, but if I'm not mistaken a US f-14 never managed to shoot anything down with an aim-54 (Except target drones). Just a load of misfires.

[Reflected]

I actually hope they make the Aim-54 as unreliable as it was in real life. From what I've seen the ones in game hit their mark pretty often, but if I'm not mistaken a US f-14 never managed to shoot anything down with an aim-54 (Except target drones). Just a load of misfires.

 

Yeah, because they used it so often in combat...:music_whistling:

 

Looking at results against target drones it should be quite reliable, but I'd expect it to be easy to "shake off" if you maneuver. I've also heard that the Phoenix only goes pitbull at the very last stage of its flight, so if fired in TWS mode it shouldn't give too much warning except when in real close.

[addde]

Yeah, because they used it so often in combat...:music_whistling:

 

Looking at results against target drones it should be quite reliable, but I'd expect it to be easy to "shake off" if you maneuver. I've also heard that the Phoenix only goes pitbull at the very last stage of its flight, so if fired in TWS mode it shouldn't give too much warning except when in real close.

 

From what i understand it goes pitbull at 10 miles, so you would have 10-15 seconds if my math is right.

[Tirak]

I actually hope they make the Aim-54 as unreliable as it was in real life. From what I've seen the ones in game hit their mark pretty often, but if I'm not mistaken a US f-14 never managed to shoot anything down with an aim-54 (Except target drones). Just a load of misfires.

 

The misfires were caused by maintenance problems, not because of an issue with the missile, The safety pins had not been removed, resulting in failed launches.

 

Furthermore, the AIM-54 was demonstrated against maneuvering fighter sized target drones as well as non maneuvering targets, and were used to devastating effect in actual combat during the Iran/Iraq war.

[renhanxue]

used to devastating effect in actual combat during the Iran/Iraq war.

Yeah, that gets claimed a lot but I have never seen it convincingly documented. The only source I am aware of that states it worked great for the Iranians is a single book by Tom Cooper, who seems to have based his account entirely on a few interviews with a few Iranian pilots. Who, as we all know, certainly have no reason to embellish their own successes (/s). Cooper has also gotten a lot of flak in other books for being very, uh, liberal with his sources. The fact is that in every single reasonably verifiable attempt to use the AIM-54 in combat has resulted in either a) a miss, or b) the booster never igniting at all.

 

This is nothing unique to the Phoenix, though. Cold War era BVR was really bad. In fact, I would go as far as to say that in general, all BVR missiles from before around the mid-1980's (and the advent of reasonably miniaturized digital electronics) were universally almost useless in the real world, at least if you actually tried to use them BVR. They could work reasonably under very specific controlled circumstances, but if you actually tried to shoot something down with them, you missed. A lot. Up until the Gulf War, the number of verifiable BVR shootdowns ever in the entire history of aviation could be counted on the fingers of one hand (there were four (4)).

 

The Phoenix was contemporary with the Sparrow that had a 7% kill probability BVR in the later half of the Vietnam War, and it was designed to shoot down huge bombers flying in straight lines at high altitudes. It is downright unreasonable to expect it to do anything more than that with any sort of success.

 

If you don't want to take my word for it (and actually even if you do take my word for it), I strongly recommend reading this paper by Lt Col Patrick Higsby, USAF:

[ame=http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/11/09.pdf]Promise and Reality: Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat[/ame] .

Edited April 17, 2016 by renhanxue

[Tirak]

Yeah, that gets claimed a lot but I have never seen it convincingly documented. The only source I am aware of that states it worked great for the Iranians is a single book by Tom Cooper, who seems to have based his account entirely on a few interviews with a few Iranian pilots. Who, as we all know, certainly have no reason to embellish their own successes (/s).

 

Please, at least put some effort into dismissing the experiences of an entire air force who managed to generate such a fear of the Tomcat, that by the time we rolled around, Iraqi fighters would flee without engaging our own tomcats. Common tracts in this don't go after missile effectiveness, because even if we assume huge markups, we come to an intimidating weapon that was used successfully against fighters, but rather they point out that the aircraft being fired at lacked the standard warning devices commonly found on more modern aircraft, i.e. RWR.

 

The fact is that in every single reasonably verifiable attempt to use the AIM-54 in combat has resulted in either a) a miss, or b) the booster never igniting at all.

The miss was after a Sparrow and an AMRAAM had also been fired at the target and failed to connect. The firing probability on the aircraft, who had gone hard defensive at long range and was burning the hell out and forcing extreme angle shots, was so poor, any missile would have missed. To claim it is representative of the Phoenix's performance is laughable at best.

 

The missile failing to fire was, as I already wrote, a mistake made by the maintenance personal, who failed to remove the arming pins prior to launch, not a problem with the missile at all.

 

In fact, I would go as far as to say that in general, all BVR missiles from before around the mid-1980's (and the advent of reasonably miniaturized digital electronics) were universally almost useless in the real world, at least if you actually tried to use them BVR. They could work reasonably under very specific controlled circumstances, but if you actually tried to shoot something down with them, you missed. A lot. Up until the Gulf War, the number of verifiable BVR shootdowns ever in the entire history of aviation could be counted on the fingers of one hand (there were four (4)).

An interesting note as to your timeframe of course being that during Vietnam, the period where BVR use would have been most prolific, and the last major air war the US fought prior to ODS, pilots were prohibited from taking BVR shots without visually identifying the target, a rather interesting contradiction. This requirement remained as US SOP due to the lack of sufficient electronic ID equipment, and a lack of an all out shooting war, that would allow for free engagement at long range. The Gulf War saw with it the integration of AWACS, which allowed pilots to know who they were shooting prior to launch, finally opening up the BVR envelope, not because the missiles prior to then were incapable, but because their punch exceeded their sight. This is a problem with informational support, not an issue with the missile's effectiveness as a pure weapon.

 

The Phoenix was contemporary with the Sparrow that had a 7% kill probability BVR in the later half of the Vietnam War, and it was designed to shoot down huge bombers flying in straight lines at high altitudes. It is downright unreasonable to expect it to do anything more than that with any sort of success.

Several things here, first and foremost, the Phoenix and the Sparrow cover a near 30 year period of employment and upgrade, to claim they are contemporaries is correct to a point, but in terms of range and capability they are vastly different. Furthermore, you cite the often mentioned Vietnam accuracy numbers, which suffer from several major issues when talking about our current topic.

 

1. The AIM-54C (ECCM), which is the variant we should be using as by the point in time both Tomcat's we're getting this was the only version in use, is a late 80s derived missile, with advanced seeker heads compared to earlier generations, and is leagues above where the AIM-7E-2s, the ones used at the end of Vietnam, were at. Attempting to compare them is on par with calling the AIM-9B and AIM-9Ms contemporary weapons.

 

2. Despite improvements, especially on the Navy side of the fence, airman training for employment of these weapons was insufficient, especially for the Air Force. The great number of AIM-7 Sparrow shots were taken far outside their operational capability, and while the "dogfight" Sparrow gave greater reliability, the missiles in the 70s, a good decade and a half before when our AIM-54Cs were being used, suffered from reliability issues due to the poor climate. Again, the Navy suffered less from this, and their F-4Js, which lacked a gun, had superior kill ratios to the Air Force F-4Es which did, rather making it clear that training is better than equipment.

 

3. The AIM-7 Sparrow in its Vietnam iteration, was operated by F-4 Phantoms, an aircraft which lacked pilot aids to ensure an optimal launch. The only thing they had was an "In Range" light, which illuminated when the distance between the radar and the target was a certain mile distance away. It did not take into account maneuvering or relative velocities, so even if it had been possible to fire at BVR, the pilots had no way of knowing when they had a good shot or not.

 

I'd like to again point out your remark about few "Verifiable" BVR kills. It's important to not the Verifiable part of that, as prior to use of AWACS and other more modern Battle Space Control elements, the primary means of verification was with your eyes, something impossible when operating at Beyond Visual Range.

 

And finally, the AIM-54 proved in tests to be surprisingly maneuverable against active targets so long as its motor was still burning. When fired in this "dogfight mode", the long running motor burned all the way into target and could, because of having a still thrusting engine, make some fairly impressive turns. While maneuverability suffered at long range, when operating in those conditions, surprise was the key, as the Iranians demonstrated. Even if the missile is easy to dodge, that fact does you no good if you don't know it's coming in time.

[Grundar]

BVR area, always great in theory but historically has always fallen short (pun intended).

 

The actual reliable reports of firing the AIM-54 in combat amounts to 3 - all of which did not destroy their target. That's a 100% miss rate. But statistically 3 is a completely insignificant sample size and the factors that influence effective missile deployment are simply more than locking on and launching a missile.

 

Dave "Bio" Baranek, an acclaimed F-14 RIO, was very impressed with the AIM-54's capability. Given he thought very highly of their anti-ECM capability they must have been very capable when used correctly. The AIM-54's primary use was destruction of hordes of soviet bombers and cruise missiles (traditionally slow moving and slow maneuvering targets. Again, presumably, this is due to the changing nature of aerial combat and the BVR losing it's "sheen" as the new frontier of air warfare.

 

During the Gulf War, it was reported that the F-14's were not allowed to engage in BVR combat due to the lack of an NCTR system (though iirc someone on this forums said that wasn't the reason). An F-14 with a potent BVR missile that is unable to launch at intended ranges kind of puts the efficacy of the AIM-54 automatically in the sub-optimal category.

 

Of course it's all moot now, there are no more AIM-54's to launch and no war scenario where such a long range missile has any use. The Russians have focused on shorter range IR missiles and hyper-maneuverable fighters - not for the guns kill (I presume) but for maximizing the ability to get your WVR IR missiles onto the target.

 

In game I guess we shall see how the AIM-54 is modelled, hopefully for multiplayer content it doesn't become BVR sniping or another SPAMRAAM scenario.

 

Interesting article you linked as well, was a good read, some very pertinent points and some personal ones too I see

[probad]

hopefully for multiplayer content it doesn't become BVR sniping or another SPAMRAAM scenario.

 

guaranteed people will try employing them this way, if for nothing more than the fact the idea of doming an unwitting pilot from 50nm makes most people giggle.

 

in addition, the influx of new pilots more interested in immediately flying than reading the manual, coupled with expectations grounded more in promotional documentaries and/or more rudimentary games will result in a good number of 6x54 spamcats, and an equally large number of people disappointed in their lack of success against maneuvering targets at long range. i would not be surprised to see multiple threads complaining about 54 effectiveness not matching up to expectations, and the root cause being not so much any inaccuracy of missile itself, but rather the large operational discrepancies that will always exist between dcs and reality that relegates many realistic scenarios to the realm of fantasy.

in other words, pretty much the only pilots you'd find in dcs willing to fly rwr-less iraqi fighters in straight lines are historical reenactors.

 

i'm interested to know what happens to a 6x54 tomcat past 12g's. would there be enough energy bleed intrinsic to the aircraft to avoid catastrophic airframe failure or will we see some flanker cases?

Edited April 17, 2016 by probad

[Tirak]

in other words, pretty much the only pilots you'd find in dcs willing to fly rwr-less iraqi fighters in straight lines are historical reenactors.

 

RWR is hardly a magic bullet, it most certainly does not give you perfect knowledge about what's looking at you. After all, one of the reasons the AMRAAM is so effective is you don't get a warning until it goes pitbull. The Tomcat also uses the TWS mode, and will use it from an even greater range. I don't know about you, but I don't see a whole lot of people rolling and dodging while cruising out to the target.

[Cool Breeze]

Gents not to perpetuate a discussion, but it doesn't matter what the real world Phoenix did or didn't achieve. We have this fight over every weapon system in every game I've ever played. The only thing that matters now is the missiles produced by Leatherneck and Eagle Dynamics. Our weapons are only going to be as effective as they are able to program them. Given that I'm sure some of the systems specs are still classified, omitted, or incomplete. The weapons and the way we employ they aren't going to match the real world ones perfectly. While this will be the best simulation we have had in my opinion, it is just that. So let's take this like most things in life with a health dose of perspective.

[probad]

RWR is hardly a magic bullet, it most certainly does not give you perfect knowledge about what's looking at you. After all, one of the reasons the AMRAAM is so effective is you don't get a warning until it goes pitbull. The Tomcat also uses the TWS mode, and will use it from an even greater range. I don't know about you, but I don't see a whole lot of people rolling and dodging while cruising out to the target.

 

high g maneuvers are insignificant at the scale of a long range 54 shot. they only come into play if you are starting your evasion post-pitbull, because there's nothing else to do than to compress the largest displacement possible into the least amount of time, aka high g maneuvers.

 

as creating displacement is the name of the game, it's always better to start evasion from as long a distance as possible in order to maximize the difference between a missile and the aircraft.

a familiar manifestation of it is the crank. the longer you have to execute the crank, the bigger your movements can and should be in order to build up a significant enough displacement against the missile. eventually with a long enough shot even simple course changes can generate a large displacement.

 

to that point, some people just dont fly too straight and i expect they will unwittingly dodge 54 shots they never knew coming!

 

granted, tws is a huge advantage and i fully expect people to get zonked by long range 54 shots. but i also think that while rwrs are not magical, neither are tomcat radars; that smarter players will just as easily and reliably avoid 50nm 54s, and that any monkey can copy that avoidance pattern for themselves. what i expect would happen is that even more targets will be driven into the mountains and the 54 would wind up getting used in ~20nm engagements vs medium altitude targets and <10nm vs low, depending more on terrain features than missile kinematics. in this arena the 120 and 27s would still represent healthy competition and will diminish the fantasy of the "almighty phoenix".

 

what i do think the 54 would be very interesting against are high flying eagle drivers.

 

i should also establish that i don't think anything should be changed in order to enforce a particular outcome (or rather, that is the one thing i'm against). my speculations are nothing more than exercise in speculation.

 

Gents not to perpetuate a discussion

i wasn't aware discussions were a thing to be avoided on a forum

i agree with you though, the lns 54 should be taken as the lns 54. i suppose we're actually discussing less about missiles and more about the people shooting them.

 

you better watch out, i have learned from experience that emotes no longer suffice as a disclaimer for sarcasm!

Edited April 17, 2016 by probad

[Reflected]

Wishful thinking is really funny. I see there are some people who want the Phoenix to be a complete waste of ammo, hitting 1 out of 10 times. On the other hand there are those who hope it will be a long range magic weapon. Both sides seem very convinced about their right, that's why it's so funny to see how far expectations lay from each other.

 

I trust LN will do some proper research and give us something realistic.

[renhanxue]

Please, at least put some effort into dismissing the experiences of an entire air force who managed to generate such a fear of the Tomcat, that by the time we rolled around, Iraqi fighters would flee without engaging our own tomcats.

I'm a historian. I'm interested in verifiable facts, not hearsay, and I'm not particularly convinced by Cooper's work as an accurate account of the "experiences of an entire air force", as you put it.

 

The thing is, kill counts and personal accounts are notoriously unreliable. Personal stories can be very engaging reading and a good source for how the people involved thought of themselves afterward, but as an accurate account of what actually happened, they're close to worthless. You see a similar situation in WW2 history, where until the last decade or two the accounts of German tankers stated ridiculous kill counts were accepted as fact, but when the Soviet archives were opened it turned out they had frequently claimed to have destroyed more tanks than were physically ever there (and of course vastly more than the Soviets themselves counted as lost). It's not even necessary to have any intent of embellishing, it's just that the fog of war is a very real thing.

 

A kill is easy to claim, a loss is very hard to avoid noticing. You need access to the accounts of both sides and a serious comparative analysis to make claims based on reality.

 

An interesting note as to your timeframe of course being that during Vietnam, the period where BVR use would have been most prolific, and the last major air war the US fought prior to ODS, pilots were prohibited from taking BVR shots without visually identifying the target, a rather interesting contradiction. This requirement remained as US SOP due to the lack of sufficient electronic ID equipment, and a lack of an all out shooting war, that would allow for free engagement at long range. The Gulf War saw with it the integration of AWACS, which allowed pilots to know who they were shooting prior to launch, finally opening up the BVR envelope, not because the missiles prior to then were incapable, but because their punch exceeded their sight. This is a problem with informational support, not an issue with the missile's effectiveness as a pure weapon.

This is true but has nothing to do with the actual Pk of the BVR shots that were taken. The Sparrow performed very poorly overall in 1971-1973 (Pk of around 11% with 276 shots taken) and of only 28 shots made BVR, two (2) resulted in kills. Please read Higsby's paper for the details, he goes over everything you mentioned in detail.

 

Even in the Gulf War, with AWACS and 90's Sparrows and all that jazz, only 24 kills resulted from 88 AIM-7 shots taken, resulting in an overall Pk of 27% (BVR details uncertain, see Higsby for details). For comparison, 12 Sidewinders in the same conflict resulted in 8 kills.

 

The paper you provided above does not have facts contained within (please check for those next time - facts), it has one reference to the Phoenix and the statement does not give any specifics.

Uh. I guess if you want to call official USAF statistics "not facts" I guess you can do that, but it's unlikely to contribute to the discussion. I cited the paper as support for my position on Cold War era BVR in general, not for the Phoenix in particular. Since the only account of the Phoenix in combat outside those two anecdotes already discussed is Tom Cooper's, it's obviously impossible to make any meaningful statistical comparison; hence my argument is based on BVR in general.

 

Also, here is a list of Iranian air-to-air kills that is based on data besides that of Tom Cooper. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the CIA was able to confirm a lot more kills and engagements than before.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_aerial_victories_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war

 

You will see that there are a lot of AIM-54A kills, including "confirmed kills" which are bolded. These reports are based on US intelligence documents, which prior to the invasion only credited IRIAF F-14s with ~10 kills total, still trying to claim that their avionics were disabled. The total from this list is over 60, that's a healthy number.

The only confirmation is Cooper's, as far as I can see. If the confirmations are based on CIA/US intelligence reports the page certainly does a remarkably bad job of stating it. The page cites Cooper and some apparently expat Iranian web sites of dubious character, most of which are dead links. If you happen to be sitting on a FOIA'd CIA report on this I'd be highly interested in reading it, though - it'd be very interesting to see the facts.

Edited April 17, 2016 by renhanxue

[Agremont]

So....how about that second part of the update?

[zaelu]

Hold tight! :D

[Beamscanner]

Please don't compare the pk of a SARH to an active missile.. Indications are everything..

 

Also, give credit where it's deserved. The 54 has a larger seeker and greater kinematic range then the AIM-120. At a 20 mile shot, the 120 will have little end game energy to play with. At that range the 54 will run you down if you don't break LOS..

 

Furthermore, after much investigation, it turns out the 54 has no datalink. So the enemy should not receive an RWR indication if its launched in STT or switched to STT near end game(providing continuous target updates vice every couple seconds in TWS). A hard lock+datalink combined is required to indicate a missile launch. So the AIM-54 launched in STT should have the same indications as the AIM-7 launched in flood mode (just a hard lock, as no datalink is present).

 

The only indication that the enemy should receive from a 54 engagement is the missile's seeker at terminal, and of course the AWG-9. No launch warning should ever be seen, regardless of the radar mode being used.

 

This is in contrast to a 120 launched in STT, which does give a launch warning to the enemy.

 

Because of this, an F-14 RIO can start getting targets to defend/break off from an engagement by simply locking them up(as they may think they've been launched on).. That's a pretty powerful tool if you ask me.

 

Previous posts on RWR missile launch indications in game

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2687175&postcount=37

 

Post on AIM-54 engagement process

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2669661&postcount=43

Edited April 17, 2016 by Beamscanner

[BlackLion213]

If the confirmations are based on CIA/US intelligence reports the page certainly does a remarkably bad job of stating it. The page cites Cooper and some apparently expat Iranian web sites of dubious character, most of which are dead links. If you happen to be sitting on a FOIA'd CIA report on this I'd be highly interested in reading it, though - it'd be very interesting to see the facts.

 

That's a fair criticism and I'll give you that. My original look at that post left me thinking it was better cited, but all of the non-Cooper links are deactivated and all other links lead to him. I'll kick that part out of the argument.

 

Uh. I guess if you want to call official USAF statistics "not facts" I guess you can do that, but it's unlikely to contribute to the discussion. I cited the paper as support for my position on Cold War era BVR in general, not for the Phoenix in particular. Since the only account of the Phoenix in combat outside those two anecdotes already discussed is Tom Cooper's, it's obviously impossible to make any meaningful statistical comparison; hence my argument is based on BVR in general.

 

I apologize, that's not how I interpreted your post. Unfortunately, the paper you posted does not have Phoenix statistics, only a brief mention by a member of the USAF who took an event out of context. As such, I did not see how it supported the argument except to say that all missiles have faults. It didn't support the idea that the AIM-54 was particularly troublesome or ineffective.

 

Official statistics on the Phoenix from training shots would be interesting, but recapitulating the poor performance of the Sparrow when the Phoenix was a concerted effort to improve on those faults doesn't support the argument.

 

It's a bit like stating that the F-15A has poor fuel economy and then citing fuel consumption data from the J79. Its not that relevant.

 

So I'm a bit confused as to why this paper was chosen.

 

USAF statistics are facts (some of them at least), my bigger issue was this:

 

The Phoenix was contemporary with the Sparrow that had a 7% kill probability BVR in the later half of the Vietnam War, and it was designed to shoot down huge bombers flying in straight lines at high altitudes. It is downright unreasonable to expect it to do anything more than that with any sort of success.

 

If you don't want to take my word for it (and actually even if you do take my word for it), I strongly recommend reading this paper by Lt Col Patrick Higsby, USAF:

Promise and Reality: Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat .

 

This is the part that I take issue with and that I was responding to in my post. Why would this be the case and how does the article strengthen the argument? (Honest question) :)

 

My bigger concern is that the myth of the Phoenix's purpose continues to be reinforced and that part bothers me. Is there a reason you took the above position in the first place?

 

The USN crews who fired it and trained with were very confident in its ability. Bio Baranek has said on himself that the missile was much more capable than his USAF counterparts thought (they also didn't have any insight).

 

Finally, I don't expect the Phoenix to introduce anything particularly new to DCS. All of it's "revolutionary" features are already part of DCS in the form of the AMRAAM. The only novel feature is it's potential range (still higher than anything currently in DCS) and the size of it's warhead. I'm not sure why so many are dismissive of it as an air-to-air weapon, but it shouldn't be regarded as some sort of "super missile". Thoughts?

 

-Nick

Edited April 17, 2016 by BlackLion213

[IceFire]

I think tactics are being ignored in this convo about the phoenix.

 

It may not be useful at all against fighters, then again it may be the best anti-fighter BVR weapon of all time IDK.. However, I can dream up a situation where I'd WANT to pop off a few *2* 54's at a flight of bandits at long range. 1. on the hope that they may hit home. 2. It puts the enemy on the defensive at long range, if they are concerned with trying to defeat a missile coming down at them from the edge of space, they wont be concerned with you closing at burner to shoot them in the rear when they're defensive.

 

I'd be surprised if the navy didn't think of something like that.

Edited April 18, 2016 by IceFire

[probad]

in most scenarios people already have enough time to turn back around after defending a 20nm 120 shot; a max range 54 shot isn't going to be effective because you certainly won't be closing 30nm (especially not to a cold enemy) in that window to capitalize. A long tail chase is also not a very good idea because even a newbie generally ends up running down the line of allies all itching to have a go at you.

 

there are smarter ways to set up engagements that doesn't involve spamming 54s.

 

The only indication that the enemy should receive from a 54 engagement is the missile's seeker at terminal, and of course the AWG-9. No launch warning should ever be seen, regardless of the radar mode being used.

 

This is in contrast to a 120 launched in STT, which does give a launch warning to the enemy.

 

Because of this, an F-14 RIO can start getting targets to defend/break off from an engagement by simply locking them up(as they may think they've been launched on).. That's a pretty powerful tool if you ask me.

 

Interesting insight, I agree this can be pretty powerful.

Edited April 18, 2016 by probad

[FWind]

That's a fair criticism and I'll give you that. My original look at that post left me thinking it was better cited, but all of the non-Cooper links are deactivated and all other links lead to him. I'll kick that part out of the argument.

 

 

 

I apologize, that's not how I interpreted your post. Unfortunately, the paper you posted does not have Phoenix statistics, only a brief mention by a member of the USAF who took an event out of context. As such, I did not see how it supported the argument except to say that all missiles have faults. It didn't support the idea that the AIM-54 was particularly troublesome or ineffective.

 

Official statistics on the Phoenix from training shots would be interesting, but recapitulating the poor performance of the Sparrow when the Phoenix was a concerted effort to improve on those faults doesn't support the argument.

 

It's a bit like stating that the F-15A has poor fuel economy and then citing fuel consumption data from the J79. Its not that relevant.

 

So I'm a bit confused as to why this paper was chosen.

 

USAF statistics are facts (some of them at least), my bigger issue was this:

 

 

 

This is the part that I take issue with and that I was responding to in my post. Why would this be the case and how does the article strengthen the argument? (Honest question) :)

 

My bigger concern is that the myth of the Phoenix's purpose continues to be reinforced and that part bothers me. Is there a reason you took the above position in the first place?

 

The USN crews who fired it and trained with were very confident in its ability. Bio Baranek has said on himself that the missile was much more capable than his USAF counterparts thought (they also didn't have any insight).

 

Finally, I don't expect the Phoenix to introduce anything particularly new to DCS. All of it's "revolutionary" features are already part of DCS in the form of the AMRAAM. The only novel feature is it's potential range (still higher than anything currently in DCS) and the size of it's warhead. I'm not sure why so many are dismissive of it as an air-to-air weapon, but it shouldn't be regarded as some sort of "super missile". Thoughts?

 

-Nick

 

http://navyflightmanuals.tpub.com/P-825/P-8250109.htm

 

[ame]http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/navy/nrtc/14313_ch3.pdf[/ame]