I’ve always gotten solid kills (and gotten solidly killed) by f-4s/f-4j while i was going cold or enemies were going cold on me, even despite entering multipath. However the f-15 just needs an enemy to go cold to send the misiles to the stratosphere. I don’t understand anything, isn’t the f-15’s radar supposed to be better? Or is it just that the sparrow does it’s thing despite the radar on the f-4’s have been chaffed like the situation with the f-4e?
Can’t really say without clear examples.
I can maybe only say, in the cases the F-4J/S can hold a lock, most likely the closure rate between you and the target is fairly high, as a result the missile will be able set a good speedgate that ignores ground clutter and chaff. The F-15s radar however is quite a bit better as it also has regular PD (MPRF) mode, which allows tracking of targets even with low closure rate in rear aspect, but sparrows can not really perform well in this scenario as it is CW guidance which is closer to the F-4J/S’ radar’s PD HDN (HPRF) mode. As a result, the radar may hold lock, but the missile now has its speed gate set within a more cluttered region, however it may still be able to hold a lock due to the strong radar illumination making the target returns outpower the ground returns, however when chaff is introduced, it completely blinds the sparrow’s seeker.
In other words, probably different conditions which cause this behavior. The F-15s radar is better but allows you to make worse sparrow launches, while the F-4J/S’ radar is worse but essentially perfectly match the abilities of the sparrow, which prevent you from bad lock on conditions.
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oh so the f-4 radar basically matches the sparrow’s seeker capacities and that’s why the launches are more accurate, I can see this example in a camera with a mid autofocus system going well with a standard lens but this standard lens won’t do either on a fast autofocus camera because the lens is limiting the camera like crazy. Even if the example doesn’t seem to be really related it really is, there is a saying that the most important thing after the photographer is not the camera but the lens.
Thank you so much for your explanation!