not a bug A-10C nearly impossible to hit with SARH/IR missiles

[Pavlin_33]

It's not the first time I experience this in MP, but only now have I decided to raise an issue, with SARH/IR missiles missing A-10 from point blank range.

In the provided GIF from distance of 7km down to basically nothing, the A-10C manages to evade 6 missiles in total, with only mild maneuvering.

Now before anyone jump on "he was notching" train, the A-10 was maybe notching the first 27-R, but the rest should have hit. I've had my missiles miss form dead 6 at distances less than 2km also, but I attributed this to possible de-sync at a time.

In total the following failed to hit:

• 3 x R-27R
• 2 x R-73
• 2 x R-27T

It's like the A-10C has a cloak of invincibility or something. It seems easier to fly over it and bomb it, then to hit it with A2A ordinance.

Edited January 14 by Pavlin_33

[Aries]

Never... underestimate an F/A-10C... 

[okopanja]

Not sure, think i got something similar today.

Launched R-27ET from read hemisphere with proper PR. Missile made initial turn and stopped dead.

(while focusing on my own issue I noticed that barrel roll is an issue again)

Sadly TRK is too large so useless.

Still:

 

[GGTharos]

28 minutes ago, Pavlin_33 said:

It's not the first time I experience this in MP, but only now have I decided to raise an issue, with SARH/IR missiles missing A-10 from point blank range.

In the provided GIF from distance of 7km down to basically nothing, the A-10C manages to evade 6 missiles in total, with only mild maneuvering.

Poor tactics produce poor results.  Both aircraft are shooting from a poor position with countermeasures in the missile's FoV and the target aircraft in the most advantageous position for itself.

 

2 minutes ago, okopanja said:

Not sure, think i got something similar today.

Launched R-27ET from read hemisphere with proper PR. Missile made initial turn and stopped dead.

 

May have locked onto the 120 momentarily or never locked on.  Were you using launch override?

 

 

[Pavlin_33]

16 minutes ago, GGTharos said:

Poor tactics produce poor results.  Both aircraft are shooting from a poor position with countermeasures in the missile's FoV and the target aircraft in the most advantageous position for itself.

 

Well no, all those missiles are all aspect, and plus as I mentioned it happened also from low 6 position some time ago - not sure if I have a TacView of that one. Something is off here. No other DCS aircraft, that I am aware of, behaves like this. I mean, what were we supposed to do, perform a stern conversion at < 2km? Even choper can be hit, but not the A-10C.

P.S. my last 73 was practically launched from 6 o'clock position

Edited January 14 by Pavlin_33

[GGTharos]

The A-10 has a low IR signature and in particular is designed to hide it's IR producing parts when launched on from below.   In theory this will make countermeasures more effective.

You don't need to do a stern conversion, it's not your only option.   But that aircraft is definitely set up with robust defense in mind - your RF missiles are dealt with in the notch or near it, where chaff in DCS is most effective, and he's got plenty of flares out while you're shooting IRH.

[okopanja]

46 minutes ago, GGTharos said:

May have locked onto the 120 momentarily or never locked on.  Were you using launch override?

Yes it was a perfect lock and well within the range, the initial turn was there (it did not pass far from actual path of target), only the missile went dead immediately after, despite AB target.

My tacview is from GS server, and neither him or me exhibit drops in position updates (usually this indicates that at least one of us has low performance machine or poor network), so I would say this is not a delay induced desync. I was wondering if the net code of older missiles is actually misbehaving. And, btw I am not a beginner and the guy who posted to topic is actually an advanced BF 80s player.

If you carefully look at the missile fired by second person you will see it also flies straight just like mine. Another candidate for reason behind the issue are the changes made several releases ago made to fix the issue of PR given even if the missile does not have a PR. That issue was relate more to the front aspect, but it appears that now rear aspect works unreliably.

 

Edited January 14 by okopanja

[Pavlin_33]

27 minutes ago, GGTharos said:

..your RF missiles are dealt with in the notch or near it, where chaff in DCS is most effective, and he's got plenty of flares out while you're shooting IRH.

He was doing 446km/h true at 70degrees, which unless I made a mistake, is around 150km/h closure. What's the notch filter on the Flanker?

My second-last 73 misses from left eight o'clock from 1.8km and he was not even flaring.

Edited January 14 by Pavlin_33

[GGTharos]

Depends on the distance, but you're not far enough for it to be this huge.   On the other hand, like I said, the closer you get to 90 deg the more effective chaff becomes in DCS.

As for the R-73, I don't know what to tell you - intermittently this can happen (should it?  shouldn't it?) but there's issues with low IR signature things in DCS, including helis.

Edited January 14 by GGTharos

[Pavlin_33]

I guess a more straight forward example is needed. I will see if I manage to capture another one of these situations...

Edited January 14 by Pavlin_33

[Czar66]

Two things missing from this:

-Was the A-10C pilot going idle to throw the missiles off. It adds to the A-10 low IR signature profile.

-A-10C altitude. Being close to the ground and having chaff in the area can throw 27R off quite often.

Sorry to have a tone of skepticism here but I'm flying the A-10C and had zero feeling of being invisible to SARH/IR missiles the past days.
I've been in the same shoes against an A-10 more than 7 years ago. Depending on the pilot awareness, it is a beast against IR missiles.

The last 3 shots from the Su on the left seems awfully close to be successful. Is the track being played on 1x?

From the 3d A-10 object wings being clipped by the ground, I guess it is flying really low and adequate to the situation.

This seemed like a person who knows how to fly the warthog defensively by quite a bit although hopeless.

Edit: Any possibility to upload the tacview file?

Edited January 14 by Czar66

[Pavlin_33]

1 hour ago, Czar66 said:

Two things missing from this:

-Was the A-10C pilot going idle to throw the missiles off. It adds to the A-10 low IR signature profile.

I would say prob not, since the speed did not drop that much, but I am not 100%.

1 hour ago, Czar66 said:

-A-10C altitude. Being close to the ground and having chaff in the area can throw 27R off quite often.

Sorry to have a tone of skepticism here but I'm flying the A-10C and had zero feeling of being invisible to SARH/IR missiles the past days.
I've been in the same shoes against an A-10 more than 7 years ago. Depending on the pilot awareness, it is a beast against IR missiles.
The last 3 shots from the Su on the left seems awfully close to be successful. Is the track being played on 1x?

From the 3d A-10 object wings being clipped by the ground, I guess it is flying really low and adequate to the situation.

This seemed like a person who knows how to fly the warthog defensively by quite a bit although hopeless.

Edit: Any possibility to upload the tacview file?

 

I am not sure of the track speed, but indeed I was very close eventually.

Yes, the driver seems very competent, I agree. The thing is that this might not be the sniniest example, it's just the latest thing that happened. The worse one I have experienced so far was shooting at an A-10C in MP from low 6 at 1.5km and two R-27Rs missed along with 73s. The target did not maneuver at all, it was just releasing chaff/flares. That was the first time I realized that something might be wrong, but I disregarded it thinking it might be a desync or something similar.

I will see if I can find a better example in the future.

No track - was in MP

Edited January 14 by Pavlin_33

[Czar66]

15 hours ago, Pavlin_33 said:

I would say prob not, since the speed did not drop that much, but I am not 100%.

I am not sure of the track speed, but indeed I was very close eventually.

Yes, the driver seems very competent, I agree. The thing is that this might not be the sniniest example, it's just the latest thing that happened. The worse one I have experienced so far was shooting at an A-10C in MP from low 6 at 1.5km and two R-27Rs missed along with 73s. The target did not maneuver at all, it was just releasing chaff/flares. That was the first time I realized that something might be wrong, but I disregarded it thinking it might be a desync or something similar.

I will see if I can find a better example in the future.

No track - was in MP

 

From my own experience, on both ends of the fight, going idle and flares can be enough for a lot of situations without the need to maneuver, heavily depending on the situation.

Do you fly the A-10C? It is a beast of a module and I thoroughly recommend it, but I guess you own it already as a lot of people do.

From the days that I used to fly on open multiplayer often, I remember having the gun ready after I'd shoot a froogfoot or a warthog with a IR missile at relative close range, especially if the pilot knows where I'm shooting from. Warthogs has also an inboard missile fire warning system regardless of being IR or SARH as it reads missile launch IR signatures from the environment, adding to the pilots SA to when to flare and go idle. Doing it right, at the right time, no one will notice a speed loss from the outside, as you barely do while piloting it.

Edited January 15 by Czar66

[Ivandrov]

Well, even if you say it seems like there was no desync. I've seen plenty of cases of proximity fuzes seemingly not firing against a variety of aircraft in multiplayer. Even if everything else seems normal.

That seems to be what happened with the first missile. It looks like another was obscured and hit a hill, several look like they were fired without a valid track, whether that is pilot error in aircraft procedures, or tactics of firing against something so low to the ground, I can't say.

Point blank firing missiles is also a problem because it takes time for missiles to accelerate enough, for sufficient airflow to be established for manuevering. They have very small airfoil surfaces optimized for manuevering at much higher speeds.

As people have said before, the lack of afterburner in the A-10 makes a huge difference for the effectiveness of IR missiles against it. Flares are highly effective on it, and helicopters in-game due to low IR output from the engines.

 

You have too many variables going on here in this track to be able to confidently say whether you are encountering a bug or not.

 

For what it is worth, I've flown the A-10 for a very long time, and I've definitely been hit by SARH and IR missiles. I've also shot down a few A-10's as Redfor. Never felt like there was anything unusual going on other then what I've explained above.

Edited January 16 by Ivandrov

[Pavlin_33]

Here's some more footage (reply sped up):
3 x 73 miss from very short range

 

Edited February 12 by Pavlin_33
Resized the image

[Pavlin_33]

And some more: this time R-27R fails to track for some reason - radar lock was maintained throughout

Edited February 12 by Pavlin_33

[GGTharos]

5 hours ago, Pavlin_33 said:

Here's some more footage (reply sped up):
3 x 73 miss from very short range

 

 

I don't see why they would guide with so many flares in the air.

[Ivandrov]

23 hours ago, Pavlin_33 said:

And some more: this time R-27R fails to track for some reason - radar lock was maintained throughout

 

Radar lock may have been maintained, did the seeker in the missile even have a chance to find the reflection from that close and off-angle?

There are severe problems with weapons employment envelope and use of countermeasures in the two cases you just posted.

Edited February 13 by Ivandrov

[Pavlin_33]

8 minutes ago, Ivandrov said:

Radar lock may have been maintained, did the seeker in the missile even have a chance to find the reflection from that close and off-angle?

There are severe problems with weapons employment and use of countermeasures in both of these cases you just posted.

Oh come on. The missile didn't have time to find the target, really?
Any other air frame in DCS would have been splashed, but not the A-10C.
This is the only airplane I have to actually gun down.
 

[Ivandrov]

7 minutes ago, Pavlin_33 said:

Oh come on. The missile didn't have time to find the target, really?
Any other air frame in DCS would have been splashed, but not the A-10C.
This is the only airplane I have to actually gun down.
 

That was an incredibly terrible shot, it wouldn't have guided onto any plane.

 

You're not convincing anyone that there is a problem with the A-10 here if you keep leaving in all of these variables that explain the reasons why your missiles miss.

 

Try isolating things in a test environment, shoot against an A10 with no countermeasures, and with good leading shots.

Edited February 13 by Ivandrov

[Pavlin_33]

5 minutes ago, Ivandrov said:

That was an incredibly terrible shot, it wouldn't have guided onto any plane.

 

You're not convincing anyone that there is a problem with the A-10 here if you keep leaving in all of these variables that explain the reasons why your missiles miss.

 

Try isolating things in a test environment, shoot against an A10 with no countermeasures, and with good leading shots.

 

Problem is with the A-10C specifically. I have no issues with any other target.
Unfortunately I don't own the A-10, but I will see if I can find someone to help out maybe stage these kind of situations, so I can get a track file.

[Ivandrov]

1 minute ago, Pavlin_33 said:

Problem is with the A-10C specifically. I have no issues with any other target.
Unfortunately I don't own the A-10, but I will see if I can find someone to help out maybe stage these kind of situations, so I can get a track file.

Just do it against AI, you can setup a mission in the mission editor, remove countermeasures, and make sure you get good shots on them before you fire the missiles.

 

I can also do it myself, tomorrow, and post the results.

[Pavlin_33]

Just now, Ivandrov said:

Just do it against AI, you can setup a mission in the mission editor, remove countermeasures, and make sure you get good shots on them before you fire the missiles.

 

I can also do it myself, tomorrow, and post the results.

True I could try out AI. My only concern is that it might not be the same - I would have to replicate this with a human-driven A-10.

[Ivandrov]

Just now, Pavlin_33 said:

True I could try out AI. My only concern is that it might not be the same - I would have to replicate this with a human-driven A-10.

If it's a problem with the A-10 specifically, why wouldn't it be the same?

 

Are you saying it is a problem with the A-10? Or that it matters who or what is controlling it?

Edited February 13 by Ivandrov

[Pavlin_33]

1 minute ago, Ivandrov said:

If it's a problem with the A-10 specifically, why wouldn't it be the same?

I have no idea if DCS treats both AI and client the same.