Radar gun sight and CCIP

[lee1hy]

Doesn't it originally exist? or not yet implemented

Edited August 1, 2022 by lee1hy

[TLTeo]

CCIP won't be a thing until the F1M release. The radar gunsight isn't implemented yet.

[lee1hy]

5 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

CCIP won't be a thing until the F1M release. The radar gunsight isn't implemented yet.

 

When did F1M go into service? Isn't it COLD WAR era?

[TLTeo]

The F1M is a late 90s upgrade of the EE/CE fleets

Edited August 1, 2022 by TLTeo

[Ala13_ManOWar]

1998 firsts IIRC, and 2003 last overhauled ones. Not pretty much cold war by that time, no.

[flyingcyrus]

On 8/1/2022 at 2:08 PM, TLTeo said:

CCIP won't be a thing until the F1M release. The radar gunsight isn't implemented yet.

According to a collegue of mine who is a former F1 pilot in the French Air Force, the F1 CT was equipped with CCIP/RP, so we could expect these features in the CE, wich, like the CT, is a C with enhanced air ground capabilities for foreign countries

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by flyingcyrus

[TLTeo]

3 hours ago, flyingcyrus said:

According to a collegue of mine who is a former F1 pilot in the French Air Force, the F1 CT was equipped with CCIP/RP, so we could expect these features in the CE, wich, like the CT, is a C with enhanced air ground capabilities for foreign countries

The CE was just the export version of the C, it did not receive the upgrades of the CT. The upgraded version is the M.

[flyingcyrus]

46 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

The CE was just the export version of the C, it did not receive the upgrades of the CT. The upgraded version is the M.

As stated on Dassault-Aviation website, it's not just a C export version, as it comes with electronic equipment allowing more precise air-ground missions and improved shooting range.
https://www.dassault-aviation.com/fr/passion/avions/dassault-militaires/mirage-f1/

Edited August 6, 2022 by flyingcyrus

[TLTeo]

Nothing at all there is specific to the CE. It only says the E (which is relevant to the EE variant, NOT the CE) has improved a2g avionics and that is true - it comes with an INS and improved RWR. Nothing at all on that page says anything about CCIP or CCRP.

Edited August 6, 2022 by TLTeo

[bones1014]

I think the F1 Ex versions are capable of CCxP attacks.

[WinterH]

What's on CT has nothing to do with CE, and pretty much most other C versions.

EE doesn't get CCIP/CCRP either, that'll come with F1M. Reason being, apparently Spain never wanted air to ground telemetry, aka rangefinding feature for the radar until F1M. CT doesn't do it with the radar either, it was an upgrade to give Mirage F1Cs a better ground attack capability, and has that laser rangefinder under the nose to achieve that. As far as I know the other F1s that could do it were AZ and AD, which had a much smaller radar, but also a laser rangefinder like CT added later on, and they were mainly ground attack intended variants anyway. Probably EQs could do it too because they basically were "ALL the options please!" :). The much later MF2000 upgrade for Moroccan F1s can do so too almost certainly, but that's a modern birds in Mirage F1 dress at this point.

EE's improvements are mainly refueling capability, INS navigation system, and the option for a better RWR. Currently with CE we need some sort of beacon available for us in order to navigate anywhere.

[Fromthedeep]

I wonder why they needed an INS in the first place for an air defense interceptor, that I assume was almost exclusively intended to protect Spanish territory with ample GCI coverage and more than enough beacons to navigate around.

[dresoccer4]

On 8/1/2022 at 8:08 AM, TLTeo said:

CCIP won't be a thing until the F1M release. The radar gunsight isn't implemented yet.

do you mean the devs just haven't implemented the A2A gun w/ radar ranging yet? or the plane never had it?

[WinterH]

1 hour ago, dresoccer4 said:

do you mean the devs just haven't implemented the A2A gun w/ radar ranging yet? or the plane never had it?

CCIP bombing won't be a thing before F1M, but radar ranging and lead computation for air to air gunnery will come for CE in one of patches, it's just not in yet.

[Fromthedeep]

8 hours ago, WinterH said:

CCIP bombing won't be a thing before F1M, but radar ranging and lead computation for air to air gunnery will come for CE in one of patches, it's just not in yet.

No offense, but I've seen this being repeated over and over again, is there any actual data or documentation to prove this to be the case? Or perhaps SME statements?

[WinterH]

1 hour ago, Fromthedeep said:

No offense, but I've seen this being repeated over and over again, is there any actual data or documentation to prove this to be the case? Or perhaps SME statements?

There was, yes, but I don't remember where right now. You're free to believe whatever you prefer of course  There's a Mirage F1 discord that was created in anticiation of the module here: https://discord.gg/S8QFqRUn perhaps dig around there.

[Fromthedeep]

9 minutes ago, WinterH said:

There was, yes, but I don't remember where right now.

What exactly? Someone had the real life EE manual and combed through it and found no evidence or a real life EE pilot/avionics tech joined in, or perhaps Aerges made a comment or what? Do you perhaps remember what the evidence was, even if you don't know where you've seen it? If the only source is  Discord channel that may include someone saying something, at this point it's fair to say that no one actually knows what to expect, or at the very least, there's no reputable source that confirm this one way or another.

 

Keep in mind that CCIP does not require air to ground ranging by a radar or laser rangefinder. Active ranging sources are the best way to calculate the bombing triangle but this is not a requirement, so if people assume that it doesn't have CCIP or computed bombing because the radar is the same as the CE, it can easily be the case of an educated guess that may end up being wrong getting repeated over and over again.

 

It also isn't about what I choose to believe, as I don't believe anything. It just that there are people who make statements in no uncertain terms, and I'm wondering if there's anything that can be used to verify these claims.

[WinterH]

6 minutes ago, Fromthedeep said:

What exactly? Someone had the real life EE manual and combed through it and found no evidence or a real life EE pilot/avionics tech joined in, or perhaps Aerges made a comment or what? Do you perhaps remember what the evidence was, even if you don't know where you've seen it?

I don't, and quite honestly, I won't try to dig it up. I have a vague recollection it may have been from a pilot, but that may well be wrong. But at this point, without concrete evidence either way, it is indeed about which one one chooses to believe until said evidence is brougt up. I will admit though, it can indeed be (even semi) educated guess.

While you can theoretically do CCIP without a range source, it tends to be "Continously Crapped Intentions and Prayers", as in Hind's rocket sight, over which I often prefer to just eyeball it  which of course doesn't conclusively say it still wasn't/wouldn't done in any aircraft anyway.

There's an AZ and a CZ manual floating around, but they are flight manuals and not combat employment/armament ones, and in any case not the same variants as we have, and AZ does have a laser rangefinder and not a Cyrano radar anyway.

 

[Fromthedeep]

9 minutes ago, WinterH said:

While you can theoretically do CCIP without a range source, it tends to be "Continously Crapped Intentions and Prayers", as in Hind's rocket sight, over which I often prefer to just eyeball it

There's nothing theoretical about it, the A-10's heavily rely on their digital terrain elevation database for CCIP/strafing and I've never heard of any A-10 pilot saying it has issues with accuracy compared to let's say an F-16. They also have a way of directly inputting target elevation through the UFC rocker if it's given by the JTAC and it's more than good enough, especially for forward firing weapons.

 

The big limfac without an active ranging source, is that there are certain caveats to mission planning. If you're using the QFE or radar altimeter for the bombing triangle, it's not going to work if the target is on an elevated position like on top of a hill. If you're trying to hit preplanned targets or enemy infrastructure, the limiting factor will be what the intel guys and targeteers will give you. If you have a good enough satellite map or whatever source that can give you coordinates to the enemy location and an accurate elevation for the target point, the limiting factor will be wind and pilot skill and the interent inaccuracy of dumb bombing, assuming your INS/air data computer all work properly. 

 

Ranging sources are not magic either, a laser rangefinder doesn't work well at shallow grazing angles or if there's high humidity, clouds, dust, hail or any kind of debris in the target area and radar ranging depends on geometry, if the terrain is very hilly or variable depending on the width of your radar cone, it can get erroneous values. If you know your target coordinates in advance and you can get mensurated coordinates and very accurate target elevation, feeding in the elevation of the target point to the computer is the most accurate, reliable and surefire way of dumb bombing. But now intel is the limfac, and of course, it's not going to work all that well against movers but using CCIP against movers is also not that great of an idea in the first place.

[WinterH]

1 minute ago, Fromthedeep said:

There's nothing theoretical about it, the A-10's heavily rely on their digital terrain elevation database for CCIP/strafing and I've never heard of any A-10 pilot saying it has issues with accuracy compared to let's say an F-16. They also have a way of directly inputting target elevation through the UFC rocker if it's given by the JTAC and it's more than good enough, especially for forward firing weapons.

Seriously now isn't A-10 with a terrain elevation DB pretty heavily besides the point in discussion here though? Most oldie aircraft, and especially those with air to ground as a secondary consideration won't have anything like that, and with no ranging and no terrain elevation information either, their CCIP pipper was more of a suggestion than a solution as a result, even in best conditions.

I personally am not saying rangefinders lead into magic either, if anything, I've always felt that the accuracy we have in sims with CCIP and CCRP is probably way better than how they would be IRL, but I don't see how that ties into discussion of whether these earlier Spanish Mirage F1s had it or not either.

[Fromthedeep]

2 minutes ago, WinterH said:

Seriously now isn't A-10 with a terrain elevation DB pretty heavily besides the point in discussion here though?

Not at all. The point you were making was that without AGR there's no point in having CCIP, because the CEP would be too high, therefore, the EE likely didn't have CCIP either. Obviously aside from the logical fallacy (just because it may not work well, it doesn't necessarily mean the aircraft didn't have that capability), the discussion here is to demonstrate that other platforms can be effective at CCIP without using active ranging sources.

 

The point I was making with the DTED of the A-10 is that if you have access to the elevation of the target point, you can have pretty good success even without using active ranging. An aircraft in the 80s couldn't have a database as extensive as an A-10 would in 2022 but spy satellites were a thing even back then, and scientists had good enough tools for topography to make elevation maps of the Earth's surface. Would the Spanish Air Force have the necessary infrastructure to do this? I don't know. NATO as a whole most certainly did, and the inaccuracy only becomes an issue if there's severe elevation differences ie. the target's on a hill. If you're trying to bomb a warehouse, or airfield or Red Army truck park on flat terrain with a stick of dumb bombs, the elevation data would most likely be more than good enough, so that it won't be the limfac.

 

The advantage of modern databases is the fact that you can use it in dynamic situations for targets of opportunity. Having the intel guys come up with the elevation at a specific target point is good enough for an 80s engagement and that's definitely in the realm of capabilities of NATO at that time. If you know what you need to strike in advance, you don't need to have the memory to have the database for an entire country, you just need an INS waypoint with the elevation of where the target is, and if it's not on top of a hill, you likely won't be having any issues.

 

19 minutes ago, WinterH said:

and no terrain elevation information either, their CCIP pipper was more of a suggestion than a solution as a result, even in best conditions.

Not sure I follow you. If you have a way of caculating the bombing triangle (and having the target elevation in advance is one of way doing that), what you need is ballistic data for the bombs (that you'd have), a way of knowing aircraft acceleration, attitude, airspeed, AOA and wind. You do need an air data computer and INS for that (or something along those lines, whatever you wanna call them) and there are very well documented instances of contemporary fighters (like the F-16A) having good enough INS in that timeframe to be effective at using CCIP against preplanned targets. (Operation Opera). Remember, that if you know the target's elevation or if it's on flat terrain, having a ranging radar does not give you any advantages. The limfac here is the accuracy of ownship data needed for the calculations.

 

Now whether or not the Mirage F1EE specifically had good enough INS/instrumentation to be effective in that role is a completely different question, but at that point, we're not talking about generic theory of CCIP bombing, but a specific piece of equipment. And judging the effectiveness of a specific INS is impossible without direct empirical evidence. It is theoretically possible in the timeframe to be very effective with similar type of equipment. Whether or not the EE had this capability and if it did how effective it was in practice is something neither of us knows. (Although it is not me who made definitive statements regardless of this problem.)

 

Even in DCS, the Viggen is using its QFE altimeter for air to ground ranging for some of its computed bombing modes, there are modes where the radar is not used at all for ranging. And it's an effective bomber, and an AJ-37 is in fact an older platform than an upgraded 80s era Mirage F1.

 

27 minutes ago, WinterH said:

I've always felt that the accuracy we have in sims with CCIP and CCRP is probably way better than how they would be IRL

That's a different question all together, and we can discuss that once we've learned if the EE is going to have CCIP or not.

 

29 minutes ago, WinterH said:

but I don't see how that ties into discussion of whether these earlier Spanish Mirage F1s had it or not either.

I'm not saying it had. You guys said that it didn't, and the common reasoning for that is either that a.) it didn't have active ranging or b.) it was not used for air to ground by the Spanish Air Force. I was explaining why an active ranging source is not needed for CCIP/computed bombing so the logic that you're trying to argue from (the EE has no AGR, therefore it won't have CCIP) is simply erroneous. Just because it didn't have AGR, you cannot conclude that it won't have CCIP either. It could use a QFE altimeter, INS waypoint data or a radar altimeter for ranging.

 

B.) is an even weaker reason, just because an aircraft was not used for a certain mission set doctrinally, it doesn't mean it couldn't perform that mission set if the doctrine changed. The F-15A/C in USAF service didn't operationally do air to ground and yet it still had an assortment of bombing modes and even guided weapon integration for that role. 

[WinterH]

2 minutes ago, Fromthedeep said:

Not at all. The point you were making was that without AGR there's no point in having CCIP, because the CEP would be too high, therefore, the EE likely didn't have CCIP either. Obviously aside from the logical fallacy (just because it may not work well, it doesn't necessarily mean the aircraft didn't have that capability), the discussion here is to demonstrate that other platforms can be effective at CCIP without using active ranging sources.

Considering that I've already said in my previous post that "of course (this) doesn't conclusively say it still wasn't/wouldn't (be) done in any aircraft anyway", you are engaging in full on demagougery at this point, pulling strawmans while pointing at me screaming "logical fallacy! logical fallacy!" :))

Without ranging, and almost certainly without fancy terrain data in a 70s-80s at best secondarily strike jet, CCIP  would be pretty damn crappy indeed, and I stand by this position, yet, I do not, and did not claim that "thus, it wouldn't be added, certainly so", at no point.

Since then, the example was to show that "you can be acurate with CCIP without ranging, if you have other fancy tech", which samples an entirely different aircraft, not sure I follow you logic here either.

14 minutes ago, Fromthedeep said:

or a radar altimeter for ranging.

Now I am real curious for how that would work, genuinely so...

[Fromthedeep]

17 minutes ago, WinterH said:

Without ranging

Why? I've already explained to you what ranging does. If you know the elevation in advance, you can calculate height above target, and now the limfac is the instrumentation/equipment of the aircraft. If the INS/ADC/instruments are so poor quality and inaccurate that the solution will be useless, what would a ranging radar or range finder help with that? 

 

The way a computed bomb delivery works is that the computer inside the aircraft solves the bombing triangle, calculates aircraft velocity vector, and taking into account weapon ballistic data, environmental and aircraft parameters, it displays the solution/steering commands to the pilot. 

 

The bomb travels in a ballistic arc, with three parameters that we need to be aware of. It will have a downrange travel, which is the horizontal distance it covers from the release point ot the impact point, it will have a self explanatory time of fall, and the values of these will result in a trajectory drop, which is the angular value of the ballistic arc that the bomb will follow during its flight path. The behaviour of the bomb will depend on its inherent ballistic parameters (weight, shape, etc.) that are described in ballistic tables, the parameters of the aircraft at the point of weapon release (altitude, AoA, airspeed, attitude, yaw and G at release) and the environmental factors (temperature, air density, wind).

 

For a given environment, if you know the ballistic characteristics of the bomb, you can determine a set of aircraft parameters where the trajectory drop will have the same exact value in mils. If you do some math, you can set your pipper at the necessary depression or sight angle so that if the aircraft parameters are correct, the sight will depict the point where the trajectory drop of the bomb intersects with the target. If the parameters are incorrect (you're too high, fast, etc.) the sight will depict a false solution, and the bomb will land to a different point depending on the deviation.

 

This is what happens during manual bombing, you follow the proper set of parameters and if you release at the proper altitude, dive angle, speed with the appropriate depression set, once the pipper intersects the target the trajectory drop of the bomb will also be at the target. Of course, this is a simplification because environmental factors and ballistic imperfections but if we assume that you do it correctly, you'll hit the target. But what if you release during the dive that one of the parameters are incorrect?

 

For example, if you're too fast, the sight picture will be short and the bomb will land long, because at lower AoA at releas and lower TOF, the trajectory drop is also shallower so the bomb will land long of the target (you would need your pipper to be less depressed to be accurate). Let's say you're an experienced bomber, and you know this and you adjust based on feel, experience and you release it earlier than when the reticle and the target intersects. This will of course no going to be perfect, because you won't exactly know how much you should adjust exactly. But in theory, it can be quantified, depending on your current release airspeed a computer could calculate the new trajectory drop, the pipper could adjust itself based on computed input and you could still drop exactly at pipper-target intersection and still be accurate. This is what CCIP does.

 

So, what do we need to make such a computer? You need a ballistic computer that can take the characteristics of the bomb into account. These characteristics have been determined and are described in the bombing tables, and the memory available is obviously more than enough in the 80s to upload something like that to a computer. (Case in point the many aircraft with CCIP/RP in the 80s) Now, you need aircraft parameters as well. Airspeed, velocity vector, angle of attack, attitude are all values that even the CE knows. If you have an air data computer and an INS, you can determine all of these parameters, and now you need to solve the bombing triangle and present the solution to the pilot.

 

The bombing triangle is  a right triangle consisting of ground range, slant range and height above target and depending on what parts of the triangle you have available, the computer can use trig to determine the missing part and calculate the impact point of the bomb. If all the four requirements are fulfilled, you have a computed solution that is significantly superior to the manual sight and now you don't have to eyeball slight corrections. 

 

What active ranging sources do is determine the slant range and using that and sensor look angle, they can calculate all the missing parts of the triangle. But you can directly input height above target and if you have an INS that knows present position and target position, you'll have a ground range as well, and now you can calculate the rest of the triangle and get a solution.

 

The height above target source can be the difference between current altitude MSL and target elevation MSL or if you assume that the target isn't at a significantly higher location than the rest of the area compared to sea level, you can use AGL as well for the calculation (not going to be a good idea if you want to bomb a radar on top of a hill). Using the radar altimeter will give you a constant readout of your altitude AGL and that can be used by the computer to target. 

 

Since the EE will have an INS, in theory nothing is stopping it to have just as good effects against preplanned targets and targets at a flat terrain as an aircraft woul with a laser or radar ranging capability. What could be an issue is inaccurate ballistic data, inaccurate instruments and INS that give erroneous values to the computer and then garbage in-garbage out. But that wouldn't be mitigated even if you have an active ranging source because the computer needs an accurate velocity vector regardless of how you solve the triangle.

 

The other advantages of this method over manual bombing is that an INS can also be used to directly measure wind as well and compensate for that. Keep in mind that the logic of this applies to all computed bombing modes, not just CCIP. 

[TLTeo]

1 hour ago, WinterH said:

Now I am real curious for how that would work, genuinely so...

Take height h from the radar altimeter, take dive angle a from attitude gryo, assume terrain is perfectly flat, estimate range as r = h/cos(a) I guess?

Edited August 9, 2022 by TLTeo

[Foogle]

3 hours ago, TLTeo said:

Take height h from the radar altimeter, take dive angle a from attitude gryo, assume terrain is perfectly flat, estimate range as r = h/cos(a) I guess?

 

Just like the ASP on the Hind. It's not super accurate in practice, but it gets you close and you can adjust from there.