SAM Evasion Techniques

[kingneptune117]

Hey all,

 

Do any of you know of any good SAM evasion tutorials? I have yet to see one for DCS: Warthog. I am constantly getting shot down by SAM's and need some good techniques.

[Shez]

Staying out of their engagment zones is the best way.

 

I just read A10's in Desert Storm. The tactic I read the most was to beam it till it's engine went out then pull into it hard while dropping Chaff and/or Flares. Of course to do that you have to be able to see it.

[Snoopy]

Stay out of the area until SEAD clears it....against some SAMs this won't work but if I know there are potential SAMs in the area stay above angels 15 and do closer than 7 miles from the target area so I can search.

 

Even that doesn't do much good good against sa-3, sa-6, or s-300s.

[159th_Viper]

I am constantly getting shot down by SAM's and need some good techniques.

 

Which ones?

 

Tell me and I'll see if I can put together a track, alternatively have you measured up.

[Slothface]

Staying out of their engagment zones is the best way.

 

I just read A10's in Desert Storm. The tactic I read the most was to beam it till it's engine went out then pull into it hard while dropping Chaff and/or Flares. Of course to do that you have to be able to see it.

 

What Shez said is spot on. Its all about energy. SAMs (nearly all missiles) have a limited motor or rocket fire time... after that they rely on the potential kinetic energy they have left to fly to target.

 

Flying so your rear right or rear left side of your aircraft is where the missile is coming from, you are making the missile constantly turn to meet you or head you off. Even with the motor/rocket running the missile will be using up its energy in the turn. Much like the A-10C loses energy during tight turns... noticed how your airspeed bleeds off durng tight turns?

 

Keep alternating directions too. Fly with the missile coming in from the right for a few secs then turn 180degs and have it fly in from your left. This makes the missile change direction constantly and bleed energy in doing so.

 

You can fly a mission with enemy missile padlocks enabled and test the technique. Press F6 to find the enemy missile and keep jumping back and forth from missile to cockpit and do the S-turns. Watch how the missile has to change direction to keep up with you.

 

This technique in conjunction with what paulrkiii said will increase your survivability. As if you are on the edges of the SAM sight engagement envelope then the easy it will be to out manouvre the missile. It will naturally have less energy to get to you purely to the fact you are flying on the edge of its range. Add in flares/chaff and S-turns... nearly 100% survivable. The closer you get in range of SAMs the harder it will be to shake them.

 

If you are unlucky enough to be on top of a SAM site that launches at you, you will have to vary your evasion technique and get aggressive with your manouvres. Now that the missile has HUGE amounts of kinetic energy at this close range you have to use it against the missile. The missile can be flying a few times the speed of sound!! You are flying half the speed of sound in a very manouvrable aircraft. Your turn radius will be much smaller then the missiles and you will be able to out turn it. Whilst popping flares/chaff... turn and dive to the ground as the missile gets close and it will struggle to turn with you and be more likely to go for one of your countermeasures. Keep the tight turn and dive to the ground going until the lock is broken. Once that is done keep diving and hug the terrain. Get as low as you possibly can. Now its time to get out of the SAM engagement envelope and to safety using nap of the earth flying. Staying low extremely low and behind hills will reduce the ability of SAMs to engage. Once you are out of danger, re-assess the situation and engage the SAMs from safety or with SEAD support.

 

1. Stay outside of the SAM engagement envelope until you or SEAD flights have neutralised the SAM threats.

 

2. If you are engaged on the edge of SAM envelopes use the S-turn techniques whilst popping flares/chaff, keeping missile at your right and left rear corners. This keeps your range from the sam increasing and the missile turning.

 

3. If you are engage well inside the SAM envelopes by accident, turn hard and drop to the ground popping chaff/flares the whole way down. Get to safety hugging the ground and hills. Im talking max 50feet above the ground. 100 feet to hop over obstacles etc. The A-10 was designed for it... so use it!

 

4. Read number 1 again! :)

 

Disclaimer: This is my personal take on missile avoidance and lock breaks. I'm not saying this IS the proper and military technique. As with everything in the open ideas and shared knowledge ethos of aviation, always willing to hear other peoples thoughts and learn more! :)

Edited June 13, 2011 by Slothface

[REL]

Staying out of their engagment zones is the best way.

 

I just read A10's in Desert Storm. The tactic I read the most was to beam it till it's engine went out then pull into it hard while dropping Chaff and/or Flares. Of course to do that you have to be able to see it.

 

What do you mean by "beam it" ?

[=Panther=]

What do you mean by "beam it" ?

 

Put it at your 3/9 o'clock position.

[bluepilot76]

Last few missions I have paid a lot more attention to avoiding the SAM threat. generally I am flying in high, when I see the spike I an doing a U turn and calling in the SEAD, then listening in and watching the scope to see how they are getting on. Whilst this is happening you can often see where the SAMS are launching from, perhaps make it a SPI and zoom in, ready to kill it yourself if needs be. Keeps getting killed by the SEAD though. I am enjoying flying the missions at high altitude now, problems usually arise as I have run out of mavs and bombs and starting to get in low to have a few runs with the gun, then it seems to be the machine guns and shoulder launched jobs that are giving me trouble. Anyway a for a few missions now I have come back without a scratch and with objectives complete. That is quite a good feeling and one I could get used to!

[Bushmanni]

There are few techniques to use to evade incoming missile. Beam the missile and turn hard to it 4 seconds before impact, beam it and pull up or down few seconds before impact, beam and do repeated split-S's until the missile has gone past you, turn away from it and outrun it, dive so close to ground that the missile loses lock, fooling the missile to fly in to the ground, notch it and make it lose lock or dive behind a hill or building. Each of these have their pros and cons. None of them works in every situation.

 

Getting behind a hill or building is the safest way to defeat a missile but it's not always possible due to lack of hill or building close enough. You can plan your flight path or attack direction so that there will be a hill or a city available as a missile shield. You also shouldn't fly so high that you can't get in to the weeds before the missile hits you.

 

Flying very low in order to break the missiles radar lock will work obviously only against radar SAMs and you need to get very low. Newer SAMs like SA-15 need you to get under 30 feet and older ones like SA-11 under 75 feet.

 

If you happen to be at a suitable altitude where you can make a steep dive to the ground that takes few seconds right after the missile launch and pull up at the last moment you can fool the missile to fly in to the ground. This will not work if the missile has time to get too close to you or gain some altitude. Missiles generally lead their targets so if you point your nose to the ground the meeting point would be underground. If the missile turns to the ground early enough and doesn't have too much altitude it will reach the ground before you. Some radar missile models are supposed to have measures put in their guidance logic to prevent this but to my knowledge this will work against all IR SAMs. Against radar SAMs you can always just get low enough to break the lock.

 

Evading a missile by maneuvering is something you do if the above methods aren't possible. Common problem to most maneuver methods is that you need to know where the missile is and how far it is. During night or inside a cloud that is not possible and even during daytime it's hard as the missile is very small spot to notice and keep track of.

 

Running away from the missile is easy and reliable method if you know that the missile was fired from it's maximum range. I haven't tested all of the SAMs to see which can be outrun and which can't but to my experience all of the short range (<6nm) ones can't be outrun. They are nasty buggers who wait until you are too close to simply outrun their missiles. SA-11 is the only one of the long range SAMs that I have tested and I successfully outran it's missiles.

 

Turning in to the missile is an effective dodging technique for older SAMs but newer ones will not be fooled by it. You need to beam the missile first and turn pretty much accurately 4 seconds before projected impact time into the missile so that your nose has crossed the missile just before it flies past you. 4 seconds is the time it takes for you to turn in to the missile to face it just before passing. If this time is different for you for some reason you should adjust it accordingly. If you are late you won't create the worst possible situation for the missile and if you are early you give it enough room to get back on track. If you can't determine the correct time for the turn or you get shot at by a missile that can't be dodged by this you shouldn't use this. In the Gulf war book the pilot's talked about a certain spot on the canopy where the missile got when it was time to execute the turn. I haven't yet figured out if this works in DCS or where the spot is exactly.

 

The other turning method is orthogonal roll where you beam the missile and then pull max g while keeping the missile in beam. Against slow missiles that have depleted their energy already only a small pull a second before impact is necessary and they will fly harmlessly under you. Against missiles with more energy you will need to keep pulling g for a longer time to deplete the missiles energy which works in A-10 only by making a split-S. If you have no idea when the missile is going to strike you can just start doing split-S's repeatedly until at the deck or the missiles have gone past you. It would of course be beneficial if you wouldn't just get into worse trouble by getting low. Most often though the actual missile incoming is more of a threat than the hypothetical ones down low but this is something you should keep in mind and consider when planning mission.

 

Notching is something I haven't yet been able to do so I won't say anything about that other than it's one of the possibilities but not one of the easiest or most reliable.

Edited June 13, 2011 by Bushmanni

[arriflex]

What does SEAD stand for? Thanks!

[159th_Falcon]

What does SEAD stand for? Thanks!

Suppression of Enemy Air Defences

 

Usually the longer ranged radar guided ones.

[159th_Viper]

What does SEAD stand for? Thanks!

 

Majority of missions/strikes are actually DEAD as opposed to SEAD.

 

 

SEAD = Suppression of Enemy Air Defences

 

 

DEAD = Destruction of Enemy Air Defences

 

 

 

Edit: Sniped :D

[epoch]

Suppression of Enemy Air Defences

 

Edit: Double Ninja'd! (well - it took 5 mins to read Bushmanni's post :p)

[Longbow116]

what exactly does mean "beam" in relation to incomming SAM? What is the adventage to beam a missile. Will it stop track me?

[159th_Viper]

what exactly does mean "beam" in relation to incomming SAM? What is the adventage to beam a missile. Will it stop track me?

 

You're putting the missile either 90 degrees to your left or right (on your 3/9 line). Will still track you - you will however be able to kinetically defeat it whilst maintaining situational awareness.

 

I'll post a track illustrating the principle in the morrow if nobody beats me to it in the interim.

[Laud]

... but as the Hog hasn't too much energy itself this will not be a sure shot in each situation you're shot at...

 

Keep that in mind! ;)

[Svend_Dellepude]

What does SEAD stand for? Thanks!

 

Supression of Enemy Air Defenses

 

 

LOL!

[Laud]

What does SEAD stand for? Thanks!

 

At least THIS question is answered 100%... :lol:

[Allen123]

How does one tell the time until impact?

[Laud]

I can pretty good tell the time SINCE impact. :)

 

Sorry... joking...

 

You can't! You have to roughly estimate.

[159th_Viper]

How does one tell the time until impact?

 

Can usually judge by having regard to missile trail, type of system etc etc - comes with practice.

 

With the bigger systems (MERAD/LORAD) you can visually pick up the incoming missile if your situational awareness/stress levels allow.

[Jimmytime]

I wonder, is there a good way to counter AAA or SAMs? Some Sims had AGM-88 HARMS. Is there something to quickly lock on to a ground target that is tracking you? Does LSS do that or is it only used by friendlies?

[Laud]

No, the A-10 has no anti-radiation missile capabilities.

[159th_Viper]

what exactly does mean "beam" in relation to incomming SAM? What is the adventage to beam a missile. Will it stop track me?

 

Herewith quick and nasty track illustrating the principle:

 

At SAM launch I break hard left to put the missile on my right at 90 degrees - easily enough done with the RWR display and/or heading tape. Once missile on your 3, just climb and descend gradually - by doing so you are bleeding the incoming missile of energy and ultimately defeating them.

 

As an aside, this is by no means always the advisable thing to do.....The BUK is firing at RMAX and as a consequence all missiles are easily spoofed. It is however a good place to start and illustrates kinetically defeating them whilst maintaining SA.

 

Track: [ATTACH]52644[/ATTACH]

[GGTharos]

Turning in to the missile is an effective dodging technique for older SAMs but newer ones will not be fooled by it. You need to beam the missile first and turn pretty much accurately 4 seconds before projected impact time into the missile so that your nose has crossed the missile just before it flies past you. 4 seconds is the time it takes for you to turn in to the missile to face it just before passing. If this time is different for you for some reason you should adjust it accordingly. If you are late you won't create the worst possible situation for the missile and if you are early you give it enough room to get back on track. If you can't determine the correct time for the turn or you get shot at by a missile that can't be dodged by this you shouldn't use this. In the Gulf war book the pilot's talked about a certain spot on the canopy where the missile got when it was time to execute the turn. I haven't yet figured out if this works in DCS or where the spot is exactly.

 

Please don't teach people to commit suicide. It doesn't work in RL, and if it works in DCS, it's a missile modeling issue.

 

The only valid, non-insane and non-suicidal last-ditch maneuver is the one those pilots were talking about above but you didn't pick up on it, same one that you describe below:

 

The other turning method is orthogonal roll where you beam the missile and then pull max g while keeping the missile in beam. Against slow missiles that have depleted their energy already only a small pull a second before impact is necessary and they will fly harmlessly under you. Against missiles with more energy you will need to keep pulling g for a longer time to deplete the missiles energy which works in A-10 only by making a split-S. If you have no idea when the missile is going to strike you can just start doing split-S's repeatedly until at the deck or the missiles have gone past you. It would of course be beneficial if you wouldn't just get into worse trouble by getting low. Most often though the actual missile incoming is more of a threat than the hypothetical ones down low but this is something you should keep in mind and consider when planning mission.

 

And it's a last ditch maneuver, if you did a split-S, you did it way too early, and you'll get hit anyway. In any case, if it's all you can do, you're right, may as well do something.

 

Notching is something I haven't yet been able to do so I won't say anything about that other than it's one of the possibilities but not one of the easiest or most reliable.

 

That would be because you can't notch a SAM.