Drone intercept possible?

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Using CH mod, I tried to intercept Shahed 135 drones in flight. I tried using FCR in A2A mode, and George and they could not spot nothing, even when F10 shows my helicopter was close to the swam. Is spotting air object possible?

Edited June 27 by VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants

[Ignition]

I don't know about the CH mod, but during missions I was able to see other helicopters and even other fast aircraft.

As a side note, there's a video on youtube of an apache hitting a drone with the chain gun, something impossible with the dispersion on the DCS AH-64D.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

For the same scenario with F-15C, F-15EX and F-22, the drones in flight can be detected by A-A radar. Dunno why.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

I find "plane" like drones like TB-2 or MQ-9, the FCR can pick it up and even the AI wingman can shoot them down. But "munition" like Shahed 135 does not show on the radar but it still can hit you if you are unlucky.

[Ivandrov]

Well, the standard reply is that it being a mod is likely an issue.

I would also hazard a guess on the backend the Longbow Radar does not pick up things classed as munitions by the code.

[ShuRugal]

58 minutes ago, Ivandrov said:

Well, the standard reply is that it being a mod is likely an issue.

I would also hazard a guess on the backend the Longbow Radar does not pick up things classed as munitions by the code.

it's also worth keeping in mind that the Longbow radar does not display raw radar returns, but attempts to identify and classify targets against an internal database.  If the return doesn't match anything in the database, it will not be displayed to the crew.

While something like a shahed drone SHOULD come back classified as a fixed-wing aircraft, something that small is pushing the boundary of what the designers anticipated the system being used for.

[Ramius007]

On 7/11/2025 at 5:00 PM, Ivandrov said:

Well, the standard reply is that it being a mod is likely an issue.

I would also hazard a guess on the backend the Longbow Radar does not pick up things classed as munitions by the code.

Most likely issue is that Shahed is a missile, not a plane or helicopter, while FCR radar is coded to only see air targets, not missiles, I dont think, that mod is a problem here. It's easy to check, if Shahed can be added as air object in mission editor

[Ivandrov]

7 hours ago, Ramius007 said:

Most likely issue is that Shahed is a missile, not a plane or helicopter, while FCR radar is coded to only see air targets, not missiles, I dont think, that mod is a problem here. It's easy to check, if Shahed can be added as air object in mission editor

Yes, that is exactly what the 2nd part of my reply says.

 

Mods not functioning correctly is just a standard reply, as it is usually correct.

 

There is also the added potential caveat as mentioned before that since the Longbow Radar attempts to classify targets rather than display raw returns that the small Shahed drones is pushing the expected use case of the radar.

Edited yesterday at 04:51 PM by Ivandrov

[Ramius007]

I m preety sure that info about how small targets and from what distances Apache FCR radar can track are classified, but indeed Shahed 135 is smaller than usual "suspect", yet I imply that it has little to do with how mod is done, you will not be able to detect other objects in DCS core, that are about same size munition, or maybe even aerial targets, but only small enaugh plane/helicopter that you can test is newly added chinese gyrocopter. I played with a lot of CH mods recently, and they couse no issues, as long as you not mix large mod packs.