Does anyone know if a target within seeker activation range, concealed by clouds, make the missile useless since datalink doesn’t activate during seeker track mode?
So like for example, you detect a target 6km away on radar, but it is cloudy. If you launch, with the missile immediately in seeker tracked mode, the missile becomes useless?
Activation range =/= track, it still needs to find it, so if the target is within 10km, but seeker does not see it, it is still going to fly on DL.
Right, but in sensor view, I have never seen TRK+DL+IOG, it’s always DL+IOG, or TRK
That’s cuz in game these modes are mutually exclusive in game.
10km is range in which seeker can start searching for targets, and it will keep flying on DL until it finds it.
Okay. Also, how effective is the missile when it comes to its onboard search for the target? When the missile is flying in IOG mode and is searching for the target, does it search within its full 90 degree boresight area, or does it search a very small area?
If you use the radar screen, you will be able to see a circle, that’s where it searches
But that is a top down view of the missile, and would imply it also searching a 360° area even behind it, which is not possible. I think I might be thinking of something else in the radar screen. I can’t check in game rn
There will be a circle at the end of the line showing where the missile targets
not always
sometimes the missile decides that it knows where it is and that it is where it isnt so it has to arrive at a position where it was or something like that
anyways, it just doesnt put the target circle on anything and it just stays around the missile like in the picture
the whole radar stuff is just janky asf
It’s currently not implemented, it can only do TRK / IOG+DL / IOG. There is already a bug report that was accepted a while back about it.
An arc would be more useful to display the area the missile is searching
Also as far as my research states, since IRIS-T’s seeker is not a true imaging IR focal plane array, in that it uses a smaller, linear, two-color, 128x2 staggered element array which is scanned by a sensor which indirectly receives the image from a scanning mirror which rapidly traverses the linear array.
What this means is that not only would Laser based countermeasures have less effective range against IRIS-T (since reflective losses due to the scanning mirror) but LDIRCM would also only affect the seeker in alternative frames of scanning since the angle of the mirror reflections would not allow for the laser to dazzle the scanner for a full second.
Since the seeker scans the image from the 128x2 array in such a way that it builds a 128x128 resolution image at 80 frames per second, the LDIRCM would really only be (at maximum) effective for 40 of those frames. Meaning the guidance update rate would effectively be, in the most efficient dazzling scenario, be halved.
All of this is ASSUMING that the LDIRCM can effectively dazzle ALL the seeker elements simultaneously for any single scanning frame.
PS.(not to mention the LDIRCCM methods of feature track and HOJ etc etc)
PPS i forgot to mention but, even Aim-9M (and missiles with IOG) would not really be countered by LDIRCM on helicopters sicne the moment it becomes dazzled, the onboard computer will recognise that there are countermeasures present and will shift guidance onto IOG. Same case with IOG in IRIS-T and Aim-9X.
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Did they screw around with missile damage again or am i going insane?
Crit btw.
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Latest changelog:
- A direct hit on an aircraft’s fuel tank by the high-explosive warhead of an air-to-air missile (or equivalent munition) will now always cause the fuel tank to detonate.
You want to hear something more crazy which would be possible if a piezo-electric actuated mirror is used?
Including a sensor which measures the incoming energy of the infrared light. If the energy is above a certain threshold for one or more scanned lines (enough energy to damage the seeker) the mirror would direct these lines onto an absorber block instead of onto the sensor. Technically possible, unknown if implemented ^^
No point.
The speed of light is just too fast to slow the mirror to protect the seeker immediately… although i understand this would prevent extended exposure so it is a tactic worthy of employment.
You know that energy is “power over time”? Speed of light yes, but it has to be exposed long enough to transmit/be exposed to a certain amount of energy. If the piezo electric mirror switches between the following states there is no limitation because of the speed of light:
IR Power sensor ↔ IR sensor line (for each line as long as the incoming power is uncritical)
IR Power sensor ↔ Absorber block or line skip (if the incoming power exceeds the allowed limit for the line)
Between every line it switches to the power sensor to check if the incoming power exceeds the limit and only if it’s safe it directs the incoming IR radiation onto the IR sensor line, otherwise to either the absorber block or it skips to the next line and the cycle repeats. This would also equal a mechanical shutter effect (a shutter is necessary anyway for line-scan devices). Technically this is no witchcraft and the speed of light has nothing to do with it.
The only crititcal moment would be when the line gets redirected and in exactly that moment the LDIRCM hits the sensor, but then the exposure time would also just be just a few microseconds before the mirror switches to the power sensor again.