AIM-54 Keep Missing!

[scommander2]

It is interested to me that the AIM-54c works as expected in the multiple-player enviroment.

Attached my own AIM-54 training mission edit and I just could not get my AIM-54c work right.

Thanks.

 

 

Phoenix-training-f14.miz

[Reflected]

Is everything OK with the AIM-54? I'm working on a new campaign mission. 2 targets, non-maneuvering, 500 knots, 30k feet, hot. Launch from 40 miles, 30k feet, Mach 1 in TWS (AIM-54c). I tested the mission at least 10 times but never have I hit anything, ever. I can not share the mission, sorry, I was just wondering if there is a known bug at this time.

[scommander2]

@Reflected thanks for the post, and that was the same issue in my own mission edit unless my mission edit had the wrong setting.

[near_blind]

21 minutes ago, Reflected said:

Is everything OK with the AIM-54? I'm working on a new campaign mission. 2 targets, non-maneuvering, 500 knots, 30k feet, hot. Launch from 40 miles, 30k feet, Mach 1 in TWS (AIM-54c). I tested the mission at least 10 times but never have I hit anything, ever. I can not share the mission, sorry, I was just wondering if there is a known bug at this time.

How are they missing? failure to track? not enough speed for terminal guidance? decoyed by CM? Got a tacview?

[Reflected]

The missile passes 10k feet over the AI with 1000+ KIAS, so I'm pretty sure it's a tracking issue. I don't have tacview sorry 

[near_blind]

Without a definitive record, hard to diagnose, but why not?

• The missile is over-lofting. This is a bug that was introduced with the new kinematics and loft settings where the algorithm that shapes the missile's trajectory does a dumb and the missile doesn't steer to target. In my experience the missile usually flies over the target by something like 30K feet and then tries to turn back around and chase the target. Indication for the pilot is that the TTI timer will be abnormally large, and won't tick down in a timely manner. There's no real fix for this other than don't manually loft the Phoenix, and pressure ED to give 3rd Parties access to the API.
• The AWG-9 took a dump, the target track has entered extrapolation/trackhold. The missile should be guiding to where the AWG-9 thinks the target track is, however a limitation of the legacy APi the missiles currently use mean that if the position the radar thinks the track is at (and thus the missile is guiding to) is larger than some arbitrary distance from where the target object actually is, the missile will never go active. Your cue as pilot is the extrapolation X over the track, and the fact the TTI will never flash. 
• The missile was decoyed, and is flying to the former position of a chaff bundle well behind the target. 

[Reflected]

Yes, it was B. I remember seeing an X over the target. Which I found weird, as they were coming in fast, head on, no chaff use, 40 miles, what could go wrong?

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Reflected said:

Yes, it was B. I remember seeing an X over the target. Which I found weird, as they were coming in fast, head on, no chaff use, 40 miles, what could go wrong?

Do the targets have ECM capability? (it might affect the missiles, but not current AWG-9, afaik)

Edited April 11, 2022 by draconus

[Reflected]

They're Flankers but set to 'No reaction' and chaff= never use. Maybe I should add ECM-never use?

[sLYFa]

If the targets fly in close formation the AWG-9 tends to get confused, drops the original track and extrapolates it in a weird way. I guess thats somewhat realistic since the angular resolution isnt that great. An STT shot should be used in this case. 

[scommander2]

Any suggestion for my Tacview. 

In addition, I am not sure that is it okay what my TID still showed the tracking/the impact time countdown when AIM-54c was disappeared?

Thanks.

Tacview-20220412-002032-DCS.zip.acmi

Edited April 12, 2022 by scommander2

[near_blind]

So looking at that, I can guess one of two options. 

1. I think this is the more likely. Right now the missile is set to take an aggressive loft because the AIM-54 performs best when it is able to very high, reduce atmospheric drag, and then use its weight to fall back on to the enemy at high speed. It's bias towards lofting can encourage it to do that over other, more common sense things. Your missile took such an aggressive loft for reasons I'll get into, that it essentially went straight up, stalled, and then self destructed once it fell below a critical speed. 
2. Those MiG-29s are flying in close enough formation that the poor range cell resolution on the AWG-9 won't be able to clearly break them out for some time. At medium distance, the AWG-9 will begin to break out the single track into multiple tracks in a semi random manner. Because the radar can't reliably break the two contacts out, it will create numerous false tracks that will age out, possibly including the original "true" track. Shooting on one of these is always risky because it's a coin toss if the AWG-9 will disregard the track the missile is guiding to as "false", and thus trash the missile.

 

I personally think this is an example of case #1. Your track on the TID doesn't appear to be extrapolated. Your engagement set up is also extremely unfavorable to the missile. You're subsonic, at 8,000 feet, shooting at a target that is also at 8,000 feet, at 60 miles. The Phoenix can comfortably make a 60 mile kill, but you want/need to be higher than 30,000 feet for the missile to retain enough energy for this to happen. To try and retain as much energy as possible, the missile is attempting to do a turbo loft, to such a degree it has broken the lofting algorithm and trashed the missile. This is a bug, it's not likely to be fixed until ED/HB determine a better lofting algorithm, or ED reach a point where they release the new missile API to third party devs. 

 

41 minutes ago, scommander2 said:

In addition, I am not sure that is it okay what my TID still showed the tracking/the impact time countdown when AIM-54c was disappeared?

The AWG-9 runs the entire missile engagement on a set of predictions and assumptions it makes when you launch the missile. The TTI is an estimate of how long the missile will take to reach the target. Furthermore the missile has no way to communicate back to the radar, so the radar has no idea the missile self destructed. As far as the radar is concerned, the missile still has another 114 seconds where it needs guidance support. 

[scommander2]

7 hours ago, near_blind said:

I personally think this is an example of case #1. Your track on the TID doesn't appear to be extrapolated. Your engagement set up is also extremely unfavorable to the missile. You're subsonic, at 8,000 feet, shooting at a target that is also at 8,000 feet, at 60 miles. The Phoenix can comfortably make a 60 mile kill, but you want/need to be higher than 30,000 feet for the missile to retain enough energy for this to happen. To try and retain as much energy as possible, the missile is attempting to do a turbo loft, to such a degree it has broken the lofting algorithm and trashed the missile.

Thanks for the suggestion and I will give a try to be higher than 30,000 feet to launch Phoenix, then drop below 30,000 feet to keep my radar guides the missile to avoid MiG-29s notching.

[scommander2]

My 2nd attempt Tacview.  Thanks.

Tacview-20220412-212732-DCS.zip.acmi

[near_blind]

1. Ran out of energy due to the relatively low altitude of the target
2. Based on how the missile behaved and what the targets were doing when you shot, I'm going to guess the radar lost the target in a maneuver, the track went into extrapolation relatively soon after you fired and the missile never went active
3. Missile is bled of energy by a combination of the target's low altitude and target maneuver
4. Missile doesn't appear to go active, looks like a similar situation to shot #2. 

Phoenix is a thicc bird, it doesn't appreciate playing down in the soup all that much. 

[AH_Solid_Snake]

As a rule of thumb I’ve started to shoot AIM-54 below 20k in ACM only.

The rather simple logic being that if its close enough for PAL then its got a chance to hit in the thick air and so long as guidance happens its active off the rail.

Once the missile API / FM TWS priority are all a little closer to stable it would be good for the manual to be extended with some good information on employment of the weapons. Its got a lot of good info for how to work the system and get something fired, but not much in the way of expectation setting for ranges / performance/ good scenarios to give best chance of Pk.

[TLTeo]

Yeah, I've come up with similar conclusions. Against fighters it's more of a Fox-1 than a Fox-3 unless under ideal conditions (launch at 35k ft or more at Mach 1.2 or more, nice clean separated tracks, large closure). If I can't zoom climb to high altitude while remaining supersonic I do not bother with TWS shots at all against fighters, it's much better to be slightly lower altitude than the target to reduce clutter and take either a PD-STT or P-STT shot.

I agree on updating the manual (and training missions honestly) as well. Right now it does a fair job on explaining what you're looking at, but it's not great for teaching how to deploy the aircraft effectively imo.

Edited April 16, 2022 by TLTeo

[FlyingTaco21]

Does athe 54 prefer to loft even when it isn't necessary? The pattern i have noticed is that shorter range pal/stt locks don't seem to loft but like a switch at some point they will just try to loft sight up and thrn try to drop down vertically.granted I dont know thr exact scan zone for the seeker. But it seems like a more lateral travel would increase the chances of the missile seeing the target for a longer period of time.  Thinking flatter trajectory arty fire vs a mortar. The motar shell has smaller cep, and doesn't really get a chance to see a moving target unless the target passes directly under it, but a arty shell has potentially spends more time "seeing" its target because they are moving almost in the same plane. In many of my tests my phoenixes are doing reverse maverick from the recent trailers where the missile just drops almost vertically to one side of the target . It has energy but its just not guiding or seeing the target. Most hits I do achieve occur 45 degrees or less. The steepness of the arrival angle seems to matter here, and I don't recall it ever being as aggregated as it is. 

[scommander2]

Thanks for all replies and suggestions.

I am trying to keep myself above 30k feet (with afterburn) to close my targets with 50nm distance then launch my Phoenix with PD-STT.  When closing my targets within 20nm, I switch P-STT to lock my target.  So far, I get some of my targets down.

I guess that I still need more practices to find better rules to shoot my AIM-54 in the most effective ways  

[near_blind]

3 hours ago, FlyingTaco21 said:

…

AIM-54s fired from pulse should never loft. Pulse cannot generate guidance instructions for the missile, so the pre launch instructions are to go active and fly down the radars azimuth/elevation.

As for guidance, the current implementation is transitional until a better one can ultimately be substituted 

Edited April 18, 2022 by near_blind

[scommander2]

57 minutes ago, near_blind said:

As for guidance, the current implementation is transitional until a better one can ultimately be substituted 

An interesting point and a quick question just for my own information:  it seems there is a room to improve the DCS "AIM-54" implementation that compared with the reality and I guess that the AIM-54 and ARARM-120 have the different implementations even though they are FOX-3?!

[near_blind]

18 minutes ago, scommander2 said:

I guess that the AIM-54 and ARARM-120 have the different implementations even though they are FOX-3?!

There should ultimately be different implementations between the AIM-54A and C, much less between them and the AMRAAM. You’re talking about three missiles spanning 40+ Years.

 Right now the A is missing a number of features that should make it less reliable and more temperamental. The C is missing features that should make it more capable. 

 

[DD_Fenrir]

Trouble being as Ironmike has already explained is there is virtually no useful data on what the differences between the A and the C are and how this manifests in performance; yes the C is solid state but what tangible changes did that bring? We hear some tantalising hints on interviews about improved guidance and better ECCM but there are no figures to reference, either for the A to improve upon or for the C to confirm. It’s a guesstimate.

[near_blind]

Things might change, you never know… 

[Comstedt86]

I believe they found documentation on the 54C regarding onboard INS / Active Command at least. It should also be capable of HOJ afaik.