Aim120A/B/C, Aim54a/b, Aim9M, American missiles

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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85

The Primary time you want to actually employ an SRAAM over an MRAAM will probably be in a dogfight, and the 9M just sucks in that context, especially when compared to all other SRAAMs currently used at top tier. It is by far the weakest in an actual knife fight. (In the typhoon, I’m usually thinking about using my gun, not a 9M in that situation)

Where its meant to be stronger is in slightly longer range shots, Ideally where you can ambush a target with a set up shot, but even here its just… lacking, and there are accepted bug reports to address a number of its short falls but they just wont fix any of them.

Such as:

Lock range (report 2)

Apparently the IRCCM will now work in front aspect (as of this last major update) I have yet to actually test it but when this thread was last active, the 9M was 1 flare defeat in front aspect, which was just dumb (Report)

The IRCCM itself is waaaay weaker than it should be and can be made a lot stronger (Report)

At the moment, the 9Ms are usually 1 flare defeat threats unless set up perfectly, ideally on a target not paying attention or in a poor position, but anyone ready for it, can defeat them just as easily as a 9L.

They also seem to always go for rocket motors, no IRCCM enabled at all there.

There is also a bit of an ongoing issue with 9Ms just randomly missing, there is a report, but I cant find it, seems to be behaving itselfs more recently, but for a while (especially a few months ago) they would just randomly… turn away from the target. (a clip from 3 months ago)

So, given the fact that 9Ms arent really that much of an upgrade over 9L in some situations, its understandable why so many are extremely disapointed in them. They have to be babysat constantly and even then, the results can vary. I carefully set up a clear shot only the day before yesterday, the target was in the LSZ, I led the target, the target didnt seem to flare once. the missile just… missed, no reason for it. I couldnt be bothered to trawl through the replay to find out why though, but yeah, even when you do everything right… they just sometimes… dont work.

Ive had some shots with the 9M where they worked flawlessly, and other times where I would be no better off with a 9L and thats why I persoanlly really hate them, you jsut never know how they will behave

So TLDR, they are long overdue some much needed TLC

86

can confirm. this also happens with aim120’s for me, if they are at a mid angle side aspect and just turn hard the aim120 looses track almost instantly off the rail

87

Having relied upon them pretty heavily while spading the Gripen A, I have to say the largest advantage they have over the 9L is the low smoke motor. The vast majority of kills I got were against players who never even realized I’d fired a missile at them. I’d just pop up at ~5km, sling a missile off then turn out. By the time they notice me, I’d be turning cold, at a range that doesn’t seem likely for an IR missile, and there’s no visible smoke trail, so why bother defending?

Similar story with the F-15J, where on the rare occasions I got to sit above a furball and rain death upon my enemies, I’m hitting them from a range and aspect where they’d never expect danger. They’re basically budget R27ETs.

Certainly, they could be a lot better. But I think the advantages of having a long range, stealthy IR missile is somewhat underappreciated. Admittedly, a lot of that comes from the fact that I’ve been playing at a tier where MAWS are super rare, and primarily on a plane where it doesn’t matter if I get into a close range knifefight where the AIM-9Ms don’t work, because my Gripen will beat whatever it is anyways.

88

Yeah, there is that too. Though, a lot of my recent kills with them, I think I’d have done the same with a 9G. So it’s hard to know where the smokeless motor is actually useful or players just have bad situational awareness (I like diving on people from directly above, they never look up for some reason )

Spoiler

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Though firing a 9M and a 120 at the same time at someone hiding in MP and taking no action other than hiding in MP is funny as hell when they eat said 9M

89

Hard to say, but I can remember at least one occasion where it was useful. I fired at a guy somewhat side aspect from about 5km out and immediately turned opposite of the way he was headed. He then saw me and turned to chase, only to eat the missile a few moments later. Had it had a smoke trail, he would have seen the missile at the same time he saw me, and one flared the now front aspect missile.

If nothing else, it’s a bit of insurance against people who do look around, but don’t have perfect spatial awareness.

Yep, that’s another good usecase for them. It’s also why I’ll occasionally throw an IR missile at a multipathing target, some players get so used to no-one firing IRs at them in a headon that they’ll assume they’re invincible while multipathing and just eat the missile without thinking to flare it.

It’s not a consistent thing, and works much better at ~12.0 where people are still mostly used to strong SARH missiles but weak IR ones.

90

Do you have any solid proof or a valid tech document that IRCCM of AIM-9M is a scam?

I also used AIM-9M on Harrier GR.7, but mine was fine?

91

he probably means that only the suspension irccm part is implemented in game, and not the push ahead part or “flare bias”
image

92

well… I believe not if I think about his general stance when he shows up in American topics.
(He always shows up and biases American things…)
‘Defeated by a single flare in 90% of situations’ seems a batshit level of exaggeration, IG.

Still, improvement of 9M ‘if it is historical’ seems fine to me.
Interesting piece of images.
Flare rate bias… hmmm…

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93

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94

What the hell are you talking about?

I mentioned that I ‘USED’ AIM-9M, but you shifted the point about defending against it,

You told us that AIM-9M can be defeated with a single flare in 90% of situations

While my experiences with AIM-9M with GR.7 were like ‘press the fire button and get a free kill’

Then, according to your take, maybe YOU might be the one who needs to learn something?
Lame projection attempt fr.

Maybe it would be fine to give AIM-9M improvement, as @Morvran mentioned, AIM-9M can be missed.
Well, it is a missile with an InfraRed-Counter-CounterMeasure feature. It gives resistance to countermeasures, not immunity to those.

But you are always making exaggerations, which makes things unhelpful.

90% of situations? That is beyond regular circumstances.
If you spam IRCCM missiles mindlessly, even Magic 2 or R-73 could be missed…

Yes, AIM-9M can be frustrating since it is AIM-9L with IRCCM
while R-73 gives a drastic upgrade from R-60M, and Magic 2 became all-aspect, along with the IRCCM feature, from Magic 1.

But, your stance, which constantly undersells AIM-9M, won’t help either improve AIM-9M or the discussion itself.

95

Damn bro, no need to take it so personally.

96

I never knew that Correcting underselling bias can be personal. /s

Anyway, back to the topic, if it is historical, I am fine with buffing the AIM-9M itself.

Just… don’t exaggerate things or shift the points.

97

Sorry, but your skill issue fighting Aim-9Ms is not my bias, it’s just your skill issue.

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Tbf, you made it that by basically calling him an idiot.

There is a good bit of historical stuff that needs to be added to stuff in game. I wish they would focus on fixing that rather than releasing nerfed weapons just because people demand seeing the name of the weapon in game.

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99

Oh, no no no. I just wonder why you want to derail this topic into a dirty mudfight.

Your take was simple: ‘AIM-9M can be defeated by a single flare in 90% of situations’

I counter with ‘do you have any proof of it’
Because when I used AIM-9M, it worked fine.

Then Kizvy provided a picture of the flare-bias feature.

And YOU ignore both the image and my take and nitpick things.

Well, Dear Sir Elton said, "Saturday night’s alright for fighting’
But, Eh, honestly, I don’t prefer ‘this type’ of fighting

“Don’t give us none of your exaggeration, we had it with your whining.”

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101

Sarh mode on missile seekers once implemented wpuld be interesting against stealth, since it becomes a bistatic configuration, and the said rcs wont be the same for the missile seeker in sarh mode

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102

In this I do have to agree, though they made some buffs this last major update so I’ll review my stance in the coming days/week.

But previously, in front aspect, the IRCCM didn’t work. At all. The missile would always just got for the flare.

In rear-aspect, it did only take 1 flare and it was fairly easy then to change direction

Then in side aspect they were rather buggy for a chunk of time and either went for the flares or just flew in the opposite direction to the flares. So for a while they definitely were in about 90% of shots, especially with a little range on them. Fired from a Gr7, being subsonic and a bit closer to the target might have mitigated this a little.

Now the front aspect IRCCM has apparently been enabled (which should also improve the side aspect angles too) and they seem to be somewhat behaving themselves at the moment, so they might have stopped bugging out, but there might still be some refinement needed on some changes they made to the seeker shutoff duration a few months ago, though @kensai16 was investigating it more than me. Still some issues with the 9M being 1 missile defeat if nothing else, if the target fires a missiles the 9M will pretty always swap to it for some reason.

But for a while, I did genuinely consider whether they were worth their weight literally and whether I would be better off just ditching them on the typhoon to save weight and drag

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103

It heavily depends on range between the missile and the target, because of the giant FoV of the AIM-9M. The IRCCM (seeker-shutoff) triggers and remains active as long as a flare is inside the FoV, which is also the reason why BOL flares have a serious advantage here as the IRCCM is not triggered by intensity but mere existence of a flare and as BOL flares are ejected rearwards instead of up- or downwards, they remain way longer inside the FoV of the AIM-9M in front- and rearaspect, especially at short distances.
Missiles don’t seem to trigger the IRCCM at all and get detected as a better target (for whatever reason, as they should be registered as flares because of the intensity spike → flare rejection).
Side-aspect on the other hand is reliable if fired with a solid lock but extremely suspectible to pre-flaring as it locks and instantly switches to IOG (instead of switching back to SRC while still on the rail), causing it to drift off really fast and in the worst case detect a flare as a target, even if it shouldn’t do that at all.

It seems like they have changed something in the latest patch but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

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104

“Et tu, Brute?” /j
Well, I agree with your reply since I never fired AIM-9M on a supersonic fuselage (Except Tonka F.3 Late, which I only have a handful of playcounts since I disliked facing other 4th gens in uptiers, from F-15C to Su-30MK2)
And my Most experience with AIM-9M was made by Harrier GR.7

Hmm… Sounds convincing. Then that is acceptable information about why guys are complaining about AIM-9M drastically.

Bit off topic, Just… Pangolin didn’t fly AIM-9M slinger, which flies in supersonic, he flew only A-10C and AV-8B Plus, which are both subsonic jets, just as I do with Harrier GR.7. So… his take about AIM-9M experience sounded a bit unpromising to me

Maybe introducing extra features, as Kizvy mentioned, would be a nice way to buff the AIM-9M? Since it is historical, why not?
:D

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