Ataka proximity fuse very usefull

[Nickkerkwijk]

Hi, usually when flying the Hind with enemy all seeing AI fighters in the AO you had around 0% chance to make it out alive. But now with the 9M120O missile the fighters really have to watch out for the Hind. The AI is flying a very liniar trajectory towards you which makes it easy to shoot them down with only one missile, if you can spot them ofcourse. I always load at least 2 of these missiles so you aren't completely dependent on friendly CAP

 

 

Edited October 30, 2021 by Nickkerkwijk

[Schmidtfire]

Sounds a bit weird that it is efficent against enemy fighters. I did not expect that… Helicopters maybe, but jet fighters? ;)

Hoping that we’ll see the R60 soon. That should pack a decent punch Air-Air, except that AI tends to see launches and dispense flares like crazy.

[fargo007]

7 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

Sounds a bit weird that it is efficent against enemy fighters. I did not expect that… Helicopters maybe, but jet fighters?

Hoping that we’ll see the R60 soon. That should pack a decent punch Air-Air, except that AI tends to see launches and dispense flares like crazy.

 

That's why the best strategy is to go ultra low and force them to disengage and overfly you before they crash into the ground chasing you with their reticle. 

Because they immediately pull full afterburner and shoot up into the sky, making them a perfect target for a heat seeker. This was my Mistral strategy and it worked every single time as long as they didn't get a head on shot on me. 

[CrazyGman]

On the cold war server pvp yesterday I managed to shoot down a slow and low F-5 with just the regular old sthurm it was awesome

[Dragon1-1]

It can definitely work against jet fighters, if the jet pilot is stupid. AI definitely is, as far as this type of attack goes. Flying at the helo head-on in a straight line is not a good way of dealing with it, precisely because you're easy to hit with an ATGM that way.

Remember, there are cases of Hinds nailing F-15s during exercises, most probably with the turret gun, but still. Helicopters are not supposed to be easy targets. If you can kill it with a radar-guided missile, good, but any attempt at getting at it up close will be risky.

[Harlikwin]

14 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

Sounds a bit weird that it is efficent against enemy fighters. I did not expect that… Helicopters maybe, but jet fighters?

Hoping that we’ll see the R60 soon. That should pack a decent punch Air-Air, except that AI tends to see launches and dispense flares like crazy.

Ai fighter pilots have 01/20 vision

Jester can spot a gnats ass in a forest no problem. 

[AeriaGloria]

Compared to Ataka O model, the R-60 will have less range on the deck and be susceptible to countermeasures where the Ataka/Shturm has no countermeasures. The R-60 has better guidance and maneuverability, but with being able to take so many ATGM as well with R-60 probably being limited to 2x missiles with no ATGMs, I expect R-60s to be very underwhelming outside of the novelty of a close range IR missile on an attack helo. 

[Nickkerkwijk]

9 hours ago, AeriaGloria said:

Compared to Ataka O model, the R-60 will have less range on the deck and be susceptible to countermeasures where the Ataka/Shturm has no countermeasures. The R-60 has better guidance and maneuverability, but with being able to take so many ATGM as well with R-60 probably being limited to 2x missiles with no ATGMs, I expect R-60s to be very underwhelming outside of the novelty of a close range IR missile on an attack helo. 

I agree 100%. The AI will 99 % of the time see the launch and evade it with flares.. so better take 2 extra O's

 

I think the R60 will only work against players

Edited November 3, 2021 by Nickkerkwijk

[Apok]

R60 will have higher hit chance then O ataka. Range of ataka also goes down when target is flanking fast. Most fights will be fighter overshooting on first attempt and getting R60 in the back. Rossmum could have killed few more F5s if he only had R60s.

[Schmidtfire]

Another thing to consider is that R60 allows for tight turns and evade enemy fire. Flying ultra low at high speeds. It’s launch and leave.

The O’s will be good if you are not spotted and has time to setup your attack.

So while the O’s will be more surprising and render flares useless, they won’t be as effective in a self protect situation.

[Sobakopes]

What's better Vikhr or Ataka O? 

[GGTharos]

On 11/1/2021 at 5:52 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

Remember, there are cases of Hinds nailing F-15s during exercises, most probably with the turret gun, but still. Helicopters are not supposed to be easy targets. If you can kill it with a radar-guided missile, good, but any attempt at getting at it up close will be risky.

All of that is rendered false by real combat.  There were some cases where helis nailed some jets in the Iran-Iraq war, IIRC.  In all other cases helis have been missiled, gunned and bombed without so much as a chance to respond.   DCS is special in terms of making it easy for the helo peeps.  Of course, the DCS AI helps since it follows no tactics whatsoever in terms of specific target engagement.

[Dragon1-1]

It's not "rendered false" at all. Of course you can kill a helicopter with a jet, and the helo doesn't have many options when attacked with radar-guided missiles (short of terrain masking, which is kind of hard in a desert). Aside from that scenario, helicopters are not easy targets. That it's possible to train to deal with them (which is what the US did, after their own Cobras utterly destroyed their own F-15s in simulated combat) does not make them so. DCS simply reflects reality on that account. If you want to deal with helos, then better learn anti-helo tactics. Particularly if you're fighting over Caucasus, where there's a lot of interesting terrain for them to hide in and disappear from your radar.

[NeedzWD40]

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

If you want to deal with helos, then better learn anti-helo tactics.

"What's that, GBU-10? Kill them all? HAHA! Good idea!"

Objectively speaking, a modern fixed wing jet has a lot more options to deal with a helicopter than the other way around. This doesn't make the helicopter a sitting duck, of course, but taking an attack helicopter up against a jet fighter are some long odds. The AI is, shall we say, not very bright when it comes to flying and fighting in helicopters vs jets or vice versa, the same for most players. Having been on both sides of the equation within DCS, it's more difficult for the rotary wing side to come out on top.

[GGTharos]

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

That it's possible to train to deal with them (which is what the US did, after their own Cobras utterly destroyed their own F-15s in simulated combat) does not make them so. DCS simply reflects reality on that account. If you want to deal with helos, then better learn anti-helo tactics. Particularly if you're fighting over Caucasus, where there's a lot of interesting terrain for them to hide in and disappear from your radar.

There were no reliable ways to count kills by helis.  It's not that the exercise wasn't valuable, it was.   But flawed methodology is flawed and there are a lot of questions to be asked and answered.   Personally, I can't find the report and I'd love to read it.

[Nickkerkwijk]

5 hours ago, Sobakopes said:

What's better Vikhr or Ataka O? 

I think Vikhr, it is a more modern missile. Better range (around 8km, Ataka around 5-6 km) and also an air to air variant/option

[AeriaGloria]

12 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It's not "rendered false" at all. Of course you can kill a helicopter with a jet, and the helo doesn't have many options when attacked with radar-guided missiles (short of terrain masking, which is kind of hard in a desert). Aside from that scenario, helicopters are not easy targets. That it's possible to train to deal with them (which is what the US did, after their own Cobras utterly destroyed their own F-15s in simulated combat) does not make them so. DCS simply reflects reality on that account. If you want to deal with helos, then better learn anti-helo tactics. Particularly if you're fighting over Caucasus, where there's a lot of interesting terrain for them to hide in and disappear from your radar.

Are you sure? A helicopter is the worst target for a radar guided missile semi active or active.

what missile is better for a helicopter to avoid then a missile that loses lock when the target isn’t moving fast? With helicopters you don’t even have to beam the radar to notch a lot of the time, you just need to slow down maybe go at a bit of an angle and no one will be able to even see you on PD radar.

 

I think the only radar guided missile in the game that could take out a helicopter flying slowly is the F-14 firing a Sparrow in pulse mode from below the helicopter, and a helicopter is much better then a fixed wing at staying low 

[nomdeplume]

1 hour ago, AeriaGloria said:

Are you sure? A helicopter is the worst target for a radar guided missile semi active or active.

what missile is better for a helicopter to avoid then a missile that loses lock when the target isn’t moving fast? With helicopters you don’t even have to beam the radar to notch a lot of the time, you just need to slow down maybe go at a bit of an angle and no one will be able to even see you on PD radar.

 

I think the only radar guided missile in the game that could take out a helicopter flying slowly is the F-14 firing a Sparrow in pulse mode from below the helicopter, and a helicopter is much better then a fixed wing at staying low 

In DCS sure, but that's because DCS makes choppers hard to detect for 'balance' reasons.

Realistically the rotor prevents the helicopter from notching the radar, as it's spinning super fast and is not particularly stealthy (in terms of radar return). It probably requires special processing, so maybe older radars would just see it as a pulsing signal they couldn't do anything with, but I would assume any modern-ish fighter radar would be perfectly capable of tracking helicopters even if they're sitting motionless on the ground (so long as the rotor is spinning).

[Dragon1-1]

Finding helicopters on a modern radar indeed isn't a problem, thanks to the rotors. Older fighters might have trouble locking onto the return, but since attack helos first appeared in Vietnam, this probably wasn't much of a concern before then (a transport helo may be hard to hit, but all you have to worry about is being hosed down by the door gunner's MG).

That said, I wouldn't be so sure that the way DCS makes helos hard to detect is not realistic. They are close to the ground, so there's a lot of clutter around them (AA radars actually reject very low altitude contacts for this reason) and there's also terrain masking, which comes into play in terrain such as Caucasus. Also, tracking something flying that low requires paying attention to antenna elevation, because you have to keep the radar pointed at the helo in first place, which becomes harder as you close in. To make matters worse, fighters we have do not automatically do that unless in STT.

[GGTharos]

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

That said, I wouldn't be so sure that the way DCS makes helos hard to detect is not realistic. They are close to the ground, so there's a lot of clutter around them (AA radars actually reject very low altitude contacts for this reason)

They don't reject anything at low altitude.  The reason is doppler filtering; all demonstrated in real combat.  There's no practical difference in the SNR of a target at 150' vs one at 5' ... or even an aircraft on the ground that's exceeded the notch speed.

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Also, tracking something flying that low requires paying attention to antenna elevation, because you have to keep the radar pointed at the helo in first place, which becomes harder as you close in. To make matters worse, fighters we have do not automatically do that unless in STT.

I's procedure to sort and then lock STT at given distances though so ... not exactly a huge deal?   It's easier than tracking a fighter maneuvering in 3D.

Edited November 5, 2021 by GGTharos

[fargo007]

Come chase after us RW in fixed wings all you want.

We'll make you get real low and real slow. Most likely you'll be led right to manpads. We can carry a big handful of them around in the back. And this is before we have a true, high G air to air missile available.

The most dangerous thing about a helicopter isn't always what's up front.

It's what's in the back that kills the most stuff.

RW vs FW was tested extensively. J-CATCH. The conclusion was that fighter and attack FW should stay far the F away from RW.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/army-air-force-pitted-jet-fighters-attack-helicopters/

If real life has a vote anyhow.

[GGTharos]

30 minutes ago, fargo007 said:

We'll make you get real low and real slow.

You won't 'make me' do anything.   I don't necessarily need to descend much, and I certainly don't need to be slow.  The one who's going nowhere fast is you - you're literally not moving compared to fixed wing and it can pick and choose how and when to attack.   Granted, most people in DCS just mow the lawn and wouldn't be caught dead employing any tactic all, let alone anti-RW tactics.

30 minutes ago, fargo007 said:

Most likely you'll be led right to manpads. We can carry a big handful of them around in the back. And this is before we have a true, high G air to air missile available.

At best an R-60 on the hind.   Nice missile but easy to stay out of its WEZ.   And since you'll likely be caught in transit to a friendly (to the fixed wing) location, there's not that much worry for SHORAD either.

30 minutes ago, fargo007 said:

It's what's in the back that kills the most stuff.

RW vs FW was tested extensively. J-CATCH. The conclusion was that fighter and attack FW should stay far the F away from RW.

J-CATCH was interesting and simultaneously flawed, not to mention it doesn't really apply to the modern scenario where fighters can rain actives from above and they'll guide as long as those rotors are spinning.  Imagine what happens one day when AI gains half a brain and is able to be mobile and actually cover approaches with SHORAD, as well as pop in and out of cover and use smoke effectively, maybe even get some arty support - you'll be worrying about things coming in from above and from below.   You simply have it good in DCS right now, it gives you a completely free ride by not simulating problems that RW should be facing.

Edited November 8, 2021 by GGTharos

[fargo007]

Wow! It seems you know way more than the Army and the Air force.

Good luck with all that.  

[GGTharos]

4 minutes ago, fargo007 said:

Wow! It seems you know way more than the Army and the Air force.

Good luck with all that.  

I know that all studies have assumptions and limitations, good luck to you

[fargo007]

I'd actually love to test this someday. Recreate J-CATCH in DCS. 

Once we get some  longer range AA missiles on RW anyhow. The Mistral is pretty capable as is.

Aside of the vagaries of whether or not the FW radar we have would IRL accurately be able to pick out and lock a helicopter that was flying literally below treetop level against a massive amount of ground clutter - most of it cheerfully absorbing radar.