Mode 2 Brimstones

[Morvran]

THIS IS COVERING MODE 2! NOT MODE 3!

Responses such as

@Smin1080p_WT

Missiles are launched in an area and home in on any target within that area, including allies. Target acquisition occurs over a large area. Brimstone cannot discriminate in many cases and can destroy allies.

Are totally and completely irrelevant to this suggestion, the above is covering MODE 3.

MODE 2 is a MITL mode for guiding Brimstones onto a specific target. If you kill an allie with MODE 2 Brimstones, then you would have killed them with ANY Fire-and-Forget weapon that we have had in-game for years.

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Within this major update, we are seeing a new Man-in-the-Loop mechanic being added to many top tier AGMs that will give them a limited form of Lock-on-after-Launch ability, a mechanic that has been previously stated as the “primary” reason as to why Brimstones would not be added with any form of Fire-and-Forget modes of operation.

@Stona_WT

The primary reason is that this seeker utilizes the “lock-on after launch (LOAL)” mode, this mode allows the weapon to be fired in the general area of a target without needing any actual precision from the operator, who can remain at long range in complete safety.

We feel weapons that can be used outside of the direct line of sight of the target without needing any preliminary reconnaissance or direct user targeting are not currently workable for the game. Weapons such as Brimstone, AGM-114L cause a particular problem and similarly to other ATGMs that have lock after launch modes like the Spike and AJ.168 will not have such abilities in the game.

For the record AJ168 and Spike now have LOAL

And yet, they have continued to refuse any and all possibilites of adding any form of Fire-and-Forget to the Brimstone because it would be too powerful to be added to the game currently, which is quite frankly, rediculous.

The Brimstone has the perfect mode of operation that falls within the scope of the newly proposed mechanic. Mode 2

This mode makes use of both the Laser and the on-board seeker to look onto a marked target.

How I would propose this addition to work.

1. Fire the Brimstone as normal towards a target location either via map-marked target point or via the Targeting pod.

2. Mark the desired target with the laser.

3. When the missile enters approximately 9km it locks onto the desired target (This could be easily limited in the same way as only being the last fired missile)

This allows the pilot to then dis-engage and defend against the inevitable incoming swarm of SAM missiles, something that they cannot easily do at the moment because they must maintain laser spot until impact.

Given both the short range nature of the Brimstone 1, the shorter lock range compared to most FnF weapons and the fact that you need Line-of-sight of the target and not the missile, would actually render the Brimstone 1 weaker than any of the current weapons with MITL, these weapons can be fired at a target point from their maximum kinematic range via the map mark function and so long as you keep the weapon in line-of-sight, and not necessarily the target, you can select a target for it to lock onto and track.

This proposal for Mode 2 implementation would also eliminate the concerns regarding Teamkilling, as it would be no different to any other Fire-and-Forget weapon. Don’t fire at teammates, and you won’t kill them.

Concerns regarding quantity carried is also irrelevant, given the number of Spice-250s carried by the Gripen E and the amount of GBU-53s that can also be carried. Likewise this proposed mechanic still limits the Tornado and Typhoon to largely engaging one target at a time, not being able to fire at many targets at once, which still leaves it far weaker than said equivalents.

The only final concern would be regarding smoke, which is already mitigated via IOG and large warheads such as found on the KH-38MT, but it would be trivial to make all smoke contain chaff and block MMW seekers such as Brimstone, in the same way that all smoke blocks IR signatures despite likely not being historically accurate for all smoke. Weapon interception has also reached an all new effectiveness with the Pantsir SM-SV and heavily mitigates concerns regarding “lack of counter”. Gaijin is already limiting this new mechanic artificially for the sake of balance and not adding it to ground vehicles at all. I fail to see why the Brimstone must be 100% accurate or not added at all.

Not too mention that Smoke would still block the laser required to designate the FnF target

The current status quo cannot remain for Brimstone carriers. As is, Brimstones are almost entirely worthless to actually ever use and yet force the Tornado GR4 and SLE to be at 12.3 instead of a more appropriate BR such as 11.3/11.7 in GRB. Continued Artificial nerfing of the Brimstone because of made up reasons is just unfair and despite the fact that we now have weapons with abilities exceeding this proposed version of Brimstone, the devs are unlikely because for some reason they consider Brimstones as being super weapons that must be restricted. To such a degree that we don’t even have SAL versions of the later Brimstone models or Spear-3 which would again, be downgrades to more than a few top tier AGMs already in-game

Would you like to see Mode 2 Brimstones in-game?

• Yes
• No

[Rzi4628-live]

this would be an amazing addition

[Smin1080p_WT]

Hello.

The MITL mechanic introduced in this major is not connected to the type of targeting that Brimstones feature. MMw is very different to the operational uses we have introduced to missiles this major update with the MITL feature and their aspect of LOAL is not the same as the concerns still raised by Brimstone. Mainly:

• Missiles are launched in an area and home in on any target within that area, including allies. Target acquisition occurs over a large area. Brimstone cannot discriminate in many cases and can destroy allies.

• There are significant gaps in the ability to evade these missiles. Regular smoke screens don’t provide coverage from its radar. Only some specific smoke screens with chaff reflectors, but they’re experimental and very limited.

• We have a “sterile” jamming environment; objects on the map that would actually disrupt lock-on have no effect on the radar seekers of missiles.

This is also why we don’t allow anti-radar missiles to be launched using coordinates and locked on in flight, as there’s a high chance of hitting allied units.

As such, the conditions and primary reasons for why MMw and the other modes of Brimstone have not yet been introduced and will not be introduced anytime soon in conventional battles.