Ill be the first to admit it, im new to missile tier planes (since its quite a jump from mig19 to su33) but im kinda starting to grasp how things work. But one thing bothers me all the time, when i lock someone with a radar and send a radar missile at them, but then i find another target close by that i want to fire a IR missile at. And when i activate the missile, the tracking ring aims straight for the target i have a radar lock on, i can’t manipulate the tracking ring in any way to make the IR missile aim at someone else. Making me either wait for the radar missile to hit or abandon the target and focus on the closer one. Is there any way to make the missiles stop doing that ?
That’s how SARH (Semi-active Radar Homing) missiles work. You have to keep lock at all times until the target gets hit. The best course of action would technically be to fire the IR missiles before the Radar missile. As the IR missiles are fire and forget. If you trust the missile and the target doesn’t seem to know that a radar missile is flying towards it, you can, although it’s not recommended, lose lock and engage the second target. When you get to ARH (Active Radar Homing) missiles, you’ll be able to lose lock after the missile gets to the required range and starts following the target with its own radar. Assuming you have the R-27ETs, they have great range, so you might shoot the ET first and then use the radar missiles. Also, if there are two targets and one’s ignoring/doesn’t see you and the other does see you, and you either see that he’s tracking you or points his nose at you, then I recommend you to focus on either getting out or engaging with the most dangerous target to you. I usually shoot them an IR missile at them while I try to dodge their missiles. You’ll get paired with many planes that have ARH missiles not all of them but many F-16s, F-15s, JAS-39s, F-14s and many others with AIM-120s, MICA-EMs, Derbys and other missiles. Be careful of them as they can actually lose lock and either evade the missile or fire more missiles at other people.
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Thanks for the advice
To further what Shacortes has said, there is one work around you can try being a Su-33.
The R-27ERs have DL+IOG (datalink and inertial onboard guidance). This combo does allow them a minimal amount of autonomy.
Datalink allows the missile to be reguided after loosing lock
IOG keeps the missile going towards the last known intercept point
With most SARH missiles missile, when you loose the lock, you’ll probably need to fire another if you arent fast enough to reacquire the lock, with the R-27ER (and a few others) they will guide themselves reasonably well up until the last few KM.
So if the target is notably far away, you can fire an R-27ER, switch targets, fire the R-73/R-27ET at the second target and then swap back to the first target, reacquire the lock and continue guiding the missile. This is a very useful trick in any case, because the target gets no RWR warning for much of the flight time of the missile.
But I would advice just getting use to the combat first, before trying anything overly complicated. Having skipped much of the introduction to IR and SARH combat in aircraft like the Mig-23, you have a steep learning curving and 13.0+ is not forgiving
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Oh thats interesting, i will keep that in mind, seems very useful
Oh, just wanted to add something right now. If the target you fired the missile at dies before the missile impacts, and you just see another enemy, the Data link function (I think?) allows the missile to be completely redirected to that target, this way, you don’t waste a missile (if the missile has enough energy of course).