No Shrike against Hawk systems

[Spirale]

Hi,

As the title says, i did some tests and i am unable to fire a Shrike against a Hawk. I've tested all "MK mods "possible.

Thx for futur answers

Edited August 12, 2024 by Spirale

[felixx75]

There is simply no way to fight a Hawk position with a Shrike (at least afaik).

Edited August 12, 2024 by felixx75

[Spirale]

Thx for your reply but why there is no way for the Shrike to have a way to detect the hawk like it does with the sams 2,3,6, 8 for example?

[G.J.S]

Doubtful that Shrike was foreseen to be engaging homespun systems.
Remember that it was designed with systems that were from behind the iron curtain in mind. The seeker head types were therefore only made with bands that were expected to be encountered should the Cold War turn hot.

[=475FG= Dawger]

Hawk is 500 to 1,000 MHz

Do any of the seekers operate in that range?

[felixx75]

I found this:

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/349673-agm-45-shrike-quick-guide-by-klarsnow-updated-june-5th-2024/?do=findComment&comment=5467470

 

[Northstar98]

14 hours ago, G.J.S said:

Doubtful that Shrike was foreseen to be engaging homespun systems.

Well, the Shrike was used against AN/TPS-43 systems in the Falklands. I'm not sure what, if any, modifications were made to it in order to target those radars. Though it stands to reason that it's not necessarily exclusive to Eastern Bloc systems, even if that's certainly what the Shrike was intended for.

14 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Hawk is 500 to 1,000 MHz

Do any of the seekers operate in that range?

The AN/MPQ-50 (at least, as defined in DCS) operates within that range and yes, the Mk 37 (which ranges from 800 to 1000 MHz) can target radars within that range and I have gotten the AI to successfully engage that radar, with that guidance section.

The AN/MPQ-46 HPIR operates between 8-12 GHz and there potentially the Mk 36 (7.9 - 9.6 GHz) and Mk 49 Mod 0/Mod 1 (8 - 10 GHz) should be able to engage that radar. Though so far, I've only had success with the Mk 36 (EDIT, though having re-run the test, the AI no longer engages with the Mk 36, it does engage with the Mk 49 Mod 0 and Mod 1, but they don't guide). Again, in tests using the AI.

I'm not sure what DCS does in terms of what specific frequency it decides to use for radars, because only the minimum and maximums are defined in the .lua. I don't know if it picks a specific frequency or whether it's treated as operating on the entire range.

14 hours ago, felixx75 said:

I found this:

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/349673-agm-45-shrike-quick-guide-by-klarsnow-updated-june-5th-2024/?do=findComment&comment=5467470

 

Just note that this test was performed using the AI. I cannot vouch for accuracy with player aircraft.

Edited August 13, 2024 by Northstar98
Re-run test, AI now doesn't engage the -46 with Mk 36 and while it does engage with the Mk 49 Mod 0/1 they don't guide

[G.J.S]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Well, the Shrike was used against AN/TPS-43 systems in the Falklands. I'm not sure what, if any, modifications were made to it in order to target those radars. Though it stands to reason that it's not necessarily exclusive to Eastern Bloc systems, even if that's certainly what the Shrike was intended for.

The RAF did reprogram the Missiles that were used to cater for emitters that were (then) not in the threat library. This was done by (with great cunning and subterfuge, lol) contacting the manufacturers of the systems used in theatre, and obtaining the required parameters for threat prosecution.

Quote - “For an anti-radiation missile to be effective, you need to have loaded on your onboard computer a whole series of data or parameters of the radars to attack; some of these parameters the RAF already had but the TPS-43 and other radars (the Cardion and SAMs), were of Western manufacture and therefore unregistered with the full [threat] data as, at that time, the main threats were from the Warsaw Pact and its allies. The British therefore resorted to the respective factories to obtain
the parameters.

Taken from - 44SQN site. (Lots of useful information that may benefit mission designers).

[Spirale]

9 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Well, the Shrike was used against AN/TPS-43 systems in the Falklands. I'm not sure what, if any, modifications were made to it in order to target those radars. Though it stands to reason that it's not necessarily exclusive to Eastern Bloc systems, even if that's certainly what the Shrike was intended for.

The AN/MPQ-50 (at least, as defined in DCS) operates within that range and yes, the Mk 37 (which ranges from 800 to 1000 MHz) can target radars within that range and I have gotten the AI to successfully engage that radar, with that guidance section.

The AN/MPQ-46 HPIR operates between 8-12 GHz and there potentially the Mk 36 (7.9 - 9.6 GHz) and Mk 49 Mod 0/Mod 1 (8 - 10 GHz) should be able to engage that radar. Though so far, I've only had success with the Mk 36. Again, in tests using the AI.

I'm not sure what DCS does in terms of what specific frequency it decides to use for radars, because only the minimum and maximums are defined in the .lua. I don't know if it picks a specific frequency or whether it's treated as operating on the entire range.

Just note that this test was performed using the AI. I cannot vouch for accuracy with player aircraft.

I tested the MKs 36,37,49,49 mod1 without any result ( i tested all MK). Perhaps i did something wrong too

[Northstar98]

 

12 hours ago, G.J.S said:

The RAF did reprogram the Missiles that were used to cater for emitters that were (then) not in the threat library. This was done by (with great cunning and subterfuge, lol) contacting the manufacturers of the systems used in theatre, and obtaining the required parameters for threat prosecution.

Quote - “For an anti-radiation missile to be effective, you need to have loaded on your onboard computer a whole series of data or parameters of the radars to attack; some of these parameters the RAF already had but the TPS-43 and other radars (the Cardion and SAMs), were of Western manufacture and therefore unregistered with the full [threat] data as, at that time, the main threats were from the Warsaw Pact and its allies. The British therefore resorted to the respective factories to obtain
the parameters.

Taken from - 44SQN site. (Lots of useful information that may benefit mission designers).

Appreciate you digging into it.

I'm not sure how exactly the Shrike works, it looks like there's a difference between when the AI is firing it vs players. I'm not sure if players have some specific threat library as the AI (at least for radars it'll actually engage) it mostly seems like there's at least one guidance section that can target each radar, so long as that radar is within the frequency band.

4 hours ago, Spirale said:

I tested the MKs 36,37,49,49 mod1 without any result ( i tested all MK). Perhaps i did something wrong too

You might not be - it seems like there's some difference between how it's set up for players vs how it's set up for AI. At the moment I'm only able to test with AI, but please take note that the table Felixx75 linked might not be accurate to player aircraft. Heck, it might even be a bug that some radars can be engaged (the Mk 49 Mod 0 and Mod 1 can engage the Fan Song-E last I checked, despite the Fan Song-E operating in the G band and the Mk 49 guidance sections operating in the H to I band.

For the AI though, at time of writing, on DCS 2.9.7.58923, the AI at least will engage the AN/MPQ-50 with a Mk 37-equipped Shrike.

However, I've just re-run a test and it seems that the AI will no longer attempt to engage the AN/MPQ-46 with the Mk 36. It will try to engage with the Mk 49 Mod 0 and Mod 1, but they will no-longer guide (and the -46 was definitely still tracking the F-4E, though note that in my tracks the F-4E is set to be immortal). This wasn't the case before, but I'll edit the linked table as it's now inaccurate (I'll re-run everything again just in case anything else has changed).

AGM-45A_ANMPQ-50_Mk37.trk AGM-45A_ANMPQ-46_Mk49-1.trk AGM-45A_ANMPQ-46_Mk36.trk AGM-45A_ANMPQ-46_Mk49-0.trk

Edited August 13, 2024 by Northstar98
Reuploaded tracks

[Spirale]

Thx Northstar

And with human on board? Do you find the same result i found?

[Northstar98]

18 hours ago, Spirale said:

And with human on board? Do you find the same result i found?

I'm afraid I can't test with a human operator - sorry about that.

While I own the Phantom, my system currently isn't up to using DCS for anything other than simple tests using the AI - the kind of thing I've posted tracks of.

If anyone else would like to chime in though (preferably with a track - you should be able to use one of mine above and use the "take control" option EDIT: Wrong one, it's actually "Get new plane - respawn", found in "General", default keybind is RAlt+J, hit pause on the mission, go into the F10 map, click on the F-4E and hit the keybind, it should cause you to assume control of the AI aircraft) it would be appreciated.

EDIT: Actually, gave it a go, wasn't that painful though my iGPU managed 15 FPS, anyway, I couldn't get the Mk 36 to guide on the AN/MPQ-46, but the Mk 37 does guide on the AN/MPQ-50 albeit there's no tone (either from the Shrike or the RWR) and no indication from the flight director - so this method relies on you knowing the radar's location ahead of time or spotting it visually. However, when fired the missile does indeed guide on the AN/MPQ-50.

Please excuse my awful flying:

AGM-45A_ANMPQ-50_Mk37_player.trk

Edited August 14, 2024 by Northstar98