The whole purpose of the system was to guide missiles onto possible stealth aircraft threats out of radar detection range.
Though arguably even if it wasn’t, there is no need for perfectly precise target location as long as the missile gets close enough to an accurate course that it can get close enough for a lock. Radar (or in this case RWR) as the only form of guidance the missile has in the terminal phase.
Yeah i shouldve said that while you cannot lock with this, you still can get relative positional data and guide aams with it until they can get their own seekers onto target.
Although this is more or less the same principle as thr R-27EP. And that poor thing did not fare well especially considering that if you loose rwr tone youre blind. (So is ur enemy but yk, hes safe too)
At least with the Japanese system there would still be datalink connection through J/ARG-1, so when there is a new radar/RWR input that is given to the missile even after it lost lock once.
With J/ARG-1 datalink is also not lost in the terminal phase, but used alongside missile seeker lock to get more accurate guidance (if available of course).
But if lock is lost completely the missile would just rely on IOG, then its own lock if available. This is no different from losing radar lock after launching a radar missile on any other aircraft.
It’s a good missile, compared to AMRAAM the larger diameter does give a slight edge in radar performance even on the inital variant with PD radar, though range is probably its biggest weakness at least now with more advanced missiles around.
AAM-4 (PD radar) has about 100km range, while AAM-4B (AESA radar) still only has a range of ~120km, and that on the same missile with from what I understand the guidance logic simply giving more efficient flight paths so it might not even be implemented in War Thunder (Especially considering J/ARG-1 isn’t even modeled either).
So it might still struggle compared to longer ranged weapons like AIM-120D or Meteor unless we see experimental variants like AAM-4 TDR or JNAAM.
Do you have dates for when this was made. Also the F-22 RWR can geolocate radar signatures, the whole 3d direction finding thing is what it uses to cue radar onto a very far away target
Since an AESA focused on a small narrow beam will have better range than the wide search mode typically used, it further increases the range the F-22 can detect and get ranging data on targets
And as for being “needlessly expensive”
It’s Lockheed. And it’s still one of if not the best air superiority fighters in the world 25 years after its creation
Thats exactly what I meant. Why spent such money on an aircraft that is already really expensive and doesn’ even lack in capability?
I don’t say that it’s not fitted, but I can see why it wouldn’t.
Maybe, but considering how long HMD integration took we can’t assume they added everything.
It was overkill originally, but ugrades for an aircraft that is already seen as too much are unlikely to continue overloading it with everything you got and raise the cost further.
Ahaah What nonsense, neither the dimensions nor the mass of the empty have ever been published.There are not even mathematical calculations confirming 1.3M SC