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Attacking ship with phoenix Aim-54 no longer works ?


winghunter

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I found a video where players used the Aim54 to attack ships.

I have tried to replicate this, but it no longer seems to work, see mission: fbo_marianas_F14.miz

1. I can only see / lock the ship on DDD with Pulse from long range (RIO), not with pulse doppler (even though MFD notch filter is disabled)

2. The aim54 will fire and roughly travel to the location of the ship but it can miss by miles.

3. Locking the ship with PAL from pilot seat also works when close <15nm, but the aim54 will still miss.


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  • winghunter changed the title to Attacking ship with phoenix Aim-54 no longer works ?

I wonder if it was realistic for it to work in the past?  Attacking surface targets was part of the live-fire test plan for the AIM-54C, but I don't think any of the results of that testing ever got declassified; heck, even the plan itself is half-redacted four decades later.

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18 minutes ago, cheezit said:

I wonder if it was realistic for it to work in the past?  Attacking surface targets was part of the live-fire test plan for the AIM-54C, but I don't think any of the results of that testing ever got declassified; heck, even the plan itself is half-redacted four decades later.

They did it in desert storm with sparrows

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BreaKKer

CAG and Commanding Officer of:

Carrier Air Wing Five //  VF-154 Black Knights

 

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44 minutes ago, BreaKKer said:

They did it in desert storm with sparrows

For the AIM7-vs-boat shots, was the target being illuminated in P-STT, PD-STT or flood/CW?  The -54A seeker needs PD illumination of the target (whether by the AWG-9 or by its own radar) if I'm not mistaken.  Obviously a surface ship isn't going to give a doppler return that survives the -54A seeker's doppler notch outside of exceptional circumstances.

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On 3/7/2022 at 2:01 PM, winghunter said:

I found a video where players used the Aim54 to attack ships.

I have tried to replicate this, but it no longer seems to work, see mission: fbo_marianas_F14.miz

1. I can only see / lock the ship on DDD with Pulse from long range (RIO), not with pulse doppler (even though MFD notch filter is disabled)

2. The aim54 will fire and roughly travel to the location of the ship but it can miss by miles.

3. Locking the ship with PAL from pilot seat also works when close <15nm, but the aim54 will still miss.

 

This was an intended change as it is not realistic to lock ships with PD. This is not a supported use of the AIM-54.

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2 hours ago, Naquaii said:

This was an intended change as it is not realistic to lock ships with PD. This is not a supported use of the AIM-54.

 

Have you found any documentation about how the AIM-54C vs. boat ("surface target" in the congressional record, I assume it was a boat) test went, or if it was even carried out?  The live fire test plan from the FY1981 defense appropriations hearings listed it as live fire test shot #4 in the OPEVAL, so it should have been carried out some time in late 1983 if it happened.

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2 hours ago, cheezit said:

 

Have you found any documentation about how the AIM-54C vs. boat ("surface target" in the congressional record, I assume it was a boat) test went, or if it was even carried out?  The live fire test plan from the FY1981 defense appropriations hearings listed it as live fire test shot #4 in the OPEVAL, so it should have been carried out some time in late 1983 if it happened.

Not really, no.

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Interesting
So the only way this *could* work is when the aircraft is close to MSL, scanning the ship against the sky rather than waves. But this may not be enough altitude to launch a phoenix.

Or if the water is extremely calm, as in a lake. There could be enough doppler shift to detect against background. But since the ship needs to move, causing waves, it would present an inflated object to the radar image.

 

https://www.quora.com/Could-a-radar-guided-air-to-air-missile-lock-onto-a-ship

Paul Adam, Chief Analyst at Cassandra Defence Consulting Ltd (2015-present)

The difficulty an air-to-air missile has, in engaging a ship, is that it’s looking for a ship against the sea surface, from an elevated position: it’s not engaging a target in (effectively) free space, but having to pick the ship’s return out of the sea clutter.

This can be done, to engage low-flying aircraft (nicknamed ‘look down - shoot down’) but typically involves looking for the Doppler shift of an aircraft’s radial velocity, relative to the ground clutter. Unfortunately, there’s far less of that Doppler shift from a 20-knot ship, than a 500-knot aircraft, and it’s largely swamped by sea return (there’s lots of small up and down Doppler from wave motion)

So, I’d say it would be unlikely. An active seeker missile like AMRAAM would be unable to find a valid target (the ship just looks like more sea clutter and is filtered out along with all the waves); a semi-active missile depends on very accurate pointing of the illuminator and on the ship reflecting more radar energy than the sea, or any chaff clouds, since again there’s no way to separate the ship from sea clutter by Doppler shift.

I’ve heard of efforts by a flight of Canadian CF-188 Hornets, during the 1991 Gulf War, to engage an Iraqi minesweeper with their Sparrow missiles: they were unable to get a usable lock, and so pressed in to strafe with 20mm instead.


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Digitized sea clutter image showing the backscatter phenomenon due to... |  Download Scientific Diagram

So this is what a doppler radars sees when looking at ocean. There are some new methods to filter this kind of noise with complex wave simulations. But probably fair to say the AWG-9 didnt have that processing power back in the day.
http://cpb.iphy.ac.cn/article/2020/2032/cpb_29_6_068402.html
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6517933
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/992329

Sea clutter https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/sea-clutter


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