Currently the chaff resistance and and flare resistance of modern missiles is pretty exceptionally low compared to their true capability.
IIR missiles are consistently flared, and because they are launched from far range and don’t have smokeless motors modelled, they are reasonably simple to counter.
This is the same for ARH missiles, they are easily notched and chaffed, which encourages furball gameplay even at the highest level, with the exception of Mica which retains a buffed seeker.
I would like to see what would people prefer, fix the resistance to countermeasures of these weapons to encourage kinetic defeat tactics. Or leave things as they are?
I think the issue with IR missiles isnt that the seekers are underperforming but that aircraft (especially on reheat) are way too cold.
So we need proper IR signature modeling (Exhaust temps/plumes, directional exhaust, etc etc) before we do anything else in that department and that might resolve the issues straight away without needing to do anything else.
As for ARH… I think chaff needs a fundemental overhaul as well, and I think they should retune seeker performance a bit, but Id start with adjusting/lowering MP first down to IRL levels for each missile.
But yes, overall, its time for a missile seeker vs CM overhaul
I feel like the name tag and 3rd person camera is what makes them easier to dodge than anything else our sitautional awareness is exponetially more than what you have in sim/rl. What exactly is wrong with cm resistance compared to real life?
Playing in the furball at top tier is usually severly punished if your team has a numbers disadvantage your lifespan in it is usually very short.
We’ve got excerpts that suggest for example that the AIM-9L can’t reliably be flared if the afterburner is on, or from the rear aspect (unknown flare composition, so there are grounds for more advanced formulations to be more effective).
Also for example the All aspect range of the AIM-9L & -9M should be much further than it is.
These are docs from an RAF test of Aim-9L vs Jaguar GR1 with large calibre flares. Basically, if the target is on reheat. Flares arent going to do anything in most aspect. In-game, 9L is 1 flare defeated most of the time, at most aspect, regardless of what the target is doing.
You also have issues like Harriers at mid-ish air speeds being unable to reliably flare a long ranged R-60M due to the heat sig being so high and yet at the same time, F-5s are so cold, that you can rarely even get an IR lock even when they are sat on reheat (in fact, a reheating F-5 is colder than an F-117)
It’s a combination of everything being modeled poorly for a multitude of reasons ( various layers of abstraction, lack of data, and gaming convention aside) and really needs a complete overhaul of all Aspects.
My biggest issue with it is how poor ARH seekers are right now
Like i can literally notch a missile completely without dropping chaff at all which is horrible considering the new SPAAS rely on ARH missiles
and this gets even worse if you are using a jet that relies on good BVR performance because it isnt effective in a dogfight
But because of how easy it is to notch missiles the BVR it needs to rely on isnt reliable at all and is more of a AFK checker than anything
I know buffing ARH seekers will kinda make it more hellish for stock grinding which is why imo i think they should remove the flare/chaff upgrade completely at the top tier and just have it included stock as part of these ARH changes
IR isnt perfect either theres a few missiles that really should have no issue but they seem almost useless sometimes
Or because Gaijin needs to be Gaijin another option might be to have the mod dictate the ability to edit the amount of flares to chaff. But that you had some chaff stock. Like 2:1 ratio. Not great, but you at least had some stock.
But ultimately, if the issue limiting more realisitc gameplay is “stock grind” then fixing the stock grind is much easier and better for the overall health of spaded vs spaded combat that just not doing anything for the sake of the stock grind
You can only do that if the missile is above you, if its coming from above it wont track at all and just uses IOG+DL and turns on PD search, its waiting for you to come out of the notch to reacquire, so if you just climb/dive or speed up/down it wont hit you even if you don’t chaff as long as you are far away enough from the search cone guided in by IOG/DL, fox 3 coming from above you without DL are incredibly easy to beat since the IOG alone is usually pretty bad at getting it close, and it seems like chaff will only affect it in lookdown mode if its within 5km otherwise chaffing does nothing as its not tracking at all. If its coming from below you it switches to non-pd track and chaff will defeat it pretty much instantly as long as you don’t breadcrumb the chaff back to your plane. Which also means from this aspect if you don’t chaff while notching its gonna hit you.
Not sure how these work irl, but im like 90% sure thats how they are modeled in game unless things changed from this video.
Also if this is wrong I’d like to know. I’m also wondering why ARH would use just regular non PD radar to keep track when looking up that seems really bad compared to just using IOG+DL since its so easy to beat by just chaffing. And if anyone knows what exactly chaff is doing in lookdown mode when the missile gets close i’d like to know that too, what exactly is going on there? Why does chaff do nothing in lookdown mode till it gets close?
And 1 more thing I asked a while back in another thread if regular non PD radars could be notched and didn’t really get an answer, but this seems to be the case if thats how fox 3 are keeping track of notched targets when in lookup mode? Does this mean that regular non PD radars can only be defeated by ground clutter and chaff?
From my understanding this happens because chaff in lookdown mode gets ignored by PD radars as its filtered out as ground clutter, the technicality of why it happens im not sure my best guess is the chaff just has zero velocity so it falls into the filter.
But im also not sure why some times it will work last second maybe the missile is just switching into regular SRC at low distance?
Pretty much, notching is exploiting how PD radars work and puts the aircraft into the ground filter.
Regular radars can’t be notched because they dont filter any velocity returns.
Someone that knows more about the specifics of what im talking about can chime in for what these filters are called cause i genuinely forgot and i cant find it haha.
But this is generally the reason why most radars turn off the pulse doppler filter once the aircraft gets near 90 degrees because at that point it would start filtering it out.
(It used to be the case that no radar in the game automatically did this so you had to manually switch it)
There also used to be a datasheet that showed the velocity of what each radar would start filtering out at awhile back too and more or less a lower velocity meant the radar was harder to notch but its probably super outdated now and i cant even find it anymore either.
