Even early SARH missiles have home-on-jam capability. But this only means that the seeker can detect presence of some (not all) form of jamming signals and use them to track the jamming signal source.
The most simple HOJ implementation is tracking noise jamming source in angles only, no distance and no Doppler speed. The last resort for radar seeker, but it fails if there is more than one noise jammers, multi-path effects due the presence of chaff or ground reflection, or noise jammer is behind targets it protects and far-away.
Deception jamming means that the ECM try to produce signal, which is identical to the radar return - in this case normal tracking is used instead of HOJ.
Tu-95M and B-52 utilize noise and deception jamming. Radars and radar seekers can track noise jammer by angles in most cases. In this game event they can’t.
Due the radar time gate. Radar accepts returns only within predefined time interval for a certain scan pattern. If false signal drops outside the gate, it gets deleted and jamming has no effect.
If noise jamming is used burnthrough works in very simple way: at burnthrough range target returns become stronger than the noise, and radars have chance to detect them.
For deception jamming it is more complex: at burnthrough range radar can ignore just initiated deception, but if the radar was already locked on a false target it will continue tracking it even within burnthrough range. However, deception can be ignored even outside of burnthrough range if the radar is capable of complex signal processing: if the real target and false targets can be detected separately, they can be discriminated and proper target can be chosen. In the worst case if true target can’t be detected, the radar can track false target if it provides at least true direction to the jammer - HOJ.
In order for a jammer to initiate false signal generation, it must receive illuminating radar signal in the first place. So, the radar can’t “lock on” the false signal after burnthrough, as the false signal is superimposed to original signal, by virtue of larger amplitude. Once the plane gets close enough (burnthrough), the radar’s returning signal becomes stronger than the jammer’s (false) one and the radar starts rejecting false signal and accepts its own original signal.
But here’s a thing, if you don’t illuminate the plane (jammer), ie. “true target can’t be detected”, there’s no jamming signal either (jammer has no idea what to replicate), so no jamming (emissions) at all. This is quite important distinction, because unlike noise jamming that actively jams a certain frequency range, DECM works exclusively passively, ie. only if triggered by some outer source (radar).
This is for analogue systems. For AESA radars, one would need, at least, a DRFM jammer to have a chance of jamming it.
+1, I am so excited for stock grinding when ECM are added, It would be so much fun fighting fully spaded jets with ECM in my stock jet with 2 ARH missile and no chaff :D
Within the burnrhrough range:
If the radar is locked on a false target the tracking gates tracks only this target. The radar doesn’t “see” targets out of the gate including the true target. So it will continue tracking false target.
But if the deception is just initiated both targets are in the gate - weaker false target is rejected.
I get what you’re saying, but this is important: in TWS eg. it doesn’t really matter if the actual target drops out of tracking gates as long as it is painted (within scanning brackets). Once the radar picks up the actual return (rejects the false one), it’ll shift tracking gates within scanning brackets, back to actual target, immediately. That’s when the target “jumps” on the scope.
Once the radar stops painting the target (target drops out of scanning brackets), the target stops jamming, so nothing really to HOJ onto.
This needs to be done really carefully, or it’s not gonna be good. :D
This is something that could nicely shake up the current ARB meta or put the final nail on the coffin.
I doubt there is enough public information for ECM (Rafales SPECTRA is completely classified) to implement this properly.
On top of it I highly doubt Gaijin devs have the necessary skill and understanding to implement this properly and in an ubiased way.
I won’t go into the details of implementing it from a coding perspective, since I don’t know enough on the topic, but from what I’ve heard about WT code its gonna be ugly.
A wonderful idea, that I wish could be implemented but I doubt.
minimum of 15 min would probably be way too long for air rb/ ground rb (considering most matches don’t even last 10 min) and probably way too short for air sim. Anyways that’s up to gaijin to decide the time.
Not really. ECM “consumption” would be around the same as 80-100% throttle engine fuel consumption, so not that quick and also remember that unlike fuel consumption, you can turn ECM on/off (like in real life) so the timer will pause. Players can easily make ~15 minutes last the entire game if they use a combo of ECM + chaff and notching to defend against radar missiles.
(In the case of Sim Battles, this would apply per ‘life’ or sortie)
Of course, aircraft that lacks a high CM count (like J-15T) who rely on ECM will have to use it a lot more than those that don’t (e.g., Eurofighter). So in this specific instance, I would not be too upset if aircraft such as the J-15T or whatever else that has a low CM count getting a higher ECM timer versus aircraft who has a high CM count. This is probably one way to balance it out at top tier, because could you imagine a Gripen having the same ECM time as J-15T? It would be untouchable/unfair
Are you including bol pods as well? Also i kinda think this would be unfair to most 4.5 gen. This method of determining ECM time can be used with 4.5 gen, but when 5th gen are added (War thunder is heading towards 5th gen), this will not be a good method as most 5th gen might not carry a large amount of countermeasure. So they will get more ECM time, stealth and no pylon drag, all these should give them a huge leverage against 4.5 gen.
I believe that the basic concepts of the theory behind this system will be implemented. It is true that many ECM systems are classified, but they are all based on the same principle; it is simply a matter of applying improved features depending on the Br (I mean that top tier systems will have better features applied to their ECMs) These characteristics can basically be:
Disruption
Amplitude Modulation (AM)
False Target
Noise
And others
These jamming techniques are made possible by resources that depend on the purpose of the jammer itself. For example, CW repeater, pulse repeater, fast frequency hopping or spread spectrum transmissions are covered, and others.
Based on that, they can be modeled for the game in its basic form and with more or less technique and resources depending on the Br. That’s my opinion.