AN/AWG-9 Lacks Advanced Functions: A turbo-noob writeup
List:
Multitrack - All F-14 variants could achieve TWS tracks on several aircraft (simulated in-game), and simultaneously navigate up to 6 AIM-54 Phoenix missiles to each target simultaneously. (F-14 Tomcat in Combat) The current in-game implementation appears to only allow a single missile to be data-linked at a time, with a change in targets or launch of another AIM-54 causing the initial missile to switch to IOG.
Tactical Information Display - All F-14 variants had a new Tactical Information Display for the RIO officer. This display allowed for a much simpler display of TWS-tracked targets, with more data and target numbers to help identify which Phoenixes are guiding onto which target. (F-14 Promotion, 3:33)
LINK 4A/4C Target sharing functionality - Imma be honest I don’t know much about the datalink but here’s a writeup.
Automatic Target Selection - The AWG-9 was able to select the “greatest threat potential” targets in its view and automatically set up datalink tracking with the number of Phoenixes on board, essentially a TWS boresight mode where the radar automatically picks targets (F-14 Progress Report)
Does anyone know if the F-14 has an Auto or Manual toggle for its TWS mode?
Currently it auto centers to the best of its ability on the selected TWS track- some radar sets have manual mode where you can set the scan pattern as in RWS and it will not move based on your TWS track- this is better when trying to cycle through bandits in close proximity.
Also is this really true that only one phoenix IOG guides via data link while the rest go pit bull?
With some testing, it looks like the datalink continues working as long as TWS is detecting the target, but if it loses track for a moment all TWS guiding seems to be permanently disabled and the missile goes IOG to Pitbull.
The main problem is that the target selection pip is centered in the scanning range, so switching targets to fire at moves the antenna and messes up other TWS tracks, and because you can’t pin multiple targets like the RIO might have been able to, there’s no way of telling missiles mid-flight to reengage another target.
This is what I was talking about with a manual vs automatic mode in TWS.
The current setup when cyclic switching is enabled is like a TWS AUTO mode- this centers track on currently selected target which can cause you to lose track on previous selected target as you cycle through.
TWS manual mode will not change search parameters as you cycle through and if a track flys off scope it makes no effort to change the scope to keep the track.
TWS manual mode is best for multi track launches on grouped bandits at the start of a match- auto is good if you have one phoenix and don’t want to lose the track.
TLDR if there’s a toggle someone knows about please enlighten me - otherwise can the devs add this in?
In real life there is a toggle between auto/manual, not implemented in war thunder.
‘‘Also is this really true that only one phoenix IOG guides via data link while the rest go pit bull?’’
Aim-54 should go pitbull 16 seconds prior to impact, if you have 5 missiles below that they will go pitbull, and one guiding against a far away target, it will not go pitbull. Its situation dependant. Every missile should be guided until close enough to go pitbull in the tws mode, not sure how it works in war thunder.
The datalink is really unrobust in WT, your radar has to be detecting the target in TWS (locked or unlocked, as long as they are in the scan it counts) and the missile will continue guiding via datalink, but if the target disappears and reappears or the track is otherwise interrupted even for a second, the datalink fails entirely and the missile falls back to inertial guidance for the rest of the flight, with no way to redesignate a target.
Does anyone know if the AWG-9 had more advanced tracking capabilities for pinned targets? Like if a RIO pinned two targets and they drifted away wider or taller than the radar would normally scan would it be smart enough to know to look down to update the track?
I can’t find NAVAIR 01-F14AAA-1 anywhere to download only a heavily redacted (no radar or weapons) one for the 14D
This gets at what I was discussing with the automatic vs manual mode for TWS. An automatic mode your “Primary” target the one selected is the one that the radar will make every attempt to keep a track file on- it can only direct ARH missiles at targets with active track files. If you have two missiles out and they separate- the TWS on auto mode will keep the selected target as centered as possible even if that means dropping TWS target number 2, it makes zero attempt to average the two tracks. Additionally you always need a track file to guide an ARH- its not really capable of swapping scans between two targets on either end of the scope to give updates to phoenixes… Maybe a really good RIO could do that but not modeled in game.
Also, has there been any dev communication on link 4c or link 4a? It was pretty cool and a important feature that a 4 ship of tomcats could stitch together a datalink picture in the 1970’s
Does the AWG 9 radar radar not have rear aspect capabilities ?
So far from what i have been reading the radar has multiple modes including Search PD instead of just Search PD HeadOn that we have in game , the search only mode works in rear aspect but gets a lot of ground clutter when trying to shoot down.
It implies that when the RIO has tracked one or more targets in TWS, the AWG-9 was able to “take control of used scan volume and scan pattern azimuth and elevation as soon as target tracks are present.” I think we have that in-game already but it also specifies that it could prioritize tracked targets (plural) and optimize scan volume/direction for that.
So unless I’m misunderstanding, it seems that at a minimum the radar was able to average prioritized targets to keep tracking all of them, unlike the current center-on-one target behavior we have in game.
I ended up asking chat gpt thinking it might give me a source, chat gpt says it has the capability to track targets in rear aspect but it doesn’t reveal the sources 😂.
There is no way an f14’s Radar couldn’t see a target 6 KM Away in rear aspect using PD.
So you helped me with the answer, if the speed difference between own aircraft and target aircraft in rear aspect is with 200 knots then it’ll be invisible to the radar of f14,but ill to to check the implementation of this in the game.
Based on what’s I’ve heard F-14 RIO’s and pilots talk about they would have used regular pulse search but good RIO’s can pick tracks out of marginal situations we cannot pick them out of in game.
