Will SAM mode generate radar lock warning?

[brucewhf]

In RWS mode, TMS up will bring you to SAM mode, which can guide AIM120 to the target. The question is when I 'bugged' a target in SAM mode, will target get radar lock warning? I've done lots of googling but ended up with confusion. Someone says yes, while others says no.

Edited April 11, 2022 by brucewhf

[skywalker22]

As far as I know only in STT mode the locked aircraft will get a warning.

Edited April 11, 2022 by skywalker22

[Dragon1-1]

It won't generate an explicit lock warning, however the radar will dwell on the contact on each pass to update it. This means the pattern of the "chirps" will change (particularly on a Viggen-style raw audio RWR, but on newer ones too), and a skilled operator can recognize that his aircraft has been bugged. I'm not sure how it affects AI since it cheats with SA anyway, but for humans, it depends entirely on experience.

[Fulgrim]

12 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It won't generate an explicit lock warning, however the radar will dwell on the contact on each pass to update it. This means the pattern of the "chirps" will change (particularly on a Viggen-style raw audio RWR, but on newer ones too), and a skilled operator can recognize that his aircraft has been bugged. I'm not sure how it affects AI since it cheats with SA anyway, but for humans, it depends entirely on experience.

How does AI cheat with SA? 

[Dragon1-1]

Well, for one, they magically know when you launched and will react accordingly, so RWS or TWS doesn't really matter (although STT will make them respond preemptively). They also can see you through the bottom of their plane, you can't really bounce an AI the way you can a human player, unless the mission designer scripted that. If you're in a blindspot and launch a missile, they'll know and fight it, even if it's a heater and they have no MWS. They never lose tally and can see through clouds. They also never happen to be looking the wrong way to spot something. Basically, none of the human limits on SA apply. 

[Bunny Clark]

In DCS: no, SAM and DTT will not generate a lock warning. 

IRL: probably, maybe, I think. 

[SCPanda]

22 hours ago, brucewhf said:

In RWS mode, TMS up will bring you to SAM mode, which can guide AIM120 to the target. The question is when I 'bugged' a target in SAM mode, will target get radar lock warning? I've done lots of googling but ended up with confusion. Someone says yes, while others says no.

 

Simple answer: Nope. No lock warning when targets is bugged. No launch warning when you fire your 120. Just treat it like TWS on F-15. 

Edit: If the target is bugged, his RWR may (depends, there could be other jets or ground radar tracking him) mark you as priority threat since your radar is tracking him, like the following picture shows (diamond). But he will not get a lock warning tone like a STT lock. The priority threat behavior will also happen when you use TWS to track him on all western jets. So yeah, just treat F-16's SAM like TWS on F-15. 

Edited April 12, 2022 by SCPanda

[Northstar98]

It should be said that once we have the handoff mode available, and RWRs that produce RADAR audio in general, it should be possible to detect a transition to SAM mode audibly as @Dragon1-1 stated above.

[Dragon1-1]

Note that in TWS, this shouldn't happen, since the radar doesn't dwell on bugged tracks, although since TWS is typically a faster scan than RWS, you'd probably hear the sweeps become more frequent (so either he went into TWS or narrowed down scan volume in RWS, both indicate you've got the bandit's attention). It shouldn't be quite the same, although the RWR might automatically reprioritize the threat anyway.

[SCPanda]

4 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Note that in TWS, this shouldn't happen, since the radar doesn't dwell on bugged tracks, although since TWS is typically a faster scan than RWS, you'd probably hear the sweeps become more frequent (so either he went into TWS or narrowed down scan volume in RWS, both indicate you've got the bandit's attention). It shouldn't be quite the same, although the RWR might automatically reprioritize the threat anyway.

It does in DCS. When F-15, F-18, F-14, F-16 TWS you, you will see them as priority threat. It's pretty easy to tell in PvP severs, especially F-14. Ignore it? Long range AIM-54 in the face. 

[Frederf]

In real life: yes, maybe. SAM has a pronounced dwell time that is distinct from a simple search sweep. At long range the sweep-to-dwell ratio is high and the target may not decide that this constitutes special attention. As the range closes the sweep-to-dwell ratio reduces and the target may get the hint that he has special attention compared to regular search.

Priority threat is different from alert level. Even an E-3 scanning you in search will be priority threat if that's the worst thing detected. It would be interesting to see if SAMing F-16 is prioritized above a more distant searching F-16 that would be prioritized below if both were in simple search mode.

[SCPanda]

10 hours ago, Frederf said:

Priority threat is different from alert level. Even an E-3 scanning you in search will be priority threat if that's the worst thing detected. It would be interesting to see if SAMing F-16 is prioritized above a more distant searching F-16 that would be prioritized below if both were in simple search mode.

Based on my experience in PvP severs, yes, distance matters, the closer F-16 will be prioritized. But if it's two different jets, like an F-16 and an F-14, the F-14 will be prioritized in most cases, even if it's TWSing (well, it doesn't have SAM lol) you from a further distance than the F-16, since F-14 has a really powerful radar. But if the F-16 gets really close, it might be prioritized over the really far TWSing F-14. 

Honestly, in a chaotic environment in PvP severs, the priority threat on the RWR changes constantly, relying on it solely is not a good idea. It's best to combine RWR with the information you see on the HSD as well as gameplay experience to determine threats and build a good SA. But still, priority threat on RWR is very useful if you combine it with datalink on HSD, it will give you a rough idea who might be SAMing or TWSing you and help you avoid those long range Fox 3 shots.

For example, if you see a 14 spike as priority, and on HSD you see a hostile contact flying at 40k straight at you at 50 miles, and there are no friendlies between you and him, it's very likely he is trying to lob a long range AIM-54 shot at you. In that case, you probably want to turn to put him on beam and/or dive since flying high and facing a long range AIM-54 will only give you 3s to respond, which is not enough and you will mostly likely be dead if you do not react ahead before the missile goes pitbull. 

[Frederf]

Will RWS or RWS SAM make a tie break difference (all else equal)?

[USA_Recon]

On 4/11/2022 at 6:36 AM, skywalker22 said:

As far as I know only in STT mode the locked aircraft will get a warning.

 

it should in RWS as well though, every time that radar sweeps you see it stop on a DTT target, that is a STT brief lock and it should give a lock at that moment.  Put it in DTT and watch the sweep and watch it pause on the target then continue sweeping.

I'm assuming ED just hasn't coded this up yet.

Edited August 14, 2022 by USA_Recon

[Crptalk]

11 hours ago, USA_Recon said:

it should in RWS as well though, every time that radar sweeps you see it stop on a DTT target, that is a STT brief lock and it should give a lock at that moment.  Put it in DTT and watch the sweep and watch it pause on the target then continue sweeping.

I'm assuming ED just hasn't coded this up yet.

 

Not exactly. Every model RWR is different, even the same RWR on different airframes can be configured differently. While it's probably possible for even search radars to trigger a STT warning, more likely rwr's are setup to require a certain amount of radiation for a certain amount of time to trigger a STT warning. And of course there's no way any of that is public knowledge.

[Bunny Clark]

On 8/13/2022 at 8:44 PM, USA_Recon said:

it should in RWS as well though, every time that radar sweeps you see it stop on a DTT target, that is a STT brief lock and it should give a lock at that moment.  Put it in DTT and watch the sweep and watch it pause on the target then continue sweeping.

I'm assuming ED just hasn't coded this up yet.

SAM and DTT aren't exactly STT locks, they're more like TWS with certain tracks given higher priority. 

Ultimately, we really don't know how this "should" work. How an RWR classifies and prioritizes threats is not public knowledge. There's more going on than simply analyzing dwell time too, there can be frequency sweep changes in different modes, and the RWR can tell if the threat radar is emitting in HPRF or MPRF too. Exactly how all of this information is used to determine when a pilot gets an elevated warning about a specific threat we can only guess at.  

[makapaka]

about the ai i very often use tws on them and they start defendig when its too late soo seems thsy defend when they get lock from missile another thing is that they instantly dodge sam missile is probably because thsy get warning? like its not hard to remember a few numbers lets say sa18 and if u see ur getting locked by it that u should get the <profanity> out of there aboht ir missiles i dont really know but players also can see them with ted beacons unless they are turned off ai seems very easy to kill and even sam a few times as it dies to sams and often i was very close to them sometimes less than 5 miles and they werent able to see me or didnt started manuevering unlewss i attacked them this post is pretty old soo they maybe changed that or u had wrong perspective or maybe its dependent from server

[WHOGX5]

On 8/16/2022 at 5:34 PM, Bunny Clark said:

SAM and DTT aren't exactly STT locks, they're more like TWS with certain tracks given higher priority. 

Ultimately, we really don't know how this "should" work. How an RWR classifies and prioritizes threats is not public knowledge. There's more going on than simply analyzing dwell time too, there can be frequency sweep changes in different modes, and the RWR can tell if the threat radar is emitting in HPRF or MPRF too. Exactly how all of this information is used to determine when a pilot gets an elevated warning about a specific threat we can only guess at.  

This is not correct. In SAM and DTT the radar will linger on a the bugged contact for 1 second (if memory serves me right) before doing a sweep across the search volume, then linger 1 second on the bugged contact, then sweep, so on and so forth. In TWS the radar will constantly sweep across the search volume and build tracks based on the momentary returns during each sweep. This is why "locks" in SAM and DTT are more stable than TWS, because your radar sends out a tonne of radar pulses on the same target rather than just getting a single return or so.