That helicopter being in front of a mountain has no impact. Or at least it should have no impact. They use contrast to optically track since it’s not AI discerning what’s in front of it. That’s a dark heli against a light background. The bread and butter of an optical tracker, I work with this first hand.
The IR/EO modeling are both bad, and ties in to what I said. There’s a document on here showing cheap old disposable stinger could track at 7km I’m pretty sure. These are woefully underpowered and won’t do anything unless people are dumb enough to come near the field. Which neither a heli or a jet needs to do in order to provide effective CAS.
These are just quite assured kills against the idiots.
They still need other SPAA. Which is why I use the example that if it was an all Japan and isreal team they’d have no answer to CAS and Helis. They can work, but they work because of JustinPlays type people.
I will watch more closely the next time a missile doesn’t hit and check replay to see if it chased a flare or not, because I have had them in the effective range and they missed. Next time it happens I’ll investigate after and see.
A photocontrast channel also has its own drawbacks to consider. The target can only be engaged during the day and in clear weather conditions, and the background behind the target must be uniform.
If Stingers could lock helicopters at 7km most of the early ones would be rendered useless or Stingers would move up in BR.
If latter was true, then they’d frequently face helicopters with 5km+ ATGMs and MAWs that would allow them to hide from slow Stingers pretty easily.
Stingers can’t win in any scenario.
I recreated the scenario that most likely happened in that Spookston video. I had no LoS to the target but I was allowed to launch a missile. It looked like it’s tracking for the first few seconds then it exploded on it’s own.
I suspect that the most advanced seekers at the moment are in the Mistral 3 and Type 91 Kai MANPADS, they both have an IR CCD matrix, possibly with complex filters for comparison and image conversion by scale - as the missile approaches the target, the scale of the IR image on the matrix increases and the internal microprocessor must, using certain algorithms, enlarge the image from the one recorded in memory at the time of the seeker launch and compare it with the one available at the moment. For example, at the time of launch, the Type 91 Kai records an IR photograph from the pixels in the matrix in memory and then, as it approaches the target, casts heat spots (IR traps) from the center of mass of the aircraft/helicopter itself. I do not understand this in any way, but I think these seekers have the greatest sensitivity among all IR seekers due to the area of the matrix itself and the possibility of primary summation of IR radiation over the entire area of the matrix at the time of the MANPADS launch.
The Webra seeker is most likely just a combination of the Stinger and Igla seekers, no visible or IR CCD matrix, the Russian defense industry will hardly be able to afford to use expensive CCD matrices for MANPADS.
The type 81 uses the same system as the strela, if both are fired in IR mode they both can be flared and if they’re both fired in OPTICAL mode they cannot, the only way to dodge these in optical is to either physically dodge it or situate yourself in a way where ground is behind you. What I mean by that is if the sam is looking at you your background needs to be ground like a hill or mountain so the optical mode cannot lock or track
I suspect that the game has an incorrect capture system. In reality, the Type81 missile flies according to a firing solution calculated using radar data, then during the flight, the missile’s onboard automation decides which channel to use as a priority, the optical or IR channel, the remaining channel is used as a backup to protect against interference. But with such a design, the seeker has a big drawback - bad weather/night or shooting in the clouds, the missile automatically loses the optical channel. And like the Stinger, it easily goes to IR traps in bad weather.
Type 91 (early version) most likely also does not have a channel selection, everything is done automatically.
What I mean is, unless they’re in ir mode the optical can’t lock an aircraft with something in the background unless it’s clear sky, so yes you can hide behind a mountain or hill to dodge it or just stay in front of the said terrain because if the terrain is in the seeker fov behind you it can’t lock in optical mode
Show him 65D’s lock range of a moving target in test drive.
I tried with 65G and got a lock from 9km first time of asking, didn’t even try further away as 9km is already much further than claimed 6km. I guess 65D should act the same.
