You can’t flare optical mode that’s why both techniques are required
If you watch the spookston video I referenced the first minute or so. You’ll watch a heli at 2.5km unable to be locked broadside, even though IRST does. Then a heli further away that it does lock avoids a missile that seemingly bites a flare.
I’ve had mine bite flares without a doubt.
It’s normally fine, but severely limited as an SPAA that like I said. If you had an all Japan or Japan/Isreal team, one jet and/or one heli could dominate the team. They have no ability to have situation knowledge through a radar, and no ability to target things manually so they’re donezo.
It’s normally fine, but isn’t so
First engagement happened against Mi-8 that has MAWs and system started dumping flares as soon as missile launched. It went through dozens of them and still didn’t get fooled.
That helicopter couldn’t be locked in optical mode as it was in front of a mountain. IR seeker on it’s own can fail to lock things at those distances due to shoddy modelling.
As for the helicopter that dodged the missile, I think missile didn’t even track to begin with.
You don’t see the smoke trail of the missile coming at helicopter or it’s flares and launch itself was dodgy.
Considering the smoke trail lasts for 3km+ it should definitely be seen on the footage if it was actually tracking anything properly.
This happens with every MANPAD I’ve used so far, you get a lock then the target breaks LoS but somehow your missile is still locked. If you launch at that moment you’ll observe how missile just continues flying straight without even trying to pull towards the target.
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.
Here’s how WT models it from their devblog.
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.
You can break optical locks by drastically changing the background, also, like flying low so the background is the ground rather than the sky.
Didnt know that, in that case, maybe i’ve defeated a few through that and not through flying low and ducking behind a line of trees
English is not my native language, I use machine translation. But I have a couple of thoughts why Soviet MANPADS use Bang-bang control, first of all, it is possible that the USSR did not have compact powerful power sources capable of simultaneously powering the gyroscope, rudders, electronic control circuit and seeker. Secondly, it is possible that control surfaces based on a powder pressure generator were significantly cheaper to produce, note that such control is used on all Soviet and Russian MANPADS: Strela 2, Strela 2M, Strela 3, Igla, Igla-S and possibly Vebra. For the defense industry, it was important to use old developments so as not to restructure production, for example, for new electric proportional control drives. If I understand correctly, Stingers and other Western MANPADS use electric proportional control drives, unlike the Soviet ones based on gunpowder pressure (the gunpowder charge burns for 5 seconds and creates pressure that controls the rudders through the solenoid valves, deflecting them to the extreme position). Perhaps this is the difference in the real possible overload of Stingers in 20-22G and why they are superior to Soviet-Russian MANPADS. Also, the game does not implement the Stinger homing head for the near UV channel.
Many Russian users do not understand the principle of operation of the stinger’s UV channel, believing that it is only for protection against interference, but as was indicated above in this topic, the UV channel is the main second channel that works on a very similar scheme to the photocontrast method, using UV radiation from the Sun and allows you to capture targets with low or zero IR radiation (they look like black dots in the UV range against the background of the UV sky).
Here is an example of a real terrain in UV and visible conditions:
https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/tasmania-landscape-photography-in-uv-visible-and-ir/
This method has strong advantages in the form of capturing targets with zero IR signature, but like photo contrast, it has disadvantages in case of bad weather - heavy clouds, night, fog, etc. In these cases, the near UV range becomes unavailable for creating UV contrast for targets. Therefore, in theory, aircraft and helicopters can quite easily deceive the Stinger with heat traps at night and in bad weather, even if their IR signature is sufficient for the homing head to capture.
In contrast, if I correctly understood the operating principle of the Igla homing head, the Igla can capture targets in any weather and time of day if it has sufficient IR radiation. Perhaps the Igla IR homing head is less sensitive than the Stinger IR channel, or they are approximately comparable.
I found data on the sensitivity of the IR homing heads of the Strela 2 (9Э46), Strela 3 (9Э45), Igla-1 (9Э418) and Igla (9Э410 = 4,25×10^(-10) W/cm^2) (which is in the game):
But unfortunately I have not come across data on the sensitivity of the IR Stinger.
If you want, I can post a document containing information about all MANPADS starting with the Arrow 2 and ending with the Igla (a table of the homing head sensitivity from it), but it weighs 14.6 MB and the forum here prohibits files larger than 4 MB.
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.
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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
Or using terrain as your background, they can see you but if there’s ground in your background they cannot lock
Easier said than done when it comes to defending against a SAM in a plane
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.
I doubt that is modelled in game.
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