Situational awareness, SARH, SAMS and the BVR (single player)

[Kula66]

Oh when is DCS figher(s) gona come out :(

 

Agreed ... I just hope they spend as much time on the radar, missile and seeker modelling as on the a/c themselves. It is no good having a lovely BVR fighter a/c if the missiles are as broken as in LO.

[RvEYoda]

1000 km/h might be near a minimum maneuvering speed for a missile,

generally it should have a lot more speed to hit its target, or it will easily

break gimbals when the target turns towards the beams etc. (not to account

for even more excessive speed loss at those high AoA maneuvers)

 

1000 km/h could very well be close to stalling speed for a missile that high

 

DCS fighters!

Wooo Aim9 BANG :)

[Frostie]

No, they are designed to produce less drag and as such probably less turning ability. Less drag = more range and more energy at a given range allowing greater ability to manouvre. To counter this the R-77 has a larger diameter motor, which will push up the weight etc etc.

The R-77 has strakes instead of deltas which give it great lift with less drag. Much the same as most missiles produced today. So, yes the delta is a dated design.

You can point at the R-77's flaws, the fact is it has greater range than the AMRAAM of that era.

... Which says precisely nothing. Note that currently it is the only AAM with that control surface design, and whether it will be used again is still debatable. There's no other AAM design, current or projected that is taking them into consideration for the moment.

What does this have to do with missile range and established existing missile performance data?

I hope the above helped improve your understanding of missile tech.

 

 

 

As usual another missile thread starts getting turned into an AMRAAM whine thread, when are people going to realise that its all of LO which is not working realistically and that they might suck at BVR a bit.:joystick:

[GGTharos]

Oh the sheer irony - I'll point this out to you every time I hear you whine about maddogged missiles then ;)

 

PS: You still don't have any understanding of missile technology, but I know you won't try exploring that one yourself in any case ;)

[Wilde]

However, Western designs have proven to work very well in recent combat

 

See page 25 of this document and draw conclusions about BVR effectiveness. Anything but "proven to work well". If you're optimistic you could say there's at least hope it will work if sh!t hits the fan.

 

Maybe ED should be and is actually considering this? Must be quite difficult to balance stuff correctly.

 

Anyways, some missiles behavior is indeed unrealistic. Hope it will be better in DCS once there are fighters available.

[GGTharos]

See page 25 of this document and draw conclusions about BVR effectiveness. Anything but "proven to work well". If you're optimistic you could say there's at least hope it will work if sh!t hits the fan.

 

See real life. AMRAAM has been performing very, very well compared to any previous generation of missiles - the sparrow has also been working well, subject to storage and carriage conditions, before it was phased out.

 

Maybe ED should be and is actually considering this? Must be quite difficult to balance stuff correctly.

 

Anyways, some missiles behavior is indeed unrealistic. Hope it will be better in DCS once there are fighters available.

 

All missile behavior is unrealistic except for the very, very basics. DCS will enhance the ballistic physics of weapons at the very least (See Vikhr), and I'm confident they will also look to improve sensor modeling for them.

[Kula66]

Widle,

Yes I've read that doc sometime ago ... the thing is we just don't know. Interesting info sure. These studies often have an agenda - look at the BAe studies on how effective the Typhoon is v other a/c. There are also vast numbers of variables. Also, modern missiles (currently classified ones) are alot smarter than earlier 120A/B ... look at the IIR stuff.

 

So much of this stuff is secret, for all we know the F-22s are ending production early because a super A2A UAV has been developed!

Edited May 2, 2009 by Kula66

[Frostie]

Oh the sheer irony - I'll point this out to you every time I hear you whine about maddogged missiles then ;)

Im not sure you fully understand irony, if it was the case then I would have said something like this

'Gee GG you know so much about missile tech, maybe we can discuss more about how crap the LO AMRAAM is then I can can start bringing this and that about Maddogs being overmodeled and we could have another thread of so much JOY' :D

[GGTharos]

I think the next thread should be F-22 vs. Su-35 just to rotate subjects actually.

 

Im not sure you fully understand irony, if it was the case then I would have said something like this

'Gee GG you know so much about missile tech, maybe we can discuss more about how crap the LO AMRAAM is then I can can start bringing this and that about Maddogs being overmodeled and we could have another thread of so much JOY' :D

[Case]

Let's get back onto subject. There are a dozen other 'I fired 20 AMRAAMs today' threads on this forum which you can read to find out where this discussion will go if we don't get back onto subject.

3) F-16's with ECM are bastards. In fact, anything with ECM & ARH is a bastard, because they deny you your range advantage, and they are remarkably adept at killing your wingie.

You may have already tried this, but it is good to get some experience against 'easier' opponents, like a MiG-23, MiG-29A or a Su-27 without ECM. These carry SARH or medium to short range IR missiles and don't have ECM, so you will always have the range advantage when carrying ERs and can engage without losing SA. It'll give you experience on missile flight times and AI behaviour, as well as allowing you to visually confirm launches.

[Wilde]

Also, modern missiles (currently classified ones) are alot smarter than earlier 120A/B ... look at the IIR stuff.

 

Yes most likely they are. But so are radars, RWRs and alot of other things.

 

Surely the RAND corp had an agenda, but I doubt they simply invented those numbers. And while there are reasons for the low amount of actual launches one thing remains: the targets could have been 6 Learjets and the missile wouldn't look particularly overwhelming. True, one cannot draw the conclusion that the AMRAAM would suck equally in a full fledged combat against even forces. Though I don't understand how some do draw the opposite conclusion.

 

This has nothing to do with "my missile is better than yours" or whatever. Just saying, that maybe BVR is overrated especially amongst those who think "their team" has an advantage in it. This goes for both sides I guess.

[RedTiger]

Let's get back onto subject. There are a dozen other 'I fired 20 AMRAAMs today' threads on this forum which you can read to find out where this discussion will go if we don't get back onto subject.

You may have already tried this, but it is good to get some experience against 'easier' opponents, like a MiG-23, MiG-29A or a Su-27 without ECM. These carry SARH or medium to short range IR missiles and don't have ECM, so you will always have the range advantage when carrying ERs and can engage without losing SA. It'll give you experience on missile flight times and AI behaviour, as well as allowing you to visually confirm launches.

 

Just an observation on my part; if we're talking about AI, while I agree about planes equipped with shorter range missiles, I actually find the ECM equipped planes easier to deal with. Why? Because the AI never turns off ECM and therefore you always know where they are. Even if you have lots of aircraft using ECM, some friendly and some foe, being able to see where everyone is enhances SA. Furthermore, you can lock up the ECM signal and fly right at them and automatically lock them at burn-through. I have my doubts on how realistic this auto-switch from HOJ to lock-on is.

 

To me, the difficulty is greater with non-ECM aircraft. You actually have to -find- them, even if you know what direction they are and their altitude. You still have to find them even if you have them on datalink. For as much talk as there is about how Russian aircraft are more capable than they should be, the MiG-29's radar in LOMAC is pretty weak. You're detection range isn't great and your lock-on range is even worse. And, from my observations at least, all this IS negatively impacted if you're trying to look-down. The radar seems to work a bit better look-up. This is coupled with the fact that you have to manually adjust expected range and move the elevation up and down.

 

Most aircraft will lock you up before you can lock them up. If you're flying the A or if you fly the S with the more realistic payload of 2 R-27s and 4 R-73s, they will fire at you before you can fire at them. Once you do fire, you have two chances to kill them BVR before you will be forced into WVR. They only reason you might be successful a lot of the time vs. the AI is because the AI is stupid and will break lock at the drop of a hat and stay on the defensive. Against human opponents, it would probably be fairly realistic and be just like GG says, you will need superior numbers to win and you will take losses.

[Kula66]

To me, the difficulty is greater with non-ECM aircraft. You actually have to -find- them, even if you know what direction they are and their altitude.

 

I know what you mean, you get that first shot off after burn-through, beam to defeat the return shot, loose him during the wild manouvering to dodge the r-77 and than a mad panic trying to re-acquire while knowing he has you locked!

 

Its what I love about LO over BS ... it can still make me sweat!

[pauldy]

 

To me, the difficulty is greater with non-ECM aircraft. You actually have to -find- them, even if you know what direction they are and their altitude.

 

 

I second this one~:D

 

at least with the AI, they still shout at you saying "look at me i'm here"

no matter how low they are because of their jamming signals~

 

now about the topic..

 

well i do that zig-zag snaking drag to the missile.. since the TEWS of the Eagle doesn't give aproximate missile distance unlike the Russian RWR.

 

anyway i'm weak and always get smacked by Activer Radar Missiles most of the time :)

[Sulman]

'Hot Wind' is a huge improvement, campaign wise. It's seems a lot more balanced, for want of a better word. I wish I'd tried it first.

 

The SARH's seem to work very well indeed at closer ranges <8km. Tacview showed a 27R defeating an F-5 rear aspect at that pulled a 7.5g turn toward it, changing course by about 90 degrees. It appears to be chaff that defeats them most of the time.