The issue is that ECM isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mechanic. Implementing it broadly without accounting for the massive technical leaps between aircraft generations would break game balance. Posts like these give developers a researched baseline to work with, allowing them to expand the mechanic internally with the nuance it actually needs.
1 Like
I love this! Please please add this functionality, especially for things like the RAH 66 heli.
1 Like
Do i want it? yes
will it work? Probably not
will the average warthunder player understand it? GOD NO
1 Like
Good post
Question are there forms of strategic EW where you deny over a large area GPS and communications. Like it being truck based not something you can bolt to a plane. (Could be an important ground target)
Also drone jammers may be nice for tanks and they have been popping up everywhere like mushrooms.
I don’t even fully understand how my radar works at top tier on my F-2 I just lock get to 10km and fire. Let alone a EW system but it should be added.
Yes
1 Like
Jamming at the very latest should be introduced alongside stealth fighters, as the main effects of jamming (decreasing distance before plane can be detected and radar lock can be maintained) is broadly similar to the main advantage of radar stealth, with the important distinction that jamming makes your presence known while stealth doesn’t - so a stealth plane would rather not use jamming itself, but have a teammate use jamming to divert attention while he flies into position. Jamming power is also limited by the engine power, so broadly speaking jamming can be a factor for teamplay, can help balancing stealth and non stealth planes, and can help survivability of the powerful but not very maneuverable jet bombers. The less often mentioned advantage of jamming is that it makes chaff a LOT more effective than usual; not only does it make it easier for the radar lock to be transferred to the chaff (as it’s less stable than usual), but it’s also makes the chaff cloud a more credible target on the radar screen, as it reflects the signal from the jammer instead of only the radar beam - and this is an effect that stays even within burn through range (although the closer the distance, the smaller the effect).
Most kinds of jamming can only be employed effectively by a very experienced operator that isn’t preoccupied with flying the plane, so for Warthunder I guess there only two kinds of jamming that are possible to implement ingame:
- Spot jamming : creates noise in a specific frequency band that makes it more difficult for a radar to detect and lock individual targets (should show as a bright line of clutter in a specific direction), but has the disadvantage that it shows the enemy exactly where to look (particularly if they are capable of home on jam), interferes with your own rwr, and with both your teammates´radar and rwr. More advanced system only turn themselves on to respond to an enemy signal on RWR and try to only affect that specific frequency, but there are always overlaps.
- range gate pull out : If rwr detects plane has been locked by enemy, it automatically tries to send fake range signals to mask the plane´s actual location and velocity, so enemy can’t gauge when they should launch the missile; if the fake signal is far enough from the real one, the fake signal is interrupted and radar lock is broken.
Note how the later mode of operation won’t even start if spot jamming is so strong that the RWR stops working. The more power used by the jammer the more effective it is (RGPO is a lot less power hungry than spot jamming), but for max power the radar has to be shut down. Both modes of operation can be controlled with a couple of keybinds (off/auto/on, RGPO/ALL), so it seems pretty straightforward from a game standpoint.
Honestly the bigger issue is deciding on the counter counter measures available to each radar system, as some older radars like the ma-1 on the f-106 historically would be incredibly effective at defeating jamming, but warthunder devs tend to think older = worse.
1 Like
Instead of an unrealistic timer system, I think we have a fairly decent real-world balance in that if we get Anti-Radiation weapons and features then we have a natural counter. In addition to things like burn-through and ECCM (where more modern radars can detect what kind of jamming is happening and ignore erroneous signals, or even just hop between frequencies very quickly at a pace the ECM can’t predict/match) there’s also the fact that ARMs can follow the signals emitted by ECM units and missiles like the R-77 and AIM-120 even already have this ability in real life, where they can switch to home-on-jam mode when their radar seeker is being disrupted by ECM. If you pair this with the idea or mechanic that you cannot use SARH while your ECM is active, you’d receive a balance in that SARH missiles would require ECM off for the aggressor and the defender would still have burn-through and ECCM to worry about, meaning Fox-1 BR brackets would not get completely disrupted, and the top tier ARH brackets would have the extra threat of Fox-3s switching into HOJ mode, meaning in either case ECM wouldn’t be an easy “immunity from all radar missiles” hack.
EA-37B Compass Call
1 Like
That would be a nice target that provides a strength if protected and a weakness if shot down.
It’s a good post, and this should come especially with a home on jam for the missiles that had it and passive radar-homing missiles for players to have a further ability for counter-play, especially for SPAAs, if there are indeed missiles like the ones I described.
1 Like
A simplified and probably slightly misleading, but still a brief insight on the types of ecm we can get in game.
ECM can be done by a variety of different systems present on aircraft, it can be done by its own radar, ecm pods, internal ecm transmitters, or some defense oriented stuff like Towed Radar Decoys (TRDs)and Expendable Active Decoys (EADs)
there would be mainly 3 main ECM modes (excluding ESM, since that does not emit anything)
-
Noise/Barrage jamming : One of the most simplest form of jamming, it just vomits insanse amounts of radar signals of varying frequencies. It will be viewed kinda like a thick candle of ground clutter on the radar. It will prevent/breaks any locks. However as radars advanced, many measures were taken to reduce the effect of this jamming technique, from specially shaped radars to increasing power output and better signal to noise ratio, the effect of jamming was reduced. This type of jamming has a burn through range, within which a radar will not be effected by the jamming. HOJ can be used as a fire control solution against the jammer, however due to the lack of range figures, the missile launched in such a guidance will have a very ineffective trajectory. It wont loft, and likely can be countered by heavy close range manoeuvring. The missile would easily be drained of energy by cranking.
-
Repeater jamming :- It sends rapidly changing frequency towards the plane locking you. It will help break locks. On the radar screen it would look like the target is accelerating to some ungodly amounts of velocity, both in forward and rear direction. This would be limited to older missiles and radars. It would effect majorly SARH missiles and its respective carriers, if we stretch it, could also be made to work on initial fox 3 (like derby, aim120a, r77) but not on later missiles (like I-derby, Aim-120c5+, r77-1). Modern ECCM is able to easily filter this out.
-
DRFM jamming :- one of the most modern form of jamming, it deliberately sends fake, but curated signals to the enemy radar, feeding it wrong data like wrong positions, velocities etc. One may not even know that he is being jammed, he would have to switch to ESM mode to figure that out. However, my guess on this is like, unlike noise jamming, you can only affect a few people with this (Depending on how many ecm transmitters you have), there might even be a %fail chance per second, that for sometime the radar might not get fooled, when the pulses timing mismatch.
Actual algorithms on jamming are highly classified, same goes for the equipment itself. I would rather like to see them only differentiated on basis of their sizes, time, and nature. (for eg. a huge ecm pod would perform better than a very small ecm transmitter, or a older ecm pod would perform worse than a newer one).
It is also important to note 2 more ECM devices in detail :-
-
TRD :- Towed radar decoys are just jammers but towed by the aircraft, they are seperated by a decent margin, connected via a cord. The point is to lure the missile towards the TRD instead of the plane, so the missile misses, or if it proxies, does not damage/ does little damage to the actual jets. This would be some time use devices, if it get damaged, it wont work anymore. some jets are able to carry multiple TRD.
-
EAD :- Expendable active decoys are just jammers smashed into the chaff cartridge. You can take considerably much higher amount of these than TRDs. IT is one time use per cartridge, it has a major point to consider tho, they only have a limited battery life, from 5 - 10 seconds. Hence they should be timed correctly, use it too early and the jammer will run out of battery and maybe relock the jet again, use to late it will still be able to have splash damage on you. one would also need to enter a optimal angle to prevent damage, however not as strict as notching. Technically one can use all his CM slots for these jammers, but they are expensive irl and such a loadout would not be balanced. IT would be better if these are limited to 20 per aircraft per spawn. The efficiency of these would vary mainly on sizes like seen on current flare/chaff. Small ones would have a shorter batter life and have a bit less output power, on the other hand larger one would have longer battery life and would have a bit more output power.
Another reason why we will have headaches on top toer, anyways I would love it
Repeater jamming is basically an early form of DRFM, the main diference being that repeater jammers are only effective against pulsed or amti radars since they only interfere with the timing of the pulses, while frequency shift jammers were not effective against pulsed radars but were effective against continuous wave trackers, so drfm uses a digital processor to combine the two techniques and interfere with the timing and shifts the emitted frequency in just the right way to fool the enemy’s pulse doppler radar.
All of the above is a subset of deception jamming that just interferes with the accuracy of the range calculation, which is why I suggested the catch all name “range gate pull out”. It has the advantage of being a lot more efficient than noise jamming with no real “burn through” range, but the disadvantage that each individual system can only affect one enemy at the time, like you’ve guessed. There’s no need for a % fail chance, once active it’s essentially a timer whose duration depends on the sophistication of the jammer and the tracking radar. Once range information is stolen, radar lock can be broken by shutting off rgpo/drfm, or by having rgpo/drfm automatically walk the range information beyond the tracking limits of the radar, forcing the enemy readquire lock. The former option would be better against aesa tws radars, since they’ll readquire you almost instantly anyway.
2 Likes
By shutting off??
watch them not give the F14 ECM even tho it has it
If a radar is locked on a target on x azimuth, y elevation and z range, it’s going to ignore all radar contacts that don’t have these parameters. RGPO changes the range the radar sees, so the radar is now locked onto a point in space with nothing in it; if the fake range is far away and rgpo stops, the radar will try to maintain lock onto a empty point in space with nothing in it and fail, thus breaking lock and forcing the radar to restart search for the target again.
You can see how this can be really annoying for radars with fox-1 missiles that need to maintain lock, although against radars with tws you might want to keep it on to avoid being targeted in the first place or to trick the enemy radar into lofting a fox 3 missile away from you. It’s also mostly useless if you are within visual/acm range, as the enemy can see where you are anyway and relock you instantly and/or get a lock to launch their IR missiles.
3 Likes
Some jammers only work well concerning positions where there located like GPS spoofing
Would benefit visual range combat and optical sensors. One of the fears from a friend in aerospace is if electronic jammers get so good it could weaken stealth fighters as you do need to hit the enemy therefore cheaper planes like 4.5 become more economical. But that’s overall unlikely.
I have a feeling Jamming will be very simplified in WT like noise modulated jamming, range jamming (for naval and what not) etc.