Radar missiles too opressive, chaffs don't work,

[Morvran]

I dont know about IRL, but In game, I dont think so. But. In the clip you shared (in the F-4) you look right and see the missile coming at you as it has a marker in ARB and you can see its rapidly approaching, in that situation I would have immediately dumped 4 or 5 chaff and then pressed chaff again every 1 second or so (maybe even 2 chaff every second). The closure rate means that the missile would like hit or miss within a few seconds, which it did. You will also know when the missile is defeated by chaff because your RWR should stop screaming at you.

@_Poul_

Oh, and maybe someone can explain to me, why I couldn’t lock on anyone (beside one enemy) in this battle? I sometimes have this situation, where I just can’t get a good lock on anything. I suspect my radar picks up flying enemy missiles? Or perhaps enemy planes were already notching? It’s very confusing sometimes to understand what is going on. Unfortunately in-game tutorials and youtubers shows you perfect conditions, where everything simply works. I sometimes have battles like this too. But no one explains what to do, when conditions are not perfect and something fails for some reason.

One of the biggest thigns to impact whether or not you can lock on is ground clutter. If the target is too low to the ground, then a normal search radar might not be able to find it in the all the noise.

PD radars can find targets within the noise but are dependent on the target moving towards you. Only some radars are good enough to lock on to a target in moving away from you and PD radars dont work for targets moving left/right relative to you.

So If I would hazard a guess. The issue is that the radar simply cant find the target. But next time it happens, share a clip and I’ll see if I can identify the specific reason in that case why the radar couldnt lock.

Yeah… In game or online, guides dont cover everything. I’ve more than a few times submitted a clip and asked for help and gotten some really in depth detailed explanations as to why something did what it did and without that explanation, it looks like a bug. You could probably get a masters degree in War Thunder radars and still not have a clue what is going on half the time.

[Morvran]

Looking specifically at that clip in the F-14A.

It looks like the TWS keeps seeing the missiles fired and not the targets behind them. This is not an uncommon issue, but your best bet in that instance is to try other radar modes and see if they get any better results. Also narrowing the TWS field of view might have helped too. (both width but also the range, targets are well within 30km but you have the radar still set to 90km)

Manual target selection in the radar might help as well, but controls for that are really tricky to set up on M&K. I only use it on my HOTAS

But the moment things were starting to get a bit too close, Id have turned away and just dropped a few chaff as a precaution. Limited chaff is a bit of an issue in the F-14A so I would be inclined to run more like a 20/40 split on CMs and take more chaff.

So going through the clip a bit more second by second:

At 15 sseconds I can see more smoke trails appearing and know that a threat is potentially in the air and I need to do something about it soon. I will assume Im being targetted given the alt you are at.

At 30 seconds I can see contacts are within 25km and closing fast, You still cant get a lock. I would have probably rolled inverted, pulled hard down and back, dropping at least 5 chaff near the end of the maneuver. Afterwards I would have eased the turn and started moving as perpindicular to the missiles as I could. Aim-54s and I think Fakours cant deal with this quite as well as most. I would have also dropped a few more chaff for good measure.

By 45 seconds, the missile was always going to hit you, I dont think there is enough chaff in the world that would have saved you in that instance.

Just to check, you did try cycling through targets right?

But radar combat is hard work, always has been. ARH just make things even more complicated

[themadseventeen]

@BlueRooster57

“not going towards enemies”

I never said that, don’t twist my words.

Not going towards and eating missiles !== not going towards enemies.

[_Poul]

@Morvran

By 45 seconds, the missile was always going to hit you, I dont think there is enough chaff in the world that would have saved you in that instance.

Could you please explain this? If I understand this correctly, your job is to fool the radar inside the missile. So how does it matter if you started evading 10 km or 5 km away from the missile? You still have to fool the same radar.
The only thing I can think of is that the closer the missile is, the bigger radar signature (stronger signal) your plane will have, but the same applies to the chaff, isn’t it?

@Morvran

Just to check, you did try cycling through targets right?

Yes, in one of the tutorials I found info to use “Select Radar/IRST target to lock” button with “Targets cyclic switching of aircraft radar” option set to “Yes”. I actually started using this method yesterday. It usually works great, but sometimes I just can’t get a strong missile lock on anything (like on the video).

I try to send Fakour missiles and then go down, but in this battle I couldn’t even send missiles, which delayed me and well… you saw the result. I usually send missiles from about 40km away.

When everything works fine, I can have good results after just pressing a few buttons (like in tutorials):

Spoiler

So at least I know it can work.

@Morvran

(both width but also the range, targets are well within 30km but you have the radar still set to 90km)

To be honest, I just wanted to send 4 Fakours in this situation. I don’t think this is a big issue to keep the radar at 93 km, because there are no objects behind these planes anyway. So it shouldn’t matter to change the radar distance in this situation back to 37 km. And I usually set 93 km at the beginning of the battle, so I can see enemies at altitude quicker (and know what to expect). I don’t send missiles from 90 km obviously. I also don’t want to switch too many things too often, because it distracts me (keep in mind I’m a newbie).

And when I go down I just use “Radar/IRST beyond/within visual range combat” button to lock on targets, so these settings don’t matter anyway, as I change to a different radar mode. I don’t find cycling through targets a reliable method to lock on specific targets quickly when I use shorter range missile, like R-27R1.

I noticed with my approach I can get good results in downtiers, but usually terrible results in uptiers with this F-14A IRIAF. I’m playing it right now, because it will move up in BR soon, so it’s better to spade it now, while it still has easier matchmaker.

[Thodin]

Its just to complicated. There are too many Phoenixes or Farkours. Ppl are right, F-14 players firing from above always hit. You can fly like 1m high, you will get hit. Multipath needs to be a thing again. It was better in past days, where flying very low was enough to evade this nonsense radar missile spam. Its just too many of them. Also chaffs notoriously don’t work. My Tornado has hundrets of chaffs and I spam them all the time, they do nothing. In contrasts: Even the best IR missiles can be easily spoofed with very few flares.

Its too unbalanced. The whole radar missile mechanic needs to be nerfed. It should only be a thing when you’re high alt. All who don’t want to play this nonsense need to get a safe zone above the ground to dogfight and to go for bases/npcs. LIke 200-300m.

When single players rack up 5 kills by just spamming these buffed Phoenixes, its obvious that this whole mechanic needs a nerf.

[themadseventeen]

@Thodin

Also chaffs notoriously don’t work. My Tornado has hundrets of chaffs and I spam them all the time, they do nothing.

You don’t understand how chaff works. It’s not “a flare for radars”. Chaff is extremely light and loses all of its speed almost instantly. Because it’s effectively standing still radar’s Doppler filter ignores it. You need to drop chaff while you are notching or put a lot of chaff between you and the radar for it to be effective.

[TuxedoBird]

It’s really not complicated at all. I’ll say it one more time:

As soon as you hear the RWR launch alarm go off, turn cold (away from the incoming missile), dive towards denser air, and pop (part of) the absolute metric ton of chaff you get for free on the Tornado.

Additional tips (which every non-noob should know): WAIT UNTIL THE LAUNCH ALARM STOPS BEEPING TO RESUME YOUR ADVANCE, DON’T FLY STRAIGHT TO THE BOMBING TARGETS, FLANK, DON’T GET DESPERATE TO DROP BOMBS, DON’T BRING TOO MANY BOMBS (ONE BASE PER MATCH IS ENOUGH).

It’s not comolicated at all if you don’t act like a zomber. Yes, the Fakours and Phoenixes are very strong and even a bit unbalanced, but the worst part of it is 11.3-12.0 planes seeing 12.3+ matches all the time (literally 9/10 matches) due to the absolute spam of Tomcats and premiums.

Final recommendation: If it’s too much for you, just play a different BR.

[Gunjob]

I need to see some replays of you trying to avoid radar missiles now, please link.

Also let me set out a scenario;

Enemy - F-14a
Target height; 6,000m
Target speed; mach 1.2
Distance; 35km

You - Tornado IDS
Height; 500m
Speed; mach 0.9
Distance; 35km

You look up and see the smoke trail of an AIM-54A Phoenix. What do you do?

[TuxedoBird]

AKA “the gag reel”

[Gunjob]

Well the first replay I watched with an F-14 on the enemy team against their Tornado IDS WTD-61 was to do absolutely nothing.
Flew straight to the base, had ample warning from the RWR, didn’t attempt any maneuverer of any kind, did not dispense chaff.

[TuxedoBird]

Zombering, just as I suspected

[Gunjob]

Replay number 2 they used terrain masking and set themselves abeam to the threat and guess what, didn’t die.

[Morvran]

and with the BR changes coming anyway, MFG, WTD61 and A200 wont even see F-14s anymore anyway. Just a shame the Gr1, ASSTA1 and A200A cant move down to 11.3

[Gunjob]

I mean its pretty easy to prove chaff works, even BOL chaff which is comically nerfed at the minute;
Clowning on R-77’s with the F.3 late and BOL chaff.

Dagger 1, Defending - Tornado F.3 Late - War Thunder

[Morvran]

Yeah, i’ve yet to encounter any meaningful issues (god I want BOL fixed or Phimat) , at least not sicne the new FM on the Tornado (had a few Aim-54s before cause damage in the F3 because I couldnt turn fast enough to fully get into the notch/avoid the splash damage from it hitting the ground but didnt actually get killed by them)

But still… OP doesnt even have to worry about Aim-54s anymore if hes flying the WTD61.

[Gunjob]

Literally every single Phoenix that as got me is my fault.

[Gunjob]

Incoming Pheonix! Lets see what they do!

The answer was, cut afterburner, couple lazy 3-4G turns mostly staying on course to the base, dropped a few flares (no chaff), crashed into the floor;

[Morvran]

So the almost the correct tactics if Aim-54s had an IR seeker :D

[Gunjob]

Phoenix users don’t want you to know this one simple trick.

[Morvran]