I’ve been stock grinding the su33 recently, been having a lot of fun with it, but the fakour 90 has been giving me some grief and im not sure what is going on.
Every match i’ll side climb left to about 6-10km, tilt my radar down look for flankers so I don’t get spiked from a mica or something below me, engage targets up with me that are close, then just go for the furball below me.
Most matches I’ll usually have someone throw a fox 3 at me from 20-30km, and defeating any of the these, aim 120, r77, etc. I just go into a notch, lose the signal, change altitude and its defeated, no chaff needed. But these fakours I can not seem to drop the signal ever, and after getting slammed out of the air 4 times I finally beat one by just staying in the notch the entire time, and chaffing at the very last second and having it just barely miss.
Am I just getting unlucky with this missile in particular? Or does it have some properties that other fox 3 doesn’t that makes it harder to notch? Is it better at high alt? Having to sit in a notch for the entire duration of a missile flight is incredibly annoying compared to how easy the others are to defeat at these ranges. I don’t really understand what is going on or if again I’m just having bad luck with them.
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I just fly away(going cold) from pheonix/fakour changing direction every so often, its also cause pheonix is a significantly longer burn time along with being faster
Or does it have some properties that other fox 3 doesn’t that makes it harder to notch?
It is currently, as of the moment. One of, if not the fastest-travelling/furthest-capable BVR Fox 3 missile in the entire game.
The Fakur 90 is essentially an AIM-54 Phoenix seeker head, but with the body of the MIM-23 Hawk (a surface-to-air defence missile), hence explaining the massive speed and thrust from the rocket mortar itself which allows the F-14A IRIAF user to fire them off from at least >60km away at BVR which also in turn allows it to outrange other Fox 3s from other jets.
They can be deadly and powerful since they travel very quickly and can be quite hard to react accordingly in time.
For general tips and advice against them, I would honestly try to avoid climbing to high altitudes right at the beginning of the match while also preemptively notching a bit earlier than usual once you already know that they have been fired (Fakour’s onboard radar is the same PD HDN of the Phoenix and is semi-active radar homing).
If you have TWS, you can also identify and tell that the Fakours are launched if the square target indicator is travelling at a very fast velocity (1000+m/s) towards you. Some players even choose to track and shoot down the Fakours with their own Fox 3s, essentially leaving the F-14A IRIAF player to be less of a threat later on in the match.
You could also fly low at a multi-path height of 60 meters to trick the Fakour (beware that the Fakour has a large explosive warhead that can still do splash damage to your plane even if it misses and hits the ground close by).
The F-14A IRIAF itself uses an outdated/undetailed RWR that you can use to your advantage with the Su-33 even more, using the IRST mode and R-27ER/ET missiles (ET could be better since the F-14A has limited countermeasures and also insanely hot engines).
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Should be far easier to notch/chaff than the R-77/Aim-120. So wierd you are having an issue. Usually the problem is the large warhead causing splash damage when people just rely on MP
Only thing i died to up high was farkours and micas, i solved the mica problem by learning about radar tilt and having better situational awareness via that to people below me.
I just could not get the farkours to stop tracking like I can everything else, id sit for 10 seconds trying to find the perfect angle and it wouldnt drop for even a second. Like if somone were to throw an aim120 at long range at me i go to notch, the rwr stops pinging I change altitude and its over, this tactic was just not working for farkours for me.
Is there a custom mission or something where I can practice defending against different missile launches? Like say spawn in at 6 km at speed and have an f14 bot at 25 km away sling a farkour at me? Would obviously be useful for other situations too.
I have no idea. That is really strange. You might just need to start employing a bit of a chaff and the MICAs do actually have a better seeker. Its the best in the game.
But Aim-54A/C and Fakour 90 I think are all the same seeker.
You can check on here for all the specs and I cant see any at the moment
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1SsOpw9LAKOs0V5FBnv1VqAlu3OssmX7DJaaVAUREw78/htmlview#
main problem is that its just stupid fast but it has a weaker seeker so notching is probably your best bet in just defending or just going cold and doing the defensive actions early since you have such a smaller window to react compared to other fox 3s
it is the fastest missile in the game if we use statshark and use the long range arh preset to compare to the best long range arh missiles in the game we get an impact time of:
Fakour 90: 42.6s
R77-1: 51.6s
AIM-120 C5: 53.7s
AAM-4: 55.6
PL-12: 55.7
Maybe my understanding of chaff isn’t the best. As far as I understand it will momentarily fool the seeker if you are in a notch or nearly in a notch, but only for a very brief period as it loses velocity quickly and the seeker requires the plane as it becomes the fastest moving object in view, so using it at longer ranges where the seeker FoV isn’t zoomed in it will just see the plane again if it comes out of a perfect notch so its best to use when the missile is closer and the fov more cramped so when it does momentarily go for chaff it wont see my plane or pulls the missile off my plane last moment. I know when I’m holding a perfect notch the missile is still guiding via inertial so that’s why I change altitude so i get above/below the FOV so I don’t get required. So I normally don’t ever employ chaff unless the missile is close or I get launched on from close range.
Maybe I should have specified more in the OP but im more talking about longer range launches, I feel confident against pretty much everything at 20km+ but for some reason these are just killing me a lot. I check replays and these guys are 25km+ when throwing them at me up around the same altitude as me. I try to stay 20km away from everyone at the start of matches at least so I can defend but get some good position, obviously later on in the match i’ll get closer and die to whatever eventually.
Maybe I am just having bad luck, but its just weird I can’t manage to notch these at long range but everything else seems to work fine. Thing I mostly don’t understand is I can’t seem to get these to go into inertial tracking, im not the best pilot but everytime i have trouble notching something at long range it always seems to be fakours.
But Aim-54A/C and Fakour 90 I think are all the same seeker.
Only the AIM-54A and Fakour 90 are supposed to share the exact same seeker.
The Iranians were given the original AIM-54A Phoenix missiles with the base model F-14A Tomcat by the U.S. from 1976 to 1979.
IRL, the AIM-54C Phoenix is meant to have many more upgrades since it went into service from
1986 to 1988, such as proportional navigation, lower flying target/cruise missile tracking, digital over analog components, low smoke rocket mortar and ECCM (electronic counter-countermeasures)
In-game, however, the AIM-54C has none of these upgrades (except for a better inertial guidance without TWS updates). It performs basically like a heavier and slightly slower AIM-54A with less explosive TNT.
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Evade it by making it run out of speed if you don’t have chaff to notch it, ideally you were head on when it locked you for ‘pitbull’ or terminal guidance, then just turn to the right or left about 45° then 180° then turn back once you see it blow up in mid air.
There are other options though, like going 45° left or right, then 90° in the opposite direction and it should run out of energy if you did it while it was far enough out.
Really the first thing is your best option, generally called ‘going cold’
It works the same as evading mid-range SAM systems if you have ever done that or SEAD in DCS.
I’d have to know its a fakour, and im trying to avoid going cold altogether. Like I said its just weird that if it was an aim 120 I seem to be able to notch, change alt and done within all of like 10 seconds, but if its a fakour this doesn’t seem to work for me, I can’t even get it to stop radar tracking me and go intertial. IDK maybe I just messed up the notch everytime and everytime it happened to be a fakour, im starting to think maybe thats the case but its just a weird coincidence.
Since this is a missile that requires a lot of altitude when fired at long distances, it will always hit the aircraft in the back/back. It can be easily avoided by flying close to the ground or by applying Notch. They are usually easy to identify when the RWR warning is displayed above 30 km away at tier 13.0 BR.
Its overload is 17G, a good Notch curve together with Chaff causes it to lose lock.
Another detail is that the Fakour-90 is the missile that loses the least energy in altitude gain, it generally remains at 930 m/s until reaching the peak before curving to hit a target.
Trying to not hug the ground anymore
So pop chaff while going into the notch? Not sure im gonna be pulling much G up above 6-8km though in the turn into notch.
On most flat maps, flying very close to the ground will solve the problem without using Chaff.
However, if Fakour is already close and can even hear the missile, a small maneuver closer to the ground will cause him to explode in front of the plane, anticipating its trajectory.
its crazy fast and has a massive warhead, the seeker is head on only so thats the easiest way to defeat it
In fact, the main method of dodging radar missiles is to remember that they are always anticipating the trajectory of the target plane, so in the case of situations close to the ground, simply tilt the plane closer so that the missile in its attempt to anticipate will hit the ground in front of the plane, this works with any radar missile.
Are you chaffing when you notch?
Only if the missile gets close or im launched on by somone inside like 20km, usually at the ranges im trying to defeat them I dont need to.
Not too sure how it works in game exactly but I posted how I currently understand it a few posts up. Not sure if that is right.