correct as-is SA-10 Harm autodefense

[Kvek]

Hi,

Since 2.9 patch SA-10 can´t destroy inbound Harms.

SA10 bug.trk Tacview-20231020-222441-DCS.zip.acmi

[Revor]

That maybe a feature to bring more realism into DCS. 

"As life has shown, the SA-10 is not capable of shooting HARMs. At least 16 SA-10 FCRs destroyed by HARMs during the Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson region are confirmed. In order to protect the SA-10 units from the HARM, the Russian Army transferred the SA-15 systems.
It’s hard to say how effective the SA-11 is, but the SA-19 and SA-22 have trouble hitting these types of targets.

Confirmed information indicates that
the only system capable of shooting down small fast targets as HARM and GMLRS are SA-15s"

 

Belgorod - Russian Air Defences Compromised | Defence24.com

[okopanja]

3 minutes ago, Revor said:

"As life has shown, the SA-10 is not capable of shooting HARMs. At least 16 SA-10 FCRs destroyed by HARMs during the Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson region are confirmed. In order to protect the SA-10 units from the HARM, the Russian Army transferred the SA-15 systems.
It’s hard to say how effective the SA-11 is, but the SA-19 and SA-22 have trouble hitting these types of targets.

Might be true, but also not. I believe these were killed by other means.

But what we know as actually confirmed: HARMs are not very effective against targets deploying passive reflectors and active radar immitators.

[Kvek]

4 hours ago, Revor said:

That maybe a feature to bring more realism into DCS. 

"As life has shown, the SA-10 is not capable of shooting HARMs. At least 16 SA-10 FCRs destroyed by HARMs during the Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson region are confirmed. In order to protect the SA-10 units from the HARM, the Russian Army transferred the SA-15 systems.
It’s hard to say how effective the SA-11 is, but the SA-19 and SA-22 have trouble hitting these types of targets.

Confirmed information indicates that
the only system capable of shooting down small fast targets as HARM and GMLRS are SA-15s"

 

Belgorod - Russian Air Defences Compromised | Defence24.com

I think that we can't compare with actual conflict. Harms could be more advanced that our version, probably they used electronic warfare and there is a human factor (lack of training, not paying attention, etc).

Second, how reliable is the information that defence24 is showing?

Finally, did you see the track or the tacview? I fired 1 Harm at 60-70nm at 3 different sa10 batteries, none of them hit the harm.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Kvek

[Revor]

Well I have not been in ukraine and don't know the truth but there are several indications that the russian S-300 is not as capable as it was advertised to be. The developers have already confirmed that the changes to the SA-15 (it can now intercept bombs) where done on purpose to make it more realistic, so it is not impossible that they changed the ability of the S-300 to shoot down harms also to make it more realistic. That is only a guess. Maybe the developers can enlighten it and tell us if it is a bug or a feature......

Edited October 21, 2023 by Revor

[bal2o]

Hi, in my case, i see a large problem with SA10 : truck SA10LN move and crash in other truck even if i increase range between them. i fly on it, no shoot ...

May be it's not just HARM interception problem but SA10 working ?

(i attach SA10 after start misison => 2 trucks colision... and i was able to fly on it without shoot)

[bal2o]

ok, i test at 20k feet and no shoot. SA10 shoot only less 9k. For truck it's necessary to increase distance between them, so it's now not compatible with Sinai SAM's place ....

[Kvek]

50 minutes ago, bal2o said:

ok, i test at 20k feet and no shoot. SA10 shoot only less 9k. For truck it's necessary to increase distance between them, so it's now not compatible with Sinai SAM's place ....

But the problem is that against Harm, it fire but misses almost all the time

[bal2o]

6 minutes ago, Kvek said:

But the problem is that against Harm, it fire but misses almost all the time

yes but range engagement against plane has also completly changed, maybe it's related ?

[Exorcet]

On 10/21/2023 at 12:44 PM, bal2o said:

Hi, in my case, i see a large problem with SA10 : truck SA10LN move and crash in other truck even if i increase range between them. i fly on it, no shoot ...

You may want to disable dispersion under fire, which is set to true by default for ground units. It doesn't make much sense for a long range system like SA-10 to do this. I disable dispersion for nearly all SAM's except maybe SHORAD.

[flag02004]

On 10/21/2023 at 1:44 PM, bal2o said:

Hi, in my case, i see a large problem with SA10 : truck SA10LN move and crash in other truck even if i increase range between them. i fly on it, no shoot ...

May be it's not just HARM interception problem but SA10 working ?

(i attach SA10 after start misison => 2 trucks colision... and i was able to fly on it without shoot)

Harms are targeting radars, so moving launchers or truck while radars are not is not interesting...

The best configuration is to uncheck the "intercept incoming missile" option from the SA10 and put some SA15 arround with this option "on" and activated by trigger when Harms arround.....like in real life...might be "Pansir" in real life...

[bal2o]

2 hours ago, Exorcet said:

You may want to disable dispersion under fire, which is set to true by default for ground units. It doesn't make much sense for a long range system like SA-10 to do this. I disable dispersion for nearly all SAM's except maybe SHORAD.

moving appears in spawn, not with shoot. but i will try it.

 

But it's not change the fact that SA10 doesn't shoot a plane above 9k feet...

[Exorcet]

1 hour ago, bal2o said:

moving appears in spawn, not with shoot. but i will try it.

 

But it's not change the fact that SA10 doesn't shoot a plane above 9k feet...

Oh I see.

 

I was actually doing some testing on my own and I don't see this issue, but I am using the prebuilt SA-10 template for Russia.

 

I'm also seeing the SA-10 shooting at HARMS, it's just that it doesn't have a very good hit rate against them.

[bal2o]

8 hours ago, Exorcet said:

Oh I see.

 

I was actually doing some testing on my own and I don't see this issue, but I am using the prebuilt SA-10 template for Russia.

 

I'm also seeing the SA-10 shooting at HARMS, it's just that it doesn't have a very good hit rate against them.

Thanks,

did you try with plane à 15k feet above SAM ? (i use russia template too) is it shooting you ?

[Exorcet]

6 hours ago, bal2o said:

Thanks,

did you try with plane à 15k feet above SAM ? (i use russia template too) is it shooting you ?

The planes were flying over 20,000 ft minimum (about 36,000 ft in the screenshot above if you look at the background), and everything (planes and SAM's) were firing missiles.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Exorcet

[bal2o]

3 hours ago, Exorcet said:

The planes were flying over 20,000 ft minimum (about 36,000 ft in the screenshot above if you look at the background), and everything (planes and SAM's) were firing missiles.

 

ok thanks i will check what happened ...

[bal2o]

 ok you know what ? if i put SA in specific place, no shoot. but other it's ok. but why??

(track on sinai, with F15E)

SA10NoShoot.trk 

SA10Shoot.trk

[tripod3]

Thor is also useless... Only SA-22 (Pantsir-SM) from some mod is able to intercept HARMs

[NineLine]

On 10/20/2023 at 6:42 PM, Kvek said:

Hi,

Since 2.9 patch SA-10 can´t destroy inbound Harms.

SA10 bug.trk 2.08 MB · 0 downloads Tacview-20231020-222441-DCS.zip.acmi 237.17 kB · 0 downloads

I took control of your track, the SA-10 knocked down 1 of the 3 missiles, I think its challenging for the SA-10, but not impossible. 

[Whiskey11]

On 10/21/2023 at 9:08 AM, Kvek said:

I think that we can't compare with actual conflict. Harms could be more advanced that our version, probably they used electronic warfare and there is a human factor (lack of training, not paying attention, etc).

Second, how reliable is the information that defence24 is showing?

Finally, did you see the track or the tacview? I fired 1 Harm at 60-70nm at 3 different sa10 batteries, none of them hit the harm.

 

Officially, Ukraine was given AGM-88B's which lack a lot of the modern features of the C or E models... Unofficially, who knows if they are getting anything more advanced than that.

Regardless, your point still stands... it is, at best, anecdotal evidence, to use real life information available through OSINT resources.  There are a lot of false claims out there, and video has proven to be unreliable in identifying larger missile impacts (like those of HIMARS), let alone something smaller like HARM. Usually the videos of intercepts don't show the missile being intercepted in any clarity to even verify if it was hit or not, let alone identify what they are shooting at!

As someone who finds SAM History particularly fascinating, the S-300 and S-200 systems have been the two I've studied the most.  The S-300P's original design requirement was to engage low flying cruise missiles and ballistic missiles... consider, for a moment, that the design requirement was formalized the 1970's when the West was fielding Pershing II's and cruise missiles like the MGM-13 Mace, both of which are very large in comparison to missiles today.

For perspective, we have a reliable source which gives us the detection capability of the S-300PMU.  Mind you, we are currently using a bog standard S-300PS in game shooting the 5V55R missile... the S-300PMU used an export version of the Flap Lid-B (30N6E).  Our new S-300 uses the Flap Lid-B (30N6 according to the in game files).  According to "Der Fla-Raketenkomplex S-300PMU in der NVA"  by Bernd Biedermann, Juergen Gebbert, and Wolfgang Kerner gives the S-300PMU the ability to detect and engage targets as small as 0.2 square meters under ideal conditions and at relatively close ranges.  (About 2 square feet). 

For further perspective, the Tomahawk's RCS is estimated to be about 0.1 square meters and it is a significantly larger (about 4x) missile than a HARM is.  The AGM-88G has an estimated RCS of about 0.04 to 0.06 depending on aspect and the radar band used to illuminate it per some radar nerds over at the Spacebattles forum (yeah yeah, not a reliable source, per se, here is a link to the thread:  Link).  That's well below the threshold for the S-300PMU to be able to engage with a Flap Lid-B (30N6E).  Certainly enough to make me STRONGLY question if the S-300PS could ever engage a HARM, let alone under ideal conditions.

So yeah, I have my strong doubts about the S-300PS engaging HARM or anything in the same size category.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Whiskey11

[okopanja]

9 hours ago, Whiskey11 said:

For further perspective, the Tomahawk's RCS is estimated to be about 0.1 square meters and it is a significantly larger (about 4x) missile than a HARM is.

According to the official source, out of 218 Tomahawks launched during 1999 war in Yugoslavia (includes all variants and launch methods), 52 were shot down by PVO, which corresponds to slightly less than 24%. Not a greate efficiency, but consider that PVO had nowhere near full coverage and consisted of legacy SAMs:

- SA-3 Neva (for this one we know its capable of detecting and tracking targets with much lower RCS than above)

- SA-6 KUB

- Giraffe + Bofors.

- Strela-10

- Strela-2M manpads

- Selection of non-radar directed 20/23mm anti aircraft guns

On the other side disproportional number of HARMs were launched with rather modest hit hit rates compared to the number of hit radars.

Also I would like to point out that in their good times Soviets were designing and already testing new variants of missiles and SAM while during the initial deployment of original versions.

Example of this include: SA-2, SA-3, SA-6, and also SA-10 and S-11, again one of the arguments not to consider that 1970s nuke balistic and cruise missiles was a permanet requirements target.

It should be also noted that e.g. SA-6 and SA-11 are interoperable, in the sense that SA-6 launcher can be guided by another SA-11 launcher, on distances exceeding several kilometers. All of this just to give you a hint on how much our SAMs are under-modeled.

I would prefer for ED to freeze present SAM situation and not respond to case-to-case demands to tweak parameters, but rather remodel the SAMs one by one (not talking about having fancy 3D models). In this sense I would start with the oldest SAMs such as SA-2, SA-3 and SA-6, since there is plenty of documentation on their features and capabilities that is already available from public sources as well as reliable accounts and testimonies of war time usages.

[NineLine]

 I have tested more and I do not see an issue here. I have seen some missing but for the most part the HARM is intercepted most times. Thanks

[tripod3]

Most HARMs are coming under S-300 missiles and hit radars.

Most of the missiles from the S-300 launch with a vertical acceleration trajectory and miss significantly, this looks like a bug. Why does air defense fire if it misses hundreds of meters?

[okopanja]

2 minutes ago, tripod3 said:

Most HARMs are coming under S-300 missiles and hit radars.

Most of the missiles from the S-300 launch with a vertical acceleration trajectory and miss significantly, this looks like a bug. Why does air defense fire if it misses hundreds of meters?

Most of the SAMs have different guidance laws that can deployed based on situation. Most common solution is to aggressively gain altitude, and then it can even go toward ground. This is true even for older SAMs that do point their missiles more horizontally. E.g. SA-3 and SA-6 will guide first to the altitude and then to the target. SA-5 in turn will launch the missile at target further than 80km, in steep 48 degree trajectory for full 30 seconds before it turns down toward the target.

Consequently with requirement to be able to hit targets at longer ranges most of the solutions are vertically launched or launched at rather high elevations. This is not a coincidence.

E.g. you can see the Iron Dome, which launches the missiles high and most of them change trajectory toward the ground to hit the targets.

Btw: launching S-300 missile on HARM is not the most economic way of defending against HARMs.

[tripod3]

Just now, okopanja said:

Most of the SAMs have different guidance laws that can deployed based on situation. Most common solution is to aggressively gain altitude, and then it can even go toward ground. This is true even for older SAMs that do point their missiles more horizontally. E.g. SA-3 and SA-6 will guide first to the altitude and then to the target. SA-5 in turn will launch the missile at target further than 80km, in steep 48 degree trajectory for full 30 seconds before it turns down toward the target.

Consequently with requirement to be able to hit targets at longer ranges most of the solutions are vertically launched or launched at rather high elevations. This is not a coincidence.

E.g. you can see the Iron Dome, which launches the missiles high and most of them change trajectory toward the ground to hit the targets.

Btw: launching S-300 missile on HARM is not the most economic way of defending against HARMs.

Chizh just said that they changed FM for S-300 to be more optimized for far intercept. He said that they will adjust this issue for more effectively HARM intercepts