Silkworm Accuracy Missing Targets Consistently

[BammBamm]

Attached is a track showing a silkworm battery attacking a frigate 4.5 miles away and out of 4 launches, only hitting it once with no defensive weapons to damage or alter them.  Other times all 4 miss the boat and they won't rearm even with a Rearm Truck like other AI units.  So, the Silkworm are basically useless unless you cross your fingers and hope that 1 of the missiles hit something, but most times they don't.  You need about 4 batteries of them to get lucky enough to hit your target(s)

SW3.trk

[Northstar98]

To me this looks like a minimum range problem - it's being employed outside of its envelope for the profile it has.

The missile first performs a lofted trajectory, then assumes level cruise flight and then descends for the terminal phase upon acquiring the target. Because the target is close you're not allowing the missile to transition between the phases - it's being forced to perform an aggressive dive before it can even finish the initial lofted trajectory.

Simply increasing the target distance to 5 nmi has the missile hitting the target 4/4 times, though ideally, it should be even further away to allow the missile to assume its level cruise flight and terminal phase (and the HY-2 has a maximum range on the order of 50 nautical miles).

Now, it might be that the Seersucker (which, FWIW, is what the HY-2 missile's NATO reporting name actually is) has a mode that results in a shallow trajectory, meaning it doesn't have to perform such an aggressive dive to hit a close target, but right now only one profile is available.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of real launch footage, but so far, the initial loft seems correct as-is (though obviously I can't determine altitude accurately from just video).

HY-2_10nmi.trk HY-2_5nmi.trk

Edited August 25, 2024 by Northstar98

[BammBamm]

Interesting.  Thank you.  That is very helpful.  I will do some more testing at farther ranges.

 

Thanks again,