F-16 Fighting Falcon: History, Performance & Discussion

I can’t speak on the matter, I can only let the sources speak for themselves. To my knowledge you wouldn’t need to directly communicate with the aircraft from a specific vehicle. Rather - they’d get live updates from the satellite network or through a node.

Hence

When every vehicle is a relay it’s hard to destroy the system without first destroying the satellite and then also separating the groups from any nodes with sufficiently strong means of communication. It’s quite comprehensive and low maintenance. As the sources say “self-healing”.

I also highly doubt any current foreign jamming systems can actually truly jam these nodes.

Well, not necessarily every vehicle.
But there seem to be handheld Link 16 radios as well, so perhaps one can assume tank crews can carry those as well (On the right side of the chart):

Then there is another can of worms: RWR detection of datalinks. Which RWR should detect which datalinks?

So far, WT has been assuming a complete and perfect database for any RWR that has emitter classification capability:

Every vehicle equipped with FBCB2 would essentially need to have the capability.

Whether it is actually fully realized or utilized is an entirely different story altogether.

That is probably the only fair way of doing it. Gaijin has (for the most part - the Tornado manual being the obvious exception) no way of knowing how comprehensive different nations emitter libraries are, so they can only really let everyone identify everything or make completely arbitrary nerfs to different nations.

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t … That’s my own post that I quoted there.

This is essentially somewhat unknowable (Heck, even the units themselves probably don’t know it with 100% certainty), as it’s quite dynamic.

You might not have the fingerprint for radar x right now, but you might be able to record it and add it to your databases a month from now, but then a month later the enemy might change their software to change the radar’s fingerprint and make it unclassifiable again (of course it might not always be that easy IRL, but the possibility is there with modern radars and other emitters).

So the game essentially simulates the capabilities of the vehicle (ability to classify emitters), and not the SIGINT and EW tug of war between countries …

And that brings the question: Should SADL, Link 16 and other datalinks be classifiable or at least detectable (as unknown datalink/emission) by RWRs?

That datalink refers probably to the lazur or markham as it includes the A-50. The “datalink” of the n001/n019 + r27R is the carrier CW itself on either frequency 1 or 2 that represent 0s and 1s for the barker code.

The a50 to mig31/su27 is ankther thing not even ingame

You also should take into account frequency ranges, antenna resonance(bc you cant have the antenna have the same gain at 3cm wavelength if its resonant at 30cm or 6cm) which would show the signal at different ranges, how fast they switch, PRF limits, how much time they illuminate the rwr, able to decode them?, how good(or bad) the RWR is( cough spo15 cough cough). Link 16 looks to be between 900 -1300MHz on a quick google search.

You’d probably have the rwr going crazy. Anything in a 20° arc is getting a warning. And for D/L- comms stuff, you have dedicated planes for it.

Its a biiig barrel of worms that is 99% classified and technical. And knowing the move of how everybody gets notification when fox3s go active despite rwrs not being able, it wont be as technical.

Somethings telling me these bug reports are being intentionally avoided…

I’d say we could also see the Block 25 as well.


They might both say F-16C No. 1, and technically neither are incorrect. 83-1118 was the first ever F-16C, while 83-1121 was the first F-16C delivered to a unit.

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Isn’t Link 16 typically omni directional?

Well, the can of worms is already open.
A-10C got added with datalink with the last major update.
Though, the datalink currently isn’t properly implemented like e.g. radars and RWRs are. It has no radio communications. It just works automagically (I think it’s implemented as part of the Scorpion HMD code).

Is there a source for that?
I do find it odd that Fox 3s would continuously STT lock the target from 16km away.
But that would only affect RWRs that can’t classify targets. RWRs that classify targets (assuming they have the fingerprint / signal pattern for that seeker in their database) would still be able to classify it as an incoming ARH missile and give the appropriate warning.

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I meant whatever the signal the plane uses to guide amraams, a big cone infront of antenna( Larger than the main beamwidth itself)

Matches in top tier. Once amraams go active, anything inside the cone will get a rwr warning. Not only the plane thats getting targeted will get the warning.

Why would the seeker scan around once it knows the target? Lock it and don’t lose it. On terminal guidance you need constant information for the guidance computer for any corrections. You’d increase the chance of losing the target if he chaffs or employs ecm.

16km

Closure rate is high and those ranges may vary. On the phoenix if the f14 RIO selects target size - small, its 6NM~ 11km.

To know its a ARH missile you could identify it with the higher than usual PRF required due to the high closure rates.

As for the recording of the RWR, that would mostly fall to SIGINT, not the fighter itself. Recording all frequency ranges would take alot of memory. One giga is 1,000,000,000 Hz. Even if you separate into 10kHz blocks you’d have 100,000 values to store in the memory. And thats just for an instant. How many times do you do it? Every 50 ms( Do mind that radars to measure range use frequency modulation and they change rates at values like every 8.6 ms so you might miss them for proper sigint)? 20 per second. 2,000,000 values every second. Now what about every 25 ms? 4 million. Lets say you want to cover 4GHz. 16 million values. It will eat memory. Not telling you its not possible, but look at limitations of the era(memory sizes). It’s easy to say record, look later but you gotta do the recording part first.

Also, RF space is congested. You gotta filter ALOOOOOOT. And waveforms aren’t simple long continuous waves you can say, hey I see xy frequency in the spectrum and it must be from something. You have them using pulses( could be short as 1.5 micro seconds) followed by 1.5μs to 2500μs of nothingness where the radar just listens for its signal. The frequency of the pulse trains gradually increase/decrease frequency then after couple milliseconds increase/decrease at a higher or lower rate. Then you could have the single pulse change frequency( pulse compression). Then you could see be seeing 2 signals from 2 different contacts arriving because they have 2 different frequencies but no, in reality is just 1 plane doing 1s and 0s with those 2 frequencies.

Hell how you they classify unknown? How constant must it be? For example the apg 65 occasionally throws a burst for accurate ranging purpuses, that burst will have length, pulses a width, a PRF different than the standard waveform. Assuming its long enough to appear, would the receiving RWR mark it as a unknown or what?

Rather just leave that job to sigint and capabilities are unknown.

A Block 25 would be cool

Today I got my F-16C Block 40 Barak II. The turn rate is 22.5 sec at best. Compairing to Block 15 or Block 50, we see 19sec.

Block 40 Barak II is in fact the only F-16C in game with such a bad turn rate.

Are you comparing stat cards?

Yes and in flight. I cannot run out properly a Su27 with a Barak, while I can on the US F-16C

Barak-II has almost same weight that Block-50 has while having weaker engine, so it makes sense.

In terms of flight performance Block-40 is the worst one, still i think both Barak-II version does have same flight performance and weight which shouldnt be the case.

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Correct, F-16D with the dorsal spine should never be the same as the F-16C without, even if counting in the additional CM.

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