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[NO BUG]Harpoon Flight Profile


RichardG

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From the manual:

 

"LOW: The Harpoon cruises to the target at low (sea skimming) altitude. Low altitude is also known as a sea skimming profile because the Harpoon travels to the target area at very low altitude. While maximum range is reduced, enemy reaction time is also greatly reduced. Cruise altitude is 5,000 feet"

 

This contradicts itself. In game, Harpoon does NOT cruise at low sea skimming altitude. It flies at 5000 feet, or lower if launching aircraft is lower than 5000, until it aquires target.

 

 

 

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From the manual:

 

"LOW: The Harpoon cruises to the target at low (sea skimming) altitude. Low altitude is also known as a sea skimming profile because the Harpoon travels to the target area at very low altitude. While maximum range is reduced, enemy reaction time is also greatly reduced. Cruise altitude is 5,000 feet"

 

This contradicts itself. In game, Harpoon does NOT cruise at low sea skimming altitude. It flies at 5000 feet, or lower if launching aircraft is lower than 5000, until it aquires target.

 

 

 

Isn't there a SKIM flight profile, along with LOW/MED/HIGH? Been quite a bit since I've loaded an AGM84D on the Hornet, and been a bit since I've flown the Hornet, to be fair (thanks to the A10CII) - but I am quite sure there is a SKIM flight profile...

 

 

Cheers,

 

Ziptie

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No. That is TERM...terminal attack profile.

 

Ah, copy that sir.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Ziptie

i7 6700 @4ghz, 32GB HyperX Fury ddr4-2133 ram, GTX980, Oculus Rift CV1, 2x1TB SSD drives (one solely for DCS OpenBeta standalone) Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS, Thrustmaster Cougar MFDs

 

Airframes: A10C, A10CII, F/A-18C, F-14B, F-16C, UH=1H, FC3. Modules: Combined Arms, Supercarrier. Terrains: Persian Gulf, Nevada NTTR, Syria

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The Harpoon seems a little off to me, note this is my opinion, I can't find much about it online.

 

Having cruising profiles of 5000 feet and above kinda defeats the point of a sea-skimming anti-ship missile, as higher up, the missile can no longer hide under the RADAR horizon provided by the curvature of the Earth.

 

To me it makes better sense to have the cruising altitude set, and then descend to sea-skimming when at the seeker search distance/HPTP and once acquired and on terminal homing, have the Harpoon do whatever specified terminal manoeuvre.

 

IDK, it just makes more sense to me, rather than the current implementation, though I don't know if the current implementation is inaccurate.

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The Harpoon seems a little off to me, note this is my opinion, I can't find much about it online.

 

Having cruising profiles of 5000 feet and above kinda defeats the point of a sea-skimming anti-ship missile, as higher up, the missile can no longer hide under the RADAR horizon provided by the curvature of the Earth.

 

To me it makes better sense to have the cruising altitude set, and then descend to sea-skimming when at the seeker search distance/HPTP and once acquired and on terminal homing, have the Harpoon do whichever specified terminal manoeuvre.

 

IDK, it just makes more sense to me, rather than the current implementation, though I don't know if the current implementation is inaccurate.

 

Exactly. This is almost certainly how it's supposed to work. The cruising portion of the flight should end at (the absolute latest) when the search distance is reached, at which point the missile should be at a much lower 'search' altitude. This would only need to be 100-200 feet to give an adequate radar horizon for it's limited seeker. When a target is found the missile should then descend to the sea skimming portion, to end in the TERM profile (remain skimming or pop). It seems that the 'search altitude' is completely ignored by ED's implementation. But common sense implies it's there or a similar mechanism to get the missile lower much further out from the target than it presently does.

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They still get shot down though.

As they should if fired singularly, as a group they would stand a chance if "sea skimming" but 500 ft AGL is a high easy target for a Missile Frigate.

 

Detail

 

The JF-17 C-802AK has two profiles - top down and sea skimming (50-15 ft AGL), combining the two attack profiles will allow the sea skimmer to get through a CIWS and hit a ship.

 

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An attack profile like this isn't available for the F/A-18C / Harpoon, so it seems a waste of effort to try to use Harpoons vs the Neustrashimyy.

 

 

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If launched at 500" they will cruise at that altitude regardles of the profile. Not saying what is right and wrong. Just saying that there is a way around it. They still get shot down though.

 

The minimum release altitude for the Harpoon should be 2500ft. You get a 'ALT' inhibit warning on the HUD and Stores page if below. DCS might allow drop below this, haven't tried, but it's a cheaty and unauthentic workaround.

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@Ramsay Even if you equip 4 Harpoons and tick unlimited ammo you still have a hard time even scoring a hit against a single destroyer. One Walleye will sink it, but it's a pain to operate. @AvroLanc It's a cheaty workaround for a missile that doesn't work like it supposedly should. :)

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  • ED Team

Hi,

 

This is not a bug. LOW is for cruise altitude, it is not the terminal sea skim altitude.

 

Thank you

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This is not a bug. LOW is for cruise altitude, it is not the terminal sea skim altitude.

The problem is the Harpoons only **start** to descend from LOW (5,000 ft) cruise altitude to sea skimming @ ~5 Nm, and a missile cruiser like the Neustrashimyy will start shooting them down at ~6 Nm.

 

To be effective in DCS, the Harpoon likely needs to be at it's terminal sea skim altitude 5-6 Nm from the target, not starting it's descent phase.

 

Other sea skimming ASM start getting shoot down at ~3 Nm (i.e. at half the range of the Harpoon), so it's much easier for them to overwhelm the Neustrashimyy's defences.

 

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  • ED Team

The issue for the Harpoon is increasing it's radar range and adjusting RCS of ships, once we have done this it should be a lot better.

 

thanks

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Hi,

 

This is not a bug. LOW is for cruise altitude, it is not the terminal sea skim altitude.

 

Thank you

 

Low is the cruise altitude when the terminal is pop, when the terminal is skim it is my understanding that it should be skim for the whole flight aside from a brief fly up at search range to acquire.

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when the terminal is skim it is my understanding that it should be skim for the whole flight aside from a brief fly up at search range to acquire.

 

Same here. I must have been reading about a Harpoon that is different than the one in DCS.....? :book:

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Ziptie

i7 6700 @4ghz, 32GB HyperX Fury ddr4-2133 ram, GTX980, Oculus Rift CV1, 2x1TB SSD drives (one solely for DCS OpenBeta standalone) Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS, Thrustmaster Cougar MFDs

 

Airframes: A10C, A10CII, F/A-18C, F-14B, F-16C, UH=1H, FC3. Modules: Combined Arms, Supercarrier. Terrains: Persian Gulf, Nevada NTTR, Syria

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  • ED Team

The reply I have given is direct from the team.

 

thanks

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  • 6 months later...

Hi @BIGNEWY, another point is that AI fired harpoons are actually skimming at 49 ft from quite a distance while player fired ones are not.

 

(Currently playing liberation with friends and attacking ships together with AI flights: our harpoons are always engaged sooner than AI ones (because ours are higher) and never get through, while some AI harpoons, skimming at 50ft manage to get through)

 

 

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  • 4 months later...
On 10/30/2020 at 10:42 PM, BIGNEWY said:

The issue for the Harpoon is increasing it's radar range and adjusting RCS of ships, once we have done this it should be a lot better.

 

thanks

@BIGNEWY, this has not happened, yet, correct?

The flight phases just make no sense. In RB/L the missile cruises all the way to the designated target. Then it either "sees" the ship and tries to dive at ~90° at it and therefore completely ignoring the TERM settings, or it just overflys it. Seems, the missile only enters search mode just right on top of the target point.

And in BOL, it always goes down to 150... ish ft right away and sea skims acording to the BRG to the target and thus ignoring the set cruise altitude altogether. Then it often actually does perform the TERM maneuver.

If you then combine all this with HTPT ... and it only gets more complicated. Experimented with all this for several hours now, but I am still not yet able to tell, what effects different settings then have to the flight profile.

It's not fun.


Edited by Flagrum
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  • 1 month later...

I assume this issue is still not cured?

Expecting the Harpoon to drop from cruise altitude to sea skimming after seeker achieves target lock still doesn't work a year later.

Regardless of seeker range setting, seeker always only acquires at around 5 NM distance to the target. The Harpoon then barely reaches sea skim height upon arrival at the target.

The seeker range setting is useless in the current state. Harpoons will follow set cruise altitude and initial heading until arriving the 5 NM range.

Defeats the whole sea skimming concept.

Randomly I see Harpoons launched by me and other players dropping down to 150 ft cruise altitude initially. I still can't make out on what this behavior is based.

 

On 10/30/2020 at 10:42 PM, BIGNEWY said:

The issue for the Harpoon is increasing it's radar range and adjusting RCS of ships, once we have done this it should be a lot better.

 

thanks

It would be great to see anything being done about it, eventually.

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