Looks like @Gunjob beat me to it. Here’s a couple of extras:
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This is 100% British theory on American weapon systems and never proven ever.
Additionally, nothing is said that the opponent’s missile will track your own missile to any reliable degree. You cannot tell what the missile is locking, only that its locking something by tone, it literally just a last-ditch hope and pray for the best situation.
It "may just" intercept the opponents missile.
Yes, it MAY just intercept the missile provided you are at close enough in range happen to see the missile beforehand know its IR, generate a tone and fire an IR missile in return. Which is highly unlikely.
Can I get the full context of this please. I would like to dissect it.
And a flare “MAY” decoy a missile, you’re always working with “May’s”. Come on mate, you were wrong readjust and move on.
The only missiles that can ignore other missiles motors are modern IIR missiles, ASRAAM for instance can ignore its own rocket motor permitting for ripple launches which wasn’t possible with AIM-9L.
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“May just.”
“close range.”
“2-4 seconds.”
Key words here.
You can lock a sidewinder at miles over an afterburning F-14 tomcat in WT. Do you have any idea how bright the F-14A tomcat is irl?
This British theory (never proven ever in the history of the world) states that if a missile is fired at close range at you, and you magically see it visually, know it’s an IR missile and somehow know that your IR signature and exhaust emission is not visible to its seeker and have 2-4 seconds to react, you are to master arm your Aim9Ls generate a tone (hopefully) and fire all your Aim9Ls at once. Because the Aim9L may just intercept the missile provided it does not go for the aircraft firing it that has a bigger IR signature?
Do I have this theory correct? It is a theory btw and never proven.
Nothing is said that the opponent’s missile will go for your missile. That is the point.
ONLY that your missile may intercept it. There is a fundamental difference.
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Probably so the motor is still burning at a useful moment.
All decoying is “may” its never a certainty there is always some nuance.
Reaction times, and flare rise up times. A pilot is going to be able to boresight a SW much quicker than the flares will deploy and rise with enough separation from the aircraft.
You don’t need to dig your heels in here. Your position should be “oh I guess missiles can decoy other missiles” as your previous positions was;
And that clearly isn’t the case. Sure there is probably some nuance with the range to target and competing IR signatures all being in seeker FOV.
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If the missile is close enough, and no other brighter signature is in its FOV. I do not disagree.
However, let’s look at WT.
Short range IR missiles will go out of their way to track other missiles at insane ranges while their first track, a large heavy dual engined after burning jet is still clearly in its FOV. They will not only do this at short ranges but will do this out to 6km+. Miles away.
They will not only do this in front aspect but side and even rear aspect.
That is the issue at hand.
The actual issue is 9L and similar seekers aren’t tracking reheat plumes hard enough.
Spoiler
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Ok cool. Good to know.
However In WT, in head on engagement if an opponent fires an IR missile at you and you fire an IR missile at him in return, both missiles will intercept each other to at around 90% percent accuracy. Does not matter if you are at differing altitudes or same altitudes, out a few miles and afterburning or not.
The missiles will almost always disregard both aircraft and go for each other. I actually tested this @MiG_23M.
ok, but how would the actual issue you say if solved would bring down that 90% down to a “may intercept” probability like stated in the F3 tactics theory you shared earlier?
It would fix (hopefully) greater IR signatures such as reheat plumes not being bright enough to drown out other IR sources. Once you’ve fixed the “worst case” scenarios the tuning to different lower IR spectrums should be easier.
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Well, there is nothing really else to say other than I’ll wait, you kind of answered everything right there and makes sense.
Thanks.
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No worries, glad we came to an agreement.
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InSb and PBs seekers are both highly susceptible to the emissions wavelength of rocket motors… the gasses not only are within the 1.5 to 5.5 um range but also has an obscuring effect.
InSb detection is 3-8um
PBs detection is 1-5um
The plume of the rocket motor is not obstructed by the misisle at all, and the plume size is comparable to that of a jet engine on 60%. It’s narrower but much much longer.
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60% makes total sense and sounds reasonable. It gets hot, but It’s a small, short lived solid fuel rocket.
But what do you mean by much longer though, because afterburning jet engines, for example the Mig29 and F-14 shoot out darn near 3/4 the length of the jet flare out and can pretty much be seen from the front as well.
I see. Yeah, that is pretty long and that is just the length that we can on the visible light spectrum.
It’s much longer in infrared.
Last thing though gun. Yes we are working with “mays”.
But flares are proven to decoy missiles.
A sidewinder never decoyed another IR missile away from a defending aircraft ever.
There is no “may” but only an unproven theory.
As for modern missiles. The aim9P was the first to implement flare resist logic designed to ignore Soviet “dirty flares” that burned lower on the IR spectrum to mimic the signature of western aircraft exhaust. The Soviet Union found out that the US inadvertently designed their aim9s like the J to seek emissions consistent with their own fighters instead Soviet Unions MiGs.
I’m assuming the theory was proven using acquisition rounds. Very little in the tactics manuals isn’t the result of various trials.
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My understanding is that IR missiles did not fully have this capability until dual band IR seekers. It is said that modern flares today attempt to reproduce heat emissions similar to that of the aircraft in order to decoy modern dual band seekers.
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