Optical Contrast Mode

As we mentioned in the TAN-SAM-1C dev blog, we’d like to talk about photocontrast mode! This means today we’ll be talking in detail about some of the upcoming improvements to IR missile functionality in War Thunder and what this means for IR missile gameplay.

The technical background of IR seekers

Infrared homing heads are widely used on air-to-air missiles and ground based anti-aircraft missiles. They combine the benefits of using effective missile guidance trajectories, are also cheap and do not irradiate the target with any radiation. On the surface, making the heat source of your enemy the main target for a missile has some key advantages. On the flipside however, it does have some downsides that can be found within the main principle of how a target’s thermal radiation is captured, as the target must emit infrared waves for this to work. The higher the intensity of the radiation, the better. The range at which target lock on and tracking actually works greatly depends on this. In addition to this, a missile going for a heat source can be easily deceived by false sources of infrared radiation, such as flares.

Slower aircraft that have piston and turboprop engines emit a small amount of heat and the radiation from a jet engine is almost invisible from the frontal aspect in many cases. An infrared homing seeker head can detect a target like this at fairly modest distances. The same IR seeker of a MANPADS can capture a small helicopter from a distance of only 2-3 kilometers at most. However at this distance, you’re prone to being shot at quite easily, even by unguided aircraft rockets. Anti-aircraft missiles with an infrared seeker in those particular conditions can often hit a target as it exits from its attack run. However in this case, it relies on someone being there to launch them at this very moment.

The use of photocontrast mode

These shortcomings with the use of IR seekers as part of military air defense were especially relevant in the 1960s, when the development of IR seekers did not yet make it possible to confidently isolate a useful thermal signal from a target in the forward hemisphere. This is when the idea of using the visible wavelength range for target tracking came about. The Strela-1 was one of the first air defense systems to use a photocontrast homing head for targeting. This made it possible to capture and engage targets on opposing courses and ensure the protection of troops even before the target launched an attack. 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.

The use of combined dual and triple-band homing heads helps to smoothen out the shortcomings and makes a missile defense system function in all-weather and in day and night conditions. In difficult weather conditions, against low-flying targets and at night, guidance in infrared mode is used, and when launching from a long distance and against weakly emitting targets, photocontrast mode is used. It is also recommended to use photocontrast mode against targets on a collision course when they use countermeasures, to which the photocontrast channel is less sensitive compared to the infrared one. A dual-band seeker of this kind is equipped on the 9M37M missile system of the Strela-10M2, which is already present within the game. The use of an IR channel made this missile all-weather compatible, whilst the photocontrast channel provides the ability to capture a target and fire at it from long ranges, even exceeding the maximum flight range of the missile.

Photocontrast mode in War Thunder

Within War Thunder, the photocontrast channel will be present on missiles that are a successor to the Strela-1 system. Namely the 9M37M missiles of the Strela-10M2 SAM, as well as on the Japanese Type 93 SAM. With the release of the “Kings of Battle” major update, the Type 81C SAM will also benefit from this improvement. In game, you’ll have the ability to switch between three modes: photocontrast, infrared and automatic, which is enabled by default. In automatic mode, the seeker will perform a lock on in the most appropriate mode. However, you must take into account that after launch, it will not be possible to switch between modes. If the target was locked on in photocontrast mode, but evaded by going lower to the ground, then target tracking will fail and the missile will miss its mark.

You can look forward to these improvements and many others in the upcoming major update “Kings of Battle”! Until then, enjoy your matches and see you soon!

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anything about making manpads better at hitting the target? No because most still are 10-15gs when they should be double or triple that (mistrals especially). It’s only useful against helicopter and gaijin powercreeping the hell out of cas with retarded and guided bombs w/ ccip, dozens of km, missile launch warnings (maw are coming in the near future also), it’s impossible to effectively counter cas. What should be is that spaa should be OP against CaS, not the other way around (especially seeing how cheap powerful cas elements are).

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I agree, I think they should add some kind of stationary air defense (something like a patriot system) in higher br games so cas players need to be more careful. You could also make the „sam site“ act like an base (or sim airfield) so if you bomb it you can decrease its effectiveness. This way cas player will have to attacks the „sam site“ first so they won’t get killed by it. This gives the spaa player more time to effectively destroy the cas planes

The Ozelot should definitely get downtiered after this and Strela / Type 91 go up.
No reason for 9.7 at all.

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So when are Stinger users getting this?

FIM-92K uses a data link that allows an external sensor to acquire a target beyond the acquisition range of the sensor of the Stinger itself. The missile steers towards the target using the data link and acquires the target mid flight.
FIM-92 Stinger | Weaponsystems.net

And when is the maximum g-load of the Stingers getting fixed?

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ozelot has radar slaving missiles if i’m correct. What would be coherent would be -1.0 br to all manpads spaas, especially manpads w/ guns since they get only 4-6 missiles and after are pretty much useless.

So either the strella needs to go up in br, or a NATO equivalent should be added to their missiles, or the NATO equivalents should go down in br. Id prefer the stingers getting their data link and the warhead size changed to it’s actually 6lbs instead of 0.5kg

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How surprising that the solution to the range of MAPANDS that Soviets used was implemented, but not the one used by Western nations 🤔🤔🤔

I imagine the fact that it benefits Japan was just an unfortunate side effect.

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Gaijin, don’t you just leave every other manpad-like system behind!

Stingers datalink, max g overload, IR UV seekers, Mistral acquisition range in front aspect etc.

So many things to fix/adjust

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1205-SDC14009

Hmmmmmmm

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So… What about red tops that were designed for all aspect or SRAAM, also all aspect? Any reason they still haven’t been finished?

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