correct as is RLWR Not Dispensing Programmed Chaff?

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

I had assumed this was just a training issue, but all the obvious stuff people told me to do has not seemed to have an effect.

I checked RLWR was enabled.

I have chaff armed.

I have chaff set to program.

I setup a test miz with a single SA-8.

I am never seeing chaff automatically dispensed when  a radar missile is launched at me.

Am I missing something else?

(See attachments)

 

(The chaff stores count never decrements.)

RLWR_Test.trk

RLWR_test.miz RLWR_Test.trk

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[admiki]

I did not check track files, but if they are showing the same as your video, there is nothing wrong with helicopter. You moved CMWS from AUTO to BYPASS. It is up to you now to deploy countermeasures.

Leave CMWS on AUTO.

Edited November 28, 2023 by admiki

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

40 minutes ago, admiki said:

I did not check track files, but if they are showing the same as your video, there is nothing wrong with helicopter. You moved CMWS from AUTO to BYPASS. It is up to you now to deploy countermeasures.

Leave CMWS on AUTO.

 

 

Thanks.

I was told that CMWS only controls flares and that RLWR controls the chaff dispensing. 

I usually left it on and had the same behavior.  I turned it off for this test to avoid confusion.   

BTW, I can manually dispense the chaff program so I know the stores are ready to drop, they are just not dropping automatically.

Just to double check, I'll try again with CWMS on auto.

 

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

I just ran the same test again and kept CWMS on auto.  Same result.

I didn't record it because everything else was the exact same steps except for leaving CWMS on auto.  I can if it would be helpful.

Either I am missing some other piece of information or it is bugged.

I can believe either.

[Raptor9]

The RLWR has no effect on any expendable countermeasures, and the CMWS only controls flare dispensing, despite the chaff quantity also being displayed on the CMWS control panel.

As such, there is no automatic chaff dispensing capability. Setting the chaff to MANUAL or PROGRAM only affects how chaff is dispensed when the dispense button is pressed.

I recommend reviewing the Aircraft Survivability Equipment chapter in the DCS AH-64D Early Access Guide.

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

 

OK, thanks.  That makes what I've seen make sense now.

I was expecting something like that to be the answer but everyone was just telling me it should work, I was just doing it wrong so I wanted to make sure there wasn't a way to do it I was missing.

 

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[admiki]

21 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

The RLWR has no effect on any expendable countermeasures, and the CMWS only controls flare dispensing, despite the chaff quantity also being displayed on the CMWS control panel.

As such, there is no automatic chaff dispensing capability. Setting the chaff to MANUAL or PROGRAM only affects how chaff is dispensed when the dispense button is pressed.

I recommend reviewing the Aircraft Survivability Equipment chapter in the DCS AH-64D Early Access Guide.

I just learned something new.

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

14 minutes ago, admiki said:

I just learned something new.

It's a complex system.

I thought it should as well at first.  

Seems like an odd design choice (Boeing not ED).  It would be interesting to understand the reasoning.  I guess they figure radar missiles are far enough away you should have time to manually dispense.

But at least I wasn't the only one confused.  Apparently a ton of other people thought the same.

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[AlphaOneSix]

7 minutes ago, [HOUNDS] CptTrips said:

Seems like an odd design choice (Boeing not ED).

You mean design choice by Hughes, of course.

[Raptor9]

12 minutes ago, [HOUNDS] CptTrips said:

Seems like an odd design choice (Boeing not ED).  It would be interesting to understand the reasoning.  I guess they figure radar missiles are far enough away you should have time to manually dispense.

Ultimately, if you are relying on expendable countermeasures to save you from getting shot down, you are already behind the power curve. The reason why aircraft have things like RWR or other warning systems is so the pilot can do something about a threat before they get a warhead launched their way.

It would be like if someone was in a firefight and didn't bother taking cover because they had a bulletproof vest on; in that they don't mind being shot at because they have something that "should" protect them.

[NeedzWD40]

19 minutes ago, AlphaOneSix said:

You mean design choice by Hughes, of course.

Hey now, let's not blame Hughes for McD's design decisions! They just used what the US Army gave them!

[Raptor9]

20 minutes ago, NeedzWD40 said:

Hey now, let's not blame Hughes for McD's design decisions! They just used what the US Army gave them!

It's also very easy to make judgements without a full understanding of the why. This can be seen quite often like "I bet if the engineers could go back and design this aircraft's systems differently because of [insert function] they would." This betrays a lack of understanding of the how the aircraft was intended to be employed.

Aircraft are not just slapped together in a haphazard way based on what components are available or simply just to fly to point A and shoot the weapon mounted to it. Everything from the avionics to the cockpit interface to the sensors are designed to suit how the aircraft is meant to fight for the military that intends to use it. This is why aircraft like the AH-64D, F-15E, F-16C, F/A-18C are so different in their fire control systems and cockpit interfaces. There may be common threads between some aircraft, especially when they come from the same manufacturer, but each of these aircraft are designed to fulfill a specific role within a specific military branch, and the associated doctrine within that mission set and that branch.

What may seem like an odd choice in design to a Navy F/A-18 pilot may make perfect sense to an Air Force F-16 pilot, and vice versa. Different doctrine, different missions, different methods of fighting in combat.

A forum post that does a good job in explaining this reasoning is here: 

EDIT: Another example from a while back is someone asking why the AH-64D, as a "CAS aircraft", doesn't have the ability to perform ADF to ground force radio frequencies; only to NDB navigation stations. The entire premise is not based in reality. Despite the fact that many DCS user files feature missions in which you locate friendly forces by using ADF to their radio transmissions, that is something that is not done in real-life during the conduct of close air support. Further, the AH-64 was not designed to be a CAS aircraft, despite the fact it has been performing a CAS-like mission for most of the past several decades.

My point of this long story is that there are a lot of concepts that are floating around in the community that doesn't reflect reality, and these can unfortunately lead to unrecognized misconceptions.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Raptor9

[NeedzWD40]

11 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

Aircraft are not just slapped together in a haphazard way based on what components are available or simply just to fly to point A and shoot the weapon mounted to it.

I'm trackin' what you're puttin' down, but at the same time, I wanna just say the AH-1G/Q/P/S/E/F exist. And the AH-1J/T/W. Those had a little doohickey that was exclusively for dropping M18 smoke grenades. And the funky inboard pylons so they could drop bombs from the inboard stations.

[ruiner_]

The 737 max also begs to differ. 

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

1 hour ago, Raptor9 said:

Ultimately, if you are relying on expendable countermeasures to save you from getting shot down, you are already behind the power curve. The reason why aircraft have things like RWR or other warning systems is so the pilot can do something about a threat before they get a warhead launched their way.

It would be like if someone was in a firefight and didn't bother taking cover because they had a bulletproof vest on; in that they don't mind being shot at because they have something that "should" protect them.

 

Well, the exact same argument could be made for auto dispensing flares.

You should already know where possible IR threats are and plan you attack so you are never in their threat envelop.  

And infantry should always have sufficient cover they don't need a helmet. Oh well.

But in war, stuff happens.  CMWS are for those "oh crap" moments when everything didn't go according to your set-piece plan.  

I'm not saying you mis-implemented the representation, just if I were a pilot, I'd like to have the option to configure auto chaff for the same kind of unforeseen situations that auto flares might be handy.  Like when I first started looking into this I was crossing some mountains on the Cyprus terrain and found a Osa that had been tucked into a valley that hid it from my reconnoiter.  It wasn't a SAM from 50km away but a SA-8 launching from 3km.  

In the moment I was busy looking for some cover to get small behind and was assuming it was dropping chaff as I heard it dropping flares.  Only once I was frying to a crisp did I notice it hadn't dropped a single chaff.

But Boeing,,,er Hughes didn't ask my opinion.

Thanks for the info tho.

 

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[NeedzWD40]

9 minutes ago, [HOUNDS] CptTrips said:

Well, the exact same argument could be made for auto dispensing flares.

From what I was told, the auto option was rarely used. Too many false positives from the system. May have changed over the years, but CMWS was a persnickety little piece of kit according to the grapevine.

11 minutes ago, [HOUNDS] CptTrips said:

I'm not saying you mis-implemented the representation, just if I were a pilot, I'd like to have the option to configure auto chaff for the same kind of unforeseen situations that auto flares might be handy.  Like when I first started looking into this I was crossing some mountains on the Cyprus terrain and found a Osa that had been tucked into a valley that hid it from my reconnoiter.  It wasn't a SAM from 50km away but a SA-8 launching from 3km.  

Counterpoint: within DCS, we have the luxury of a known and clean/reliable EW environment. With all the RFI and EMI in the real world, the false positive rate could be so much higher that auto dispensing would waste the entire bucket 30 seconds into the flight. Even within DCS I get a lot of false positives in a complex environment, so auto dispensing would be thoroughly useless to me. In addition, the utility of chaff against more advanced threats is suspect and I've been told the primary reason for chaff buckets for aircraft like the AH-64A and AH-1F was as a counter to the Shilka, which was seen as the primary threat against those platforms.

It's a gray area of course because a large chunk of this falls into tactics and procedures, to say nothing of EW. This leaves a wide berth for anecdotal evidence and how it should be taken.

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

17 minutes ago, NeedzWD40 said:

From what I was told, the auto option was rarely used. Too many false positives from the system. May have changed over the years, but CMWS was a persnickety little piece of kit according to the grapevine.

I don't disagree, yet the option for auto flares was provided.  The pilot can decide to enable it or not depending on his evaluation of cost\benefit.  

If I were a pilot, I'd want the option for chaff even if I decided to usually not enable it.

When I fly with my boys, I generally keep CMWS on auto in transit in case something surprises me on my route I wasn't expecting.  (Oh crap moment.)  Once I near the BP I turn it to bypass to not get activated by my wingmen yeeting Hellfires.  I like the option.

Now that I know it won't auto dispense chaff, fine.  I was just thinking CMWS had my back while I was trying to evade.  Then the consensus was that it was intended to work, I just didn't have some setting right, so I wanted to know if that was true.

It's all good.

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[Raptor9]

22 minutes ago, [HOUNDS] CptTrips said:

yet the option for auto flares was provided.

A key difference being that when such threats are initially detected, a missile is already on the way.

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

19 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

A key difference being that when such threats are initially detected, a missile is already on the way.

Fair enough, though I don't recall having all that much warning with that Osa I stumbled across. 

I guess it seemed that if it knew a radar was tracking me, and knew a missile was launched, and knew the launch was on the same heading as the tracking radar,  then it didn't seem unreasonable to think that if the CWMS was set to auto that it would drop chaff.  Oh well.  War is Hell.

As I said, now that I know it won't, fine.  I don't appear to have been the only one to misunderstand that.

As Admiki said, I learn something new every day.

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by [HOUNDS] CptTrips

[Raptor9]

@[HOUNDS] CptTrips Please don't misunderstand, not trying to argue the topic; just trying to provide the proper context since you mentioned it seemed like an odd design choice. The context I was trying to provide was that using expendable countermeasures against radar threats vs IR threats are quite different.

The CMWS as a whole includes both the missile warning sensors and the flare dispensers, and the purpose is to provide protection against IR-guided missiles that have already been launched at the aircraft. However, the combined radar and laser warning system (RLWR) is designed to warn the crew of threats so they can take action prior to being engaged. The idea of automatically dispensing chaff may be useful for high-speed aircraft, but it doesn't really do any good to make a cloud of chaff around the helicopter while it is in a hovering battle position trying to snipe tanks. Hope that provides some clarity.

[AlphaOneSix]

4 hours ago, NeedzWD40 said:

Hey now, let's not blame Hughes for McD's design decisions! They just used what the US Army gave them!

McD didn't buy Hughes until 1984.

[NeedzWD40]

4 hours ago, AlphaOneSix said:

McD didn't buy Hughes until 1984.

Thus the AH-64D and the lack of automatic chaff dispenser can be laid at the feet of McD.

[AlphaOneSix]

20 hours ago, NeedzWD40 said:

Thus the AH-64D and the lack of automatic chaff dispenser can be laid at the feet of McD.

Well, fine, but it's the exact same dispenser as on the A-model.