RCS Changes to Phoenix/Missiles seem to be a bit excessive - Missiles being intercepted by Aim120

[DoorMouse]

 

 

You can see in this video, and it is easily replicateable - The 120 is intercepting Aim54s in a 20nm head on engagement.  I'm not sure what the intent of changing the missile RCS values was, but I'm pretty sure this was not it. 

 The Track File is too large, ill find a way to post it if needed - but this is glaringly obvious, I can find a dozen examples of this happening day one of the patch. 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c6jsrsgtqr9tdqn/Tacview-20210811-192307-DCS-Dedicated_Tact_Loadout_PG.zip.acmi?dl=0

Edited August 12, 2021 by DoorMouse

[Csgo GE oh yeah]

I've seen aim120's hit other aim120's plenty of times. 
You want the triple range advantage, then maybe you should accept that your missile is also the size of a scud missile

Edited August 12, 2021 by Csgo GE oh yeah

[DoorMouse]

yeah.... im pretty sure this is a bug and not an intended design feature. Its a problem for the 120 shooter too, you can use this to stuff their missiles at will. 

Edited August 12, 2021 by DoorMouse

[E-TF RIKER]

13 hours ago, Csgo GE oh yeah said:

I've seen aim120's hit other aim120's plenty of times. 
You want the triple range advantage, then maybe you should accept that your missile is also the size of a scud missile

 

It actually gives the tomcat more of an advantage and really hampers the aggressors. If I increase the volume of aim54s in a given area its impossible for the aim120 carrier to kill me as the missiles which are meant to track me go active on the 54s and do a quick spin, losing all there energy. Example in the gif below

 

https://imgur.com/a/QRlKpSC

Edited August 13, 2021 by E-TF RIKER

[Killshot0597]

I do think that anything and everything has an RCS. Even missiles, something as big and chonky as an AIM-54 should and can be tracked by an active AIM-120 if it detected it first. Perhaps the reason why the AIM-120s are tracking and hitting your AIM-54s could be because he is launching down at you and the 54 is flying up towards your target. Their noses relatively pointed at each other, I'm not surprised if they detect each other and home in on each other. I have no idea how realistic these RCS values are but perhaps you could change your tactics? 

You can still reliably get kills on targets whi8le coming from a higher altitude and observing proper BVR tactics since the 54 is coming from a steeper angle the chances of your 54 being intercepted will be very low. You'd have the range advantage too. Turn your ECM on and launch at 30Nm and you'd be untouchable.

Edited August 13, 2021 by KIllshot0597

[Lt_Jaeger]

It's a RCS and, more important, a Fuze thing if missiles should intercept missiles (remember the Patriots in the gulf War) - so, tracking is one thing, hitting another - I'm very sceptical. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Lt_Jaeger

[Killshot0597]

6 minutes ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

It's a RCS and, more important, a Fuze thing if missiles should intercept missiles (remember the Patriots in the gulf War) - so, tracking is one thing, hitting another - I'm very sceptical. 

 

if both missiles acquire each other and are going head on towards each other, I would think the chances of them actually hitting each other is a lot higher.

[Lt_Jaeger]

Think size, think closing speed, think msls (at least the ones I know) are fitted with proximity Fuze to make sure there is no need for a direct hit. 

For the patriot the developed a dedicated msl to intercept msl (even so it is even more challenging from the ground up. After all, DCS is still a game with simulation tidbit included

[Lurker]

15 hours ago, Csgo GE oh yeah said:

I've seen aim120's hit other aim120's plenty of times. 
You want the triple range advantage, then maybe you should accept that your missile is also the size of a scud missile

 

 

Maybe you should lay off the hyperbole. The AIM54 is a big missile, but it's not SCUD sized. One other thing to consider, if the AIM120 is tracking a fighter, why would it switch to a relatively much smaller and faster object with a much smaller RCS? Unless it was tracking the AIM54 from the get-go, or fired MADDOG it shouldn't be tracking the missile at all. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Lurker

[E-TF RIKER]

2 hours ago, KIllshot0597 said:

I do think that anything and everything has an RCS. Even missiles, something as big and chonky as an AIM-54 should and can be tracked by an active AIM-120 if it detected it first. Perhaps the reason why the AIM-120s are tracking and hitting your AIM-54s could be because he is launching down at you and the 54 is flying up towards your target. Their noses relatively pointed at each other, I'm not surprised if they detect each other and home in on each other. I have no idea how realistic these RCS values are but perhaps you could change your tactics? 

You can still reliably get kills on targets whi8le coming from a higher altitude and observing proper BVR tactics since the 54 is coming from a steeper angle the chances of your 54 being intercepted will be very low. You'd have the range advantage too. Turn your ECM on and launch at 30Nm and you'd be untouchable.

 

Its actually the opposite, I was shooting the target from an elevated position (around 10k above the target). At this time I jokingly said "shields up" as i knew with this maneuver it was impossible for the hornet to kill me. As not a single aim120 would go active on me, thus making me invincible in that particular situation. The intention of this demonstration was to get my aim54s intercepted as it helps showcase how this could be abused to create a "field" of preferential targets to deny a missile track on the tomcat.

 

Just an extra point ECM is banned in competitive dcs and also if you die to a 30nm aim54 that's a different issue.

10 minutes ago, Lurker said:

 

Maybe you should lay off the hyperbole. The AIM54 is a big missile, but it's not SCUD sized. One other thing to consider, if the AIM120 is tracking a fighter, why would it switch to a relatively much smaller and faster object with a much smaller RCS? Unless it was tracking the AIM54 from the get-go, or fired MADDOG it shouldn't be tracking the missile at all. 

 

That's what makes this problematic, the missiles were fired at the tomcat not the missiles but they still go active on the artificial field I created in that scenario.

Edited August 13, 2021 by E-TF RIKER

[Cmptohocah]

[Killshot0597]

19 minutes ago, E-TF RIKER said:

Its actually the opposite, I was shooting the target from an elevated position (around 10k above the target)

Initially yes, it looked like the missile didn't loft at all though? Did you launch in STT with the ACM cover up? None of those 54s looked like they were launched in TWS at all. After the initial fight, the 2nd fight you got into (the one that eventually splashed you) You were actually above him a lot. Honestly, if you uploaded the video on youtube, might as well have made it a little longer by selecting both your aircraft and the bandit. It's hard to judge the ranges you were firing at. They were definitely too close, one thing is for sure. 

What is even the point of this exercise? Ideally, your missile and his missile wont ever intercept each other. I think it is reasonable to a degree that a 120 could (on pitbull) track an AIM-54 instead of the F-14. As the saying goes, the Fox 3 goes after the first thing it sees. What might be a more presentable target to a 120's radar? An F-14 trying to turn away at mach 0.88? or a chonky missile travelling at towards it at mach 1.83? Just to cite the first engagement.

I'm sure they aren't finished tweaking the RCS values but I'm sure is a possibility of it happening. 
Is this "shield's up" really worth doing? Seems like a pointless waste of an AIM-54 to me.

Edited August 13, 2021 by KIllshot0597

[DoorMouse]

This is all nonsense.... And clearly a bug/oversight.

 

In no universe should an aim120 be tracking phoenixes with near perfect intercept results, and that doesn't explain why the SD10 or other missiles don't do this either.

 

This isn't some intended behavior or emergent gameplay. This is a mistake that wasn't caught in testing. 

[Cmptohocah]

56 minutes ago, DoorMouse said:

...that doesn't explain why the SD10 or other missiles don't do this either.

Some months ago R-73s were tracking AIM-120s. Not sure if this was fixed in the meanwhile.

[GGTharos]

11 hours ago, KIllshot0597 said:

I think it is reasonable to a degree that a 120 could (on pitbull) track an AIM-54 instead of the F-14. As the saying goes, the Fox 3 goes after the first thing it sees.

 

No, that's a game thing.  A real missile will angle/range/speed gate the target it wants to find, and the AIM-54 (or anything other than the intended target) is very unlikely to match any of those.  There are circumstances where this could happen, but it is 'reasonable to a tiny degree' that it would track the missile.

 

11 hours ago, KIllshot0597 said:

What might be a more presentable target to a 120's radar? An F-14 trying to turn away at mach 0.88? or a chonky missile travelling at towards it at mach 1.83? Just to cite the first engagement.

 

An F-14 at M0.88 ... ie the thing closest to the doppler gate at the time of autonomous search.

[KenobiOrder]

This happened because heatblur was asked by ED to change the rcs. The RCS of air to air missiles in game is now at absurd values which is why we have this stupid behavior regarding the phoenixes and why air to air radars are now detecting every single missile in the sky cluttering the radar screen. When people shoot the radar turns into a cluttered mess of incoming a s outgoing contacts. I have not tested yet but I would be very surprised if this doesn't cause issues with tws in the tomcat when the missile gets close to the target given how wonky it's correlation gates are.

[Killshot0597]

6 hours ago, KenobiOrder said:

This happened because heatblur was asked by ED to change the rcs. The RCS of air to air missiles in game is now at absurd values which is why we have this stupid behavior regarding the phoenixes and why air to air radars are now detecting every single missile in the sky cluttering the radar screen. When people shoot the radar turns into a cluttered mess of incoming a s outgoing contacts. I have not tested yet but I would be very surprised if this doesn't cause issues with tws in the tomcat when the missile gets close to the target given how wonky it's correlation gates are.

I'm no IRL fighter pilot, perhaps this is how it is IRL? 
I'm not saying no to tweaking the RCS values as I'm sure they still need adjustment, all I'm saying is it should be possible for a Fox3 to lock on and engage another Fox 3. Especially when they've acquired each other. Especially when they are head on to each other.

 

8 hours ago, Cmptohocah said:

Some months ago R-73s were tracking AIM-120s. Not sure if this was fixed in the meanwhile.

I've had one occasion my AIM-9M tracked an AIM-7 that went stupid that was falling out of the sky in front of me almost a year ago. I'm not surprised since rocket motors burn really hot so it's reasonable to assume AAMs would have an IR signature, even if it was falling out out of the sky already. Perhaps with the IR API we could expect IR signature to degrade over time after the missile's motor has run out?

Edited August 14, 2021 by KIllshot0597

[KenobiOrder]

2 hours ago, KIllshot0597 said:

I'm no IRL fighter pilot, perhaps this is how it is IRL? 
I'm not saying no to tweaking the RCS values as I'm sure they still need adjustment, all I'm saying is it should be possible for a Fox3 to lock on and engage another Fox 3. Especially when they've acquired each other. Especially when they are head on to each other.

 

 

 

Its not that it should be impossible, but that it should be far less likely. A missile has a tiny radar cross section when viewed from the front or rear. In the case of a target moving away from the launch aircraft, the detection range would suffer even more. And yet when you shoot you can now see your own missile on the radar. Targets like these would almost certainly be filtered out because there is little use in seeing them and they clutter the screen to no end, especially in TWS. Quite frankly, its hard to see how TWS in any jet is picking the missiles up (especially immediately after launch) because it would take several frames before TWS correlated said detection as a track in the first place. Even then, the radar would notice the low RCS and extremely high doppler of the contact and likely ignore it entirely.

 

In the current situation all radar modes just get completely saturated with BS missile tracks. No one would want a A2A radar that does that. It would cause all kinds of problems in building SA or sorting targets etc.

 

Then there is the issue of them air to air missiles tracking on other air to air missiles. As GGTharos mentioned, the real missile would not correlate the small RCS high doppler missile as corresponding to its target. But there is also the issue of the current lack of INS guidance. Based on Wags most recent statements, the new INS modeling sounds very cool but its not in the game atm. What this means is that we have missiles going pitbull too early and then snagging on to whatever is there.

 

 

[Harker]

There are two issues here. The first one is the increased RCS of missiles, so they should up on radars all the time. While an A2A missile could technically show up on a fighter's radar as a raw return, it's generally unlikely and getting a full track from it (which is what happens in DCS) is even more unlikely, because the radar will likely won't correlate the returns. This is all based on conversations with IRL fighter pilots who operate these radars regularly. By extension, it's likely that the same inaccuracy exists in FOX3 radars, in DCS.

The other issue, as GGTharos points out, is that FOX3 radars currently lack gates of any kind. A FOX3, once active, will look for the target that matches the range, velocity and velocity rates of the one that the firing platform is tracking. It stands to reason that it'll be able to differentiate between different targets in front of it. Only if it can't find the intended target, will it throw the gates open, in an effort to locate it. Also, IRL, the fighter-missile datalink does not get severed when the missile goes active, like it does in DCS. The missile keeps receiving information on the target and correlates it with info from its own radar, for optimal tracking.

[Sideburns]

Seeing a lot of people "gaming" the system and shooting down incoming missiles, is this intended by ED?

[GGTharos]

It isn't and last I heard they're working on it.

[nighthawk2174]

I know they did this after saying that the radar dishes were good sources of radar returns?  Wouldn't the refraction caused by the material of the missiles radome mitigate or even negate this effect?

[okopanja]

On 8/14/2021 at 3:26 PM, Harker said:

There are two issues here. The first one is the increased RCS of missiles, so they should up on radars all the time. While an A2A missile could technically show up on a fighter's radar as a raw return, it's generally unlikely and getting a full track from it (which is what happens in DCS) is even more unlikely, because the radar will likely won't correlate the returns. This is all based on conversations with IRL fighter pilots who operate these radars regularly. By extension, it's likely that the same inaccuracy exists in FOX3 radars, in DCS.

 

May I point out that from point of RCS there is no big difference in RCS between AIM-54 and a typical cruise missile, hence both fighters and missiles (including those from 80s) designed to intercept the cruise missiles and fast airplanes are more than capable of catching and tracking those reflections. Under right condition they will shot down the AIM-54 (unless there is an undocumented chaff container? )

On 8/14/2021 at 3:26 PM, Harker said:

Also, IRL, the fighter-missile datalink does not get severed when the missile goes active, like it does in DCS. The missile keeps receiving information on the target and correlates it with info from its own radar, for optimal tracking.

The point of having a receiver in a missile for both SARH and active homing is to ensure the missile receiver gets the most favorable signal/noise ration. Radar emits the energy into the beam, which travels, attenuats, reflects and disperses against surface (again weakening and distortion of signal) and travels back, along all that white noise and environment interference (ECM, radars and other electromagnetic sources) to the receiver.

 

Furthermore placing transmitter forward in the missile also means that received reflection gets stronger compared to SARH, since the traveling distance is further reduced. Once the distance drops significantly enough that transmitted energy of missile is higher than what aircraft can transmit. This point effectively determines the minimal conditions for a pitbull. After that point there is no point in correlataing the radar data of active homing missile with radar data from aircraft, since any information airplane provides will be already inferior to what the rocket transmits/receives on its own. You can not have super-precise AIM-120c fire-and-forget against fighters and at the same time hope it will happily ignore nice large target reflecting more than the aircraft behind it.

[GGTharos]

2 hours ago, okopanja said:

You can not have super-precise AIM-120c fire-and-forget against fighters and at the same time hope it will happily ignore nice large target reflecting more than the aircraft behind it.

 

Of course you can.   That's what doppler and range gates are for.

[okopanja]

2 hours ago, GGTharos said:

Of course you can.   That's what doppler and range gates are for.

Please consider that at time zero when AIM-54 gets launched, AIM-120 were already in flight. At that moment: range between AIM-54 and launching aircraft is practically 0 from the point of AIM-120. Now lets consider the speed: the between 2 is virtually zero. At the same time the missile accelerates and range is increasing. The aircraft changes its aspect and speed radically. You could argue that AIM-120c sees aircraft as one large chaff protecting nice hot target called AIM-54 (it really gets slower and stay behind).

 

However, you made me take a closer look into the video, and this time I used HD from the start. I think we are discussing the wrong scenario here: too me it looks like it's actually AIM-54 that intercepts AIM-120c in both cases. You can see that AIM-120c tracks nicely in both encounters the aircraft and actually does not react to AIM-54 which changes it speed and aspect from the aircraft. AIM-54 in contrast never points to aircraft but immediately to AIM-120. Am I wrong?

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by okopanja