Can any real world fast jet pilots comment on the RWRs in DCS? - Questions/Comments from a former USN EW tech

[mdmasters]

I was an electronic warfare operator and technician for a shipboard electronic warfare system way back in the 80's.  The system that I worked on was a computer controlled broadband microwave receiver that could detect, analyze, and classify electronic emissions (emitters), and then present the resulting EW picture onto a screen, much like the RWR's in the DCS jets that we fly.  However, like all things, this was not a simple task for these early computers to perform, and in most cases they really were not very good at classifying the emitters.  There were a couple of reasons for this.

1) The system worked by analyzing the parameters of the emitter (frequency, PRF, scan type, scan rate, etc.) and matching these parameters up to a database of emitters.  The issue was (and is, I assume), that there was a LOT of parameter overlap between emitters, and so any given set of parameters could often fit a  wide range of emitters, especially in the case of search radars and aircraft radars.  So it was quite common for, say, a passing freighter to be identified as something like maybe a Russian destroyer surface search radar.

2) There are a HUGE amount of emitters out there - things like shipborne air search radars, shipborne surface search radars (military and commercial), fire control radars, missile homing radars, small craft radars, commercial airliner radars, military aircraft, private aircraft, altimeters, ILS systems, weather radars, harbor control radars, etc. If any of these things had parameters that overlapped the known military radars, then they would be identified as a military radar, but quite often they would just show up as unknown.

The bottom line was that there was a lot of stuff on the screen, and only some of it was military, and only some of that was correctly identified.  So it always bothers me that the RWR in our DCS jets identifies each emitter perfectly and there are no civilian emitters or unknown emitters (which vastly outnumber the military emitters).

Assuming that the subject is not classified for the older aircraft, can any real world pilots comment on the way the RWR is modeled in DCS?  Thanks.

[Dragon1-1]

Not a pilot, but flew a lot of DCS.  You're right, DCS systems are far too reliable and accurate, for multiple reasons.

First, you have to remember DCS environment is only as full as we make it - all those ships, aircraft, SAMs and weather stations would have to be added manually to the mission, bogging it down. If you do fly a mission like that (say, with a big friendly SAM screen), you'd see the RWR being appropriately cluttered. Generally, DCS missions are far more empty than your average civilian area, even discounting the fact that many emission sources aren't even in the sim.

Second, RWRs have to be specifically told to show unknown contacts, and some, especially Soviet models, do not have that option at all. IRL, those were designed at a time when the EM spectrum wasn't nearly as cluttered, and they also couldn't see many of those radars, since they were mostly meant to detect airborne FCRs. The first RWRs appeared to protect aircraft from unexpected gun attacks with the use of a radar gunsight. Try a Mi-24 or a MiG-21, and you'll see that even a minimum amount of clutter renders their RWRs borderline unusable outside detecting SARH missile launches (which is a very distinctive continuous wave signal).

I would expect modern RWRs to have a large database tailored to the region they're being flown in, and thus able to ignore weather radars and radar altimeters. Civilian radar emission patterns are known and usually different from military ones. Since aviation RWRs have to be operated by a single pilot with no mind for deciding whether a radio signal is an ILS beacon or an incoming missile, they have to do a lot of filtering on their own. This means they will ignore, for instance, a surface search radar, even if it is from a warship. An air search radar would be something an aircraft needs to worry about, so it would show.

RWRs used by dedicated EW aircraft, such as the F-4G or EA-6B Prowler, would have capabilities (and issues) closer to the system you were operating. We don't have those in DCS, though. Tactical aircraft RWRs sacrifice some of it in order to present information useful to someone who's busy flying. The Viggen has an interesting system which you can use to actually listen to various PRF tones to figure out what's looking at you, but again, this is from an era when there wasn't a surface search radar on damn near every sailboat on the sea, to say nothing of bigger ships (at least the pleasure boats would avoid turning them on unless it gets foggy).

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

we try our best to be as close to real world as possible, depending on the availability of unclassified evidence, as you can imagine we have to be very careful about what we include in DCS. If you think something is wrong for a particular system you can always PM me or Nineline, however we will require evidence before any potential change could be considered. 

With that said just a gentle reminder of our rules below regarding data as we do not want anyone getting in trouble as the discussion progresses here. 

Thank you

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[Techmonkey]

AFAIK EW is rather a sensitive topic, so getting none classified data on it will be somewhat difficult. 

[Goose489]

On 12/11/2023 at 5:26 AM, Techmonkey said:

AFAIK EW is rather a sensitive topic, so getting none classified data on it will be somewhat difficult. 

Imagine someone just leaks highly classified data on here.

[Techmonkey]

I lack any imagination on this matter