Radar Elevation Behaviors in TWS

[StarStranger]

Recently, I've been noticing the radar looking down really aggressively in TWS locking. I'm not entirely sure if its TWS manual with Jester or TWS auto, as Jester has been also using TWS manual on his own more than I've recalled. To frame the scenario: 

I do the same thing every time I go to fire off my Phoenix load. 30,000, 350+kias, ~50nm with 54Cs.
This particular day I first noticed this issue I was firing at ~4 targets at same altitude or slightly lower. As the lead target closes to ~30nm on the TID, I notice the antenna reads 8/0 with a -6 elevation. When the target is at ~20,000 still. Leading me to lose track of all targets.

Is this some kind of bug, or am I missing something here?

[near_blind]

without a tacview or a video, or a track where the jester menu isn't used, this is fairly hard to diagnose. With missiles in the air, elevation/azimuth steering is automatically controlled by the computer to try and maintain coverage over the greatest number of highest priority contacts. Off the top of my head, all I can think of is that one or more of the targets went into track extrapolation while descending, and the radar wasn't able to correlate those tracks into a new hit, causing the zone to get dragged down. That or the radar somehow getting into TWS-M with a look down azimuth set, but that shouldn't be possible with missiles in the air. 

[IronMike]

with a phoenix in the air, TWS is always auto.