How are Heating Seeking missiles modeled?

[Bartacomus]

Are heating seek missiles, AA/SA, written to seek on a actual heat variable? engine output variable? Are they randomized variables?

[razo+r]

They don't seek heat in DCS, but units. Why? I was able to lock a KA-50, which didn't even had the electricity running, with AIM-9P5s.

 

You can do an experiment yourself. Fly behind a big aircraft really close. Aim at the engines, see what happens. Or lock them with the IRST of the flanker. Where does it lock? The center of the unit.

 

Also, they have IR coefficients defined. One with and one without afterburner.

[Bartacomus]

I was running some experiments on the ramp with my Engines in the A10.

 

Pulling the Emergency Fuel Shut Off Handles. At idle it takes a good 2-3 seconds to kill the engines, however at speed its damn near instantaneous.

 

Watching the Fan and Temp gauges. I could cool the engines twice as much and twice as fast.

Rather then pulling the throttle and popping flares. Twice as cool, twice as fast. At a -10 angle, i conserve the energy as well.

 

That is if DCS modeled the tracking on a sliding scale. But thats not the case. :(

 

its a bit like cheating anyway i guess. no pilot would kill engines with a human behind them. maybe at 20,000 ft though.

[AeriaGloria]

Hey if it actually made it impossible to lock on with heaters, it’s not stupid if it works:)

[Bartacomus]

Right? I dont know if the temp drop off is modeled realistically. But its fast.

 

But since its only 'Unit' or 'Unit Afterburner' it probably wouldnt help us.

 

I know from watching some the Grim Reapers group challenges, that the AI units will disengage after a certain amount of damage. I doubt pulling the FCO valves would trigger them to stop tracking.

 

ill probably try it a few times. Would be neat if someone who flies in a squadron could do some SA ir tracking and see if the planes go quiet when the Shut Offs are yanked.

 

quick slaved to a key or button maybe? key binding the pull to the CMS activate and the push to the CMS stop program key.

[Weta43]

I think each aircraft has a look up table of how much 'heat' it gives off from various angles, altitudes (?), and with or without the afterburners on.

Missile seekers have their own calcs to determine whether or not that would be detectable at a particular distance.

At the time the SIM was coded it was probably considered a waste of time to do a lookup for engines off on the ground, so it probably uses 'low and slow', and so is detectable.

[BlackPixxel]

Each plane has two coefficients, one for afterburner on and one for off. The aspect is the second variable. The radiated heat is a (linear?) fuction of the angle towards the plane, and the same for any plane. From the side you have 2x the range (4x the heat) as from the front, and from the rear you have 3x the range (16x the heat) as from the front.

 

Each seeker now has a simple threshold for the heat required to detect the target.

 

Any other state (plane on/off, slow/fast etc.) does not have any effect. The whole weapon coding is super primitive and propably did not change from Lock On.

[Bartacomus]

Thanks guys.

 

if its that simple, i wonder if the variable changes in flight?

 

as an example, if someone sends up a missile at your 6 with AB on..

 

does killing AB and turning into the missile lower the lock variable?

[AeriaGloria]

Yup, or atleast increase chance of your flares working after launch

[Harker]

Thanks guys.

 

if its that simple, i wonder if the variable changes in flight?

 

as an example, if someone sends up a missile at your 6 with AB on..

 

does killing AB and turning into the missile lower the lock variable?

Yes, cutting the AB does help.

[Kid18120]

In the A10 a good tactic is to "mask" your engines in respect to the missile's direction with the tail just after going idle and doing a hard break.

Usually works and to be extra sure just pop a few flares right before doing the break.

So yeah the changing variables are somewhat implemented