MANPADS Missiles and Overload: The Technical Details

[Thug Shaker Actual]

Russia has been getting sanctioned since crimea 2014

[Necronomica]

if you move to Spain, are you then a Spaniard?
if you move to Germany, do you become German?

[Kanelikainalo]

So they fired every single employee and manager/higher up in russia?

X for doubt…

[dotSHINI]

you should definitly just copy paste it into here as well, before their is stuff like wont be considered since it wasnt actualy in the thread

[NoodleCup31]

@J_ackal

Most of the german a-a missiles on top tier are a work of fiction.

Huh?

[AlvisWisla]

I’ll do one better. I’ll quote it all.

I, AlvisWisla, endorse Flame’s entire message in this following link:

Why Gaijin is wrong about the Stinger (it should be 20g in game)

As everyone knows Gaijin recently posted a dev blog explaining their decision to give the Stinger a 13g overload in game. Their view is that the Stinger uses single channel control (which is correct), and that the documents giving a maximum overload of 20-22 g “indicate the peak overload achieved at the moment when the rudders are in the manoeuvre plane” and that as a result the average overload of the missile will be 63% of the peak overload (13 g). It is the second part of their reasoning I ta…

And I quote it here for all to see:

@Flame2512

As everyone knows Gaijin recently posted a dev blog explaining their decision to give the Stinger a 13g overload in game . Their view is that the Stinger uses single channel control (which is correct), and that the documents giving a maximum overload of 20-22 g “indicate the peak overload achieved at the moment when the rudders are in the manoeuvre plane” and that as a result the average overload of the missile will be 63% of the peak overload (13 g). It is the second part of their reasoning I take issue with, I am making this post to explain why in my view the source giving 20 g for the Stinger missile is almost certainly referring to what Gaijin call “average overload”, rather than the “peak overload” as they claim. There are multiple factors which strongly indicate that this is the case.

Let’s start by discussing the source for the 20g claim, as mentioned in my original report it is CTTO/6/5/Air CTTO Jaguar Tactics Manual. As the name suggests the Central Tactics and Trials Organisation (CTTO) is in charge of developing tactics for RAF pilots to use, and organising trials conducted by the RAF. Part of their job is to produce tactics manuals for RAF aircraft, these manuals cover a wide range of topics related to operating the aircraft, and in the case of the Jaguar tactics manual about 80 pages are dedicated to discussing the performance characteristics of various air-defence systems a Jaguar pilot may encounter, and how best to deal with them. This is the section which contains the detailed description of the Stinger missile system.

Here is the full section on the Stinger missile, you will note that it is based on a technical analysis CTTO conducted of the Stinger missile system. As the Stinger missile was in service with British forces a decade prior to the publication of this manual the numbers can be considered trustworthy.

Spoiler

You can see that the lateral acceleration is listed as 20g. Lets now discuss my reasons for believing this figure is the “average” overload, rather than the “peak” overload.

Reason #1: The purpose of the manual

This is quite a simple point; the purpose of the tactics manual is to inform the Jaguar pilot about the threats they will face in combat. If you were a pilot reading this manual you wouldn’t care what the maximum amount of g the missile can pull for a tiny fraction of a second while the canards are perfectly aligned with your aircraft is (the peak g), that information just isn’t relevant. You would want to know how many g the missile can maintain while it is chasing you down (the average g).

Reason #2: Consistency

The as I mentioned the Jaguar tactics manual devotes about 80 pages to discussing various air defence systems the pilot may have to face, and for most of these missiles it gives the known, or believed (for some soviet missiles) lateral acceleration. The vast majority of these missiles are not rolling airframe missiles so it would make sense for the average overload to be given for rolling missiles in order to allow the pilot to accurately assess the threat posed by different missiles. Particularly given that the manual provides various tables for comparing missiles, such as the following:

Spoiler

As an example here is the page describing the I-HAWK, it sates the maximum lateral acceleration of the missile is 13 g, in comparison to 20 g for the Stinger. If the 20 g figure was actually the peak overload for the Stinger then the manual would be misleading for the pilot, as it would be implying that Stinger has a far greater overload than the I-HAWK, while in reality the average overload of the two missiles would be the same at 13 g. It therefore makes sense that the 20 g figure would be the average overload of the Stinger, allowing for the pilot to make an accurate assessment of the different threat levels posed by the two missiles. If the 20 g figure for the Stinger was the peak overload as Gaijin claim then you would expect this to be clearly communicated so that the pilot is not mislead as to the missile’s capabilities.

Spoiler

As another example of here is the page for the SA-2 SAM. You can see that it is assessed as 6 - 8g (which aligns with Soviet documentation on the missile).

Spoiler

This Soviet graph shows how many G the SA-2 can pull at each altitude:

Reason #3: Described lethality of the Stinger

My final reason for believing that the Stinger has 20 g average overload is the level of lethality the manual describes for the Stinger. If you look at other missile systems, which have a lateral acceleration in the 8 - 17 g region, they are described in the manual as being able to be defeated by aircraft manoeuvring.

By comparison the section on defeating the Stinger reads:

> The Stinger is most difficult to defeat, but can be negated pre-emptively prior to missile launch. The following countermeasures are assessed to provide some protection against the Stinger:

> a. Flares, one every 2 seconds within an area of known Stinger activity, may be effective prior to missile launch. In a reactive situation, flares should be dropped at the same rate, whilst the aircraft is manoeuvred, to reduce the angle between its flight path and the missile axis.

> b. The firing of AAM, as an end-game tactic, may decoy an in-flight Stinger.

If the Stinger really did have an average acceleration of only 13 g then you would expect the manual to state it can be defeated by manoeuvre like the other missiles with this level of overload. Instead the manual paints a picture of the Stinger being exceptionally hard to defeat with all of the advice focusing on trying to defeat the IR seeker of the missile rather than defeat it kinematically.

I should note that while the manual does describe manoeuvring as part of the process for Stinger, it states that the aircraft should be manoeuvred to “reduce the angle between its flight path and the missile axis”. Aligning your aircraft’s flight path with that of the missile is not something you would do if you were trying to “dodge” the missile. So it sounds like for head on launches the purpose of this advice is to get the missile as close to perfectly head on as possible, to increase the effectiveness of flares (as the aircraft’s IR signature is significantly lower when directly head on); while for tail-on launcher the purposes is to simply try and out run the missile’s limited range.

With that in mind lets look at how other missiles are advised to be dodged.

SA-2 (6-8 g):

Spoiler

SA-7B (10g):

Spoiler

SA-9 (17 g):

Spoiler

I-HAWK (13 g):

Spoiler

You will notice that even the SA-9, with 17g overload, is made to sound significantly easier to dodge than the Stinger. This clearly would not be the case if Stinger was only capable of 13 g average overload.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, let me know what you think.

[Teh0]

Why are Russian standards considered the global standars in WT?

[Morvran]

A lot of Russian/Soviet sources are readily available (USSR Collapse to thank for that) . NATO sources, far less so. Unfortunately in this case. The relevant data for Stinger might be classified, or at the very least. Not publicly available.

That being said, they should never have used IGLA data for Stinger. They are too different.

[SwingfireOP]

Something just occurred to me.

Could gaijins catastrophic lack of understanding of how modern missile control systems work, also be responsible for the dumpster fire that is the control system of most ATGMs?

[Apollo_1641]

That could explain why the TOW is so horribly tedious now.

I gave up on ATGMs since the “La Royale” update

[LeGrandSarrazin]

Correction:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/762218683266236436/997340748661936278/unknown.png

8*3=24

Well, wouldn’t you know it, that goes right along with the 25G overload for Mistral 1
Funny… init

7G was for Stinger, btw
Hence 7*3=21; just below 22G for Stinger

Cheers

[DevilO6]

Well, if all the missiles would fly using bang bang it would explain all the overcorrecting

[Miragen]

And a lot of those sources are also just outright propaganda, so they shouldn’t be blindly taken as fact in the first place.

[Morvran]

Yeah… It scary to think how much in game is modeled based upon propaganda not fact.

[Cpt_Bel_V]

About Russian stuff? ^^"
Too many,… and when it’s not buffed by propaganda charts(alike the MiG-19 being able to supercruise for 2.5 years in the game, and i don’t know if it’s still possible or been fixed), it is artificially buffed by BR (MiG-21F-13// PFM being 9.3 in which BR it have nothing to do,…)

[Hartsy1]

Extremely likely considering the fact that atgms drop after launch id affected by the map terrain, if you fire over flat ground the drop is small, if you fire over a dip in the terrain or a river the missile nosedives… They should have just left them tf alone.

[Segment]

Wow. Same for Igla. 8g maneuvring target with 310 m/s speed. And missile overload only 10G.

[vizender]

I would guess it’s because of the lower speed of the Igla, thus making it have a much smaller turning radius ? All Stinger, Igla and Mistral have somewhat comparable turning radius (unnerfed obviously). Now, with the IGLA being slower, it will have a harder time chasing fast vehicles compared to the other 2

[Catnip007]

Can any bug report be made out of this mess? That is the way to effect change, form up and submit a comprehensive bug report V2

[Catnip007]

Personally I feel @Flame2512 is best qualified to do so given his excellent synopsis.