Upon further review, I acknowledge that my claims were excessive.
Over the past few months, the thread has been chaotic with meaningless arguments. For this reason, I reacted overly sensitively.
I sincerely apologize.
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Keep in mind, those documents might not be exhaustive.
For example that could be just one of the operating modes for the AASM.
As for mmW vs IIR, I think the fact that GBU-53/B uses mmW + IIR (and uncooled IIR at that) is quite telling that both have their advantages in certain scenarios …
Alrighty everybody… It’s totally fine to discuss and to disagree with each other, just make sure to do it in a respectful way. The off-topic and rule-breaking messages will be dealt with.
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here you go
I wonder what the future holds for the AASM IR.
If developers decide to keep it, other weapons known to be unable to track moving targets (ex. SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow, JSOW, JASSM…) should also be able to track moving targets in the same way as the AASM IR.
Yeah no ideas.
There we get to ifs territory.
Can only speak about the current released information.
But generaly their own statements is that laser seeker is meaned for moving targets and ir for facilities
Always gotta remember as well the hammer is supposed tp be a relatively cheap upgrade kit
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HAMMER seems like a natural evolution to the paveway-series guidance kit really. Which makes sense given that’s what France developed it for as far as I can see.
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definitly, but that realy to be kept in mind. End of the day its an upgrade kit. And will have less capability then some dedicated armament
Vizender’s statement isn’t proof, and in this instance he states “might be”. He’s free to speculate just like anyone else. No one can control anyone else’s statements. There’s been times where I speculated something and Vizender then provided me a source disproving my speculation, and the vice-versa has occurred.
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I think the AASM hammer has been talked about extensively enough that it should not be brought again unless changes happen.
Well, I believe there are 2 main things :
- MMW (at least in the earlier Brimstones) is capable of easily tracking a target with minimal compute power, although it was deemed probably completely ineffective in high target density environments by the British, because I would guess the target discrimination on the ground using MMW radar is very noisy. The MMW of the Brimstone is also said to have a range of a few kilometres at most (against tanks). Both issues have probably been improved significantly since then on newer models
- IIR is extremely computing intensive but is much better at target discrimination, because you need to run optical target recognition algorithms in real time (hence why the AASM IR was said to have 2 corrective courses taken in the span of 2-3 seconds. One about 5 seconds from impact, one about 2-3 seconds from impact). It could however have changed later in the AASM lifetime, as Safran does state “continuous improvements along the lifetime of the missile”, as computing power and AI algorithms have been significantly improved, but to be fair there is not really any available on what improvements where made (although mostly internal changes since the exterior of the kit has not changed). The stated range of the AASM IIR seeker is about 2km as well, but physically the seeker could be turned on far sooner. I guess it’s only used in terminal guidance because it’s not deemed necessary before that, as to extend the battery life and reduce the computing power needed for the missile to operate at ranges
Using both systems would allow for the IIR seeker to help discriminate targets in busy environments, while the MMW would be able to provide faster scan of a designated area to look for "suspicious"elements, at least that is my guess
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Yes, I am not in charge of the reports for the FM of the plane. You would need to ask @Zayf who is the person mostly responsible for FM reports for the Rafale. I am also not in the devs mind and don’t know how their physics engine work, so I can’t give any conclusions on that. I am just giving (I hope somewhat good) assumptions, but nothing I say should be considered the truth, especially when I am not providing sources.
And to be clear, this applies to anyone in the forums (and I’m definitely not targeting anyone wink wink). Everyone has their favorites, and often time will (even unknowingly) misrepresent sources and use opinion as facts to defend their toy or go against stuff they don’t like (this issue is more prevalent as we see more "top of the line"vehicles in the game).
If you ask about me, I’m French and a French vehicles enjoyer so I’ll definitely have my own bias.
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Depends on what exactly the Algorithm it’s using needs, Correlation for example is a fairly standard, and generally low cost or at least can be sped up significantly by appropriate ASIC chips.
The advantage of Correlation, over Contrast seekers is that they could attack a zero-contrast target. by utilizing the rest of the scene to derive targeting information. and so is sufficient to provide guidance for attacking static targets. The issue is that if the scene changes or the target moves sufficiently relative to the scene, guidance fails or least ceases to provide useful information.
Contrast on the other hand is much more general and able to deal with moving targets as it segments them out of the scene and then performs basic proportional navigation tasks to attack them. The issue with Contrast seekers is conversely that the target needs to have enough contrast with the scene to be targeted.
So the use case varies depending on the target set. Many more modern stores (e.g. AGM-65F/-65G) will have some way to swap between either to allow for general use against an expanded target set, or otherwise Targets Of Opportunity.
I don’t think computing power or battery life is a factor with modern electronics, especially for a passive seeker.
If H… can implement digital image correlation for their drones then you do the math …
(That conflict is over and several years has passed so I assume the picture should be fine)
Spoiler
I think if those limitations for AASM are real, they are probably due to the optical system (sensor, lenses, cooling etc) rather than battery life or computing power …
I.e. the sensor probably just can’t see very far or the image quality is not that great …
It’s probably more so to provide terminal homing corrections to account for drift in the GPS / INS & shaped trajectory and do it’s best to align the intended / predicted (synthetic) point of aim with the point of impact.
Mavericks for example do a similar thing once the target takes up more than ~70% of the FoV, and hold the current control surface defection until impact since otherwise spurious guidance commands would be injected into the autopilot potentially trashing a shot with some geometries / targets.
The AASM IR paper is from 2008, and the AASM guidance systems uses relatively complex target recognition algorithms (since it’s the same as the SCALP). That’s my main guess for why it only does 2 corrections.
As for why it in’y turns on 2 seconds before, you are indeed probably right. The FOV of the seekers is still pretty wide for so recognizing specific type of vehicles/precise target features at range might be unpractical beyond 2km
theres a difference between something being good and unrealistic
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And i would argue that the Mirage 2000 was already a good jet and the rafale is just better than it in every regard
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Give it « realistic » thrust curves and it will underperform in many other metrics. You guys need to realize that this is a game, with very simplified (supersonic) physics, and you won’t get things « realistic » with only « realistic » values.
We already gave the devs the data sheet of the M88 during the dev server introducing the rafale. And yet they deliberately made tweaked the curves as reports were actionned in order to comply with actual IRL datapoints.
Also, the curves of the m88 mostly become highly unrealistic above the structural limit of the rafale.
While the engine does overperform above Mach 1, it’s not nearly as much as one would believe, since statshark gives values well beyond the structural limit of planes
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And yet, for other aircraft, such as the tornado, where game limitations prevent it from having a realistic flight model, the Devs chose to intentionally leave the aircraft in a underperforming state including it having a rather significant nerf to its max speed.
It is strange that the Rafale is allowed to over perform so significantly for the sake of some things being accurate but others like the tornado, harrier and Typhoon are left underperforming dramatically as to avoid them over performing
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