reported internally R-3R is not giving launch warnings to its target

[Sarowa]

I was in the F-5 with my RWR's "Search" mode off. When "Search" mode is off, the F-5's RWR normally shows all radar-guided launch warnings, both visually and aurally. I'm well attuned to the launch warning sound.

This MiG-21 was off my nose roughly co-altitude, clearly not in any RWR blind spot above or below me. The only warning I got was the smoke, at which point even an 8g pull was not enough to avoid the R-3R missile.

I heard reports of similar experiences from other players in the A-10 and A-4.

 

EDIT:
See tracks in this post:

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Sarowa

[Enigma89]

5 hours ago, Sarowa said:

I was in the F-5 with my RWR's "Search" mode off. When "Search" mode is off, the F-5's RWR normally shows all radar-guided launch warnings, both visually and aurally. I'm well attuned to the launch warning sound.

This MiG-21 was off my nose roughly co-altitude, clearly not in any RWR blind spot above or below me. The only warning I got was the smoke, at which point even an 8g pull was not enough to avoid the missile.

I heard reports of similar experiences from other players in the A-10 and A-4.

 

 

 

 

https://leatherneck-sim.mantishub.io/view.php?id=1177

 

 

 

[Sarowa]

4 hours ago, Enigma89 said:

 

 

https://leatherneck-sim.mantishub.io/view.php?id=1177

 

 

 

I was aware of the lack of lock warning. The lack of launch warning appears to be new, or at least a new exploit.

[Enigma89]

We tested this with single core vs multicore, locally hosted vs dedicated server and cold start vs hot starts and found that launch warnings do occur. We suspect this is related to RWR deadzones on the F-5. 

Other should test to validate.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Enigma89

[Sarowa]

I disagree that RWR deadzones are the issue. In all the cases I've seen of this bug, the r3r was well within the RWR field of view. There do not appear to be any lateral or longitudinal deadzones, only vertical.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Sarowa

[Enigma89]

The other theory is that maybe EWRs are somehow flooding RWRs and not letting new things pop up. Which can be tested. But right now it is not easily or reliably reproducible. RWR deadzones and/or general multiplayer desync could be just the issue. Curious if this will happen with other planes.

If people do have it happen in a flight they should post their logs as that will help.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Enigma89

[Enigma89]

It appears that if there are enough EWRs in a mission that it will not allow for RWRs to prioritize and a MiG-21 R-3R launch will be masked and not give any sort of launch warning. 

[Sarowa]

Here are a couple tracks collected by the Enigma Cold War (ECW) community.

One is the control, Launch_Warning_Test_No_Radars.trk. It has no other radars besides the MiG-21 and we see the expected behavior. The target's RWR gives a launch warning.

The other, Launch_Warning_Test_Radars.trk, has many radars that seem to saturate the RWR, causing the MiG-21 launching an R-3R to not trigger a launch warning on the target's RWR.

Launch_Warning_Test_Radar.trk Launch_Warning_Test_No_Radars.trk

Edited July 11, 2023 by Sarowa

[-Relax-]

@-Rudel- @Dolphin887

Any news on this?

[Roostyla]

Adding a post for attention to this bug, It really helped with the asymmetric balance on cold war aircraft when the F5 gave a proper warning that an R3R was incoming , itgave players a chance to evade. It did seem a lot more reliable back in DCS 2.7 when I first played. Not sure what happened.

[Tiromir]

  Would be really cool if Magnitude 3 could have a look at this. The module had no place in DCS multiplayer until ECW, and now that single glitch is holding back the module by causing the removal of one of its main peculiarities. Whether the Sapfir should or not emit a RWR warning can be a dev decision, but we need to know whether this is a dev decision, and if not we need it fixed

[Pavlin_33]

I am not 100% sure, but does anything happen at launch that would allow the RWR to detect it?

[Sarowa]

4 hours ago, Pavlin_33 said:

I am not 100% sure, but does anything happen at launch that would allow the RWR to detect it?

Normally yes, there is a fox1 launch warning when there are few radar pings on the RWR. The issue is that when there are many other radar pings, the RWR does not prioritize launch warnings. The RWR gets saturated, and search radar pings are prioritized over launch warnings, which seems to be a bug.

See the tracks in the OP for examples.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Sarowa

[Pavlin_33]

2 hours ago, Sarowa said:

Normally yes, there is a fox1 launch warning when there are few radar pings on the RWR. The issue is that when there are many other radar pings, the RWR does not prioritize launch warnings. The RWR gets saturated, and search radar pings are prioritized over launch warnings, which seems to be a bug.

See the tracks in the OP for examples.

 

What I meant to ask is: is there anything different in 21's radar signature that would allow the RWR to detect a launch.

[okopanja]

1 hour ago, Pavlin_33 said:

What I meant to ask is: is there anything different in 21's radar signature that would allow the RWR to detect a launch.

Yes there is, it has so much less power and range, that probably EWRs which transmit in hundred of kW and MW are received by RWRs as way stronger source of signal.

Edited September 27, 2023 by okopanja

[Flappie]

FYI, this issue is already reported internally regarding MP in a congested radar environment.

I've just tested SP for the sake of it, and... I just can't hear the R-3R missile warning either. Am I missing something or is this issue also affecting SP, even in non-congested radar environnement?

EDIT: it appears the MiG-21 would fire R-3S, not R-3R.

F-5_MiG-21_missile No warning.trk F1_MiG-21_missile No warning.trk F16_MiG-21_missile No warning.trk Su-27_MiG-21_missile No warning.trk

Edited December 6, 2023 by Flappie

[Northstar98]

The thing that really needs to be ascertained here is what does the MiG-21's radar do to facilitate a missile launch.

If it's the case that the radar doesn't do anything differently to its STT mode in order to support an R-3R then there wouldn't be anything to differentiate a track from a launch and so no launch warning might be accurate.

Some radars for instance will inject CW, which can be picked up by a RWR and be used to indicate a launch as opposed to just a track. The same is at least hypothetically true if a missile relies on an uplink (which may be encoded into the radar pulses themselves).

Edited December 23, 2023 by Northstar98
grammar

[Flappie]

I believe a modern F-16 would be perfectly capable of detecting a R-3R launch. Don't you think?

[Northstar98]

23 minutes ago, Flappie said:

I believe a modern F-16 would be perfectly capable of detecting a R-3R launch. Don't you think?

If (keyword: if) the radar doesn't change anything between track and launch, how would it?

[Flappie]

Doesn't the F-16C have a missile launch detection system similar to the Mirage, the one detecting Fox-2 missiles being fired?

Edited December 6, 2023 by Flappie

[Dragon1-1]

The one that we have definitely doesn't. The CMDS unit can work with one, but the switch does nothing because such a system was never fitted on the Viper. It could have been implemented on a newer block, but I don't know about them.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Dragon1-1

[Flappie]

My mistake.

So I've just tested with the JF-17, which is equipped with such as device, and... "missile, missile, missile". So maybe @Northstar98 is right...

[Northstar98]

2 minutes ago, Flappie said:

So maybe @Northstar98 is right...

Please note that it's just a hypothetical - I don't know what the MiG-21bis' radar actually does when supporting an R-3R.

Some radars do in fact change something when supporting a missile (for instance CW being injected, a change of frequency, duty cycle, or an uplink being transmitted etc) but this isn't necessarily the case for all radars (I seem to recall the Cyrano IV being an example).

If the RP-22 does in fact inject CW for illumination or do something different between track and launch, then RWRs would potentially have something to differentiate a track from a launch. If it doesn't however, then I'm not sure it would, theoretically it wouldn't be able to tell the difference (which might mean just a track warning, or a launch warning when entering track - as seen in say, the F-15C with FLOOD).

[Flappie]

OK, forget it. I tested with a MiG-21 equipped with a R-3R and a... R-3S (Fox-2), and it seems the AI unit was always firing the R-3S.

[dumbaos]

Could this be another example of F-5's RWR... *cough* modelling *cough*... shining through, and not an issue with the MiG-21's radar (even thought it's also quite funky....)?