Implementation of basic radar functionalities and their countermeasures.

[MrWolf]

Probably another repeated post. Probably repeating myself. The thing is that I've found some 60-70's USAF-USN training videos about radar and countermeasures. With this information available, the implementation of these features can't be flagged as "TOP-SECRET" unimplementable features. I don't want to keep it very long because videos are self-explanatory.

Anyway, just wanted to point out that in the chaff video they say that chaff can stay quite a long time in the air, generating false returns. This is not implemented in DCS, and I think it would be a great feature, because if chaff stays in the air it can disrupt both enemies and allies for the entire sortie duration. Blinding entire map spots for 2 hours, or maybe having special notes on the mission on not dropping chaff (because of the possible interference to allies). They even mention the super top secret ECM decoy drones on 60's.... Resources are there.

 

The long video is about ECM basic principles, systems and radar targets. Basically showing up that adding that to DCS is not "TOP-SECRET" (unknown information, or whatever). It serves as a basis of principles for more modern techniques, too.

Chaff1:

Chaff2:

ECM:

 

Edited January 28 by MrWolf

[rob10]

Without watching all that, realize that it will, at best, only apply to older aircraft.  The basic reason chaff is fairly ineffective with newer aircraft is that they are using doppler radars that are looking for movement and therefore can filter out the chaff (which has little movement after it is initially ejected from a moving aircraft).

[peterbrownbyu]

I can only speak for myself, but I've kinda reached the point where the current radar and EW environment in DCS is so simplistic it's almost distracting. Every jammer works exactly the same, every radar seems to have hard-coded detection ranges regardless of the target's radar cross section, RWRs are accurate down to the minute, very few radars in game will give you false returns, etc. These are things that most DCS players probably don't care much about, but I agree 100 percent I'd like to see them addressed.

Unfortunately DCS players have a knee jerk "it's too classified" reaction to any EW conversation. People act like radars and jamming pods use the power of god to make RF magically break the laws of physics and behave in ways it otherwise wouldn't, therefore we have no possible way of knowing how they work. The principles that make these systems work are well understood, and there's more than enough info to bring the current level of EW up to a 7 on a scale of 1-10. There's not enough public info out there to make it a 10/10, at least for newer systems; you'd have to extrapolate or guesstimate as necessary. You already have to do that to some extent to make a flight simulator. Even if you believe the levels of extrapolation required would be unacceptable, that's still not a good reason to just leave it at a 2/10. There's a lot of work to be done and we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good

I wouldn't consider this a super high priority for ED necessarily, they still have Vulkan to release and the ground AI to revamp, so if these fixes were a year or more off I wouldn't be losing sleep over it. It does seem like these things are on ED's radar though (no pun intended), and we've already seen great improvements with certain air to air radars in the game. Heatblur and ED should be releasing a ton of features with the F-4 that will raise the bar in the EW environment. I'm hopeful for the future

[draconus]

Quote

ECM. We are developing more advanced principles of electronic warfare that will allow simulation of a greater variety of electronic warfare attack and countermeasure modes and capabilities. This is a very complex task and confidential subject. We cannot promise quick results, but work is underway to deliver a satisfactory simulation of this opaque area of modern warfare. 

Radar Improvements. In 2023 we released both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the radar improvements for the F-16C and F/A-18C. Phase 3 efforts will continue with a focus on better Single Target Track (STT) simulation, false target generation, and more realistic look-down effects.

 

[Exorcet]

14 hours ago, peterbrownbyu said:

Every jammer works exactly the same, every radar seems to have hard-coded detection ranges regardless of the target's radar cross section

I'm just a bit curious here, because that's not my experience. Jammers are simple yes, especially when talking about AI jamming, but the player ones do have a tiny bit of variety. On the whole though, jamming does need work.

On RCS though, DCS has taken that into account for years. The F-117 is proof. It's actually stealth. Large transports also have noticeably better longer detection ranges than fighters. We don't have hard coded detection ranges, they work by a formula. Now that formula is not as complex as reality (varies depending on the plane), but I think what DCS actually does needs to be acknowledged when giving feedback.

[draconus]

9 hours ago, Exorcet said:

On RCS though, DCS has taken that into account for years.

I think he meant ECM burn through range.

[Exorcet]

8 hours ago, draconus said:

I think he meant ECM burn through range.

Ah if that is the case I misunderstood.

[MrWolf]

On 1/28/2024 at 6:06 AM, rob10 said:

Without watching all that, realize that it will, at best, only apply to older aircraft.  The basic reason chaff is fairly ineffective with newer aircraft is that they are using doppler radars that are looking for movement and therefore can filter out the chaff (which has little movement after it is initially ejected from a moving aircraft).

Yeah, Doppler filtering should help discard "floating chaff" from moving aircraft, very easily indeed in active missiles. For semi-active missiles it's more difficult, because the missile needs the reference signal (which for example could be taken from a backward looking antenna in the missile that gets the transmitted field by the radar antenna) in order to obtain the beating frequency and from that obtain the velocity.

I guess chaff in modern days is similar to flares, meaning that momentarily (when it gets released) the chaff can distract the missile seeker until the speed of the chaff gets low enough to get discarded and thus the seeker points again to the aircraft.

If the chaff cloud returns much more power than the aircraft scattering, then the chaff could mask the signal level scattered by the aircraft.

Anyway, the point was to show that there are multiple ways to approach the SAM problem. But in DCS we have only 1.

Edited January 29 by MrWolf