Granted I only play air occasionaly, but
The Yak 38 has rear aspect only R-60s, meaning Yak 38 has to manuevre itself into position behind the enemy aircraft to be able to get a lock.
And yak 38 manuevring is, well…lets just say yak 38 sits at 9.3 with 4x R-60s for a reason.
It’s the best Fox-2 in the game. In sim and ground battles it is an invisible missile which puts it in a league of its own by default. Its IRCCM mechanism is also effective at all ranges and makes it virtually immune to being defeated accidentally by periodic flares or flares deployed against third party threats. In order to defeat the 9M, the opponent has to both realize that a 9M is inbound and drop everything that they’re doing to defeat it. That’s a tall order amidst the chaos of a 16v16 furball. That’s why the 9Meta is the best Fox-2 in the game.
Than you everyone for the input.
How SARH missiles such as AIM-7 series work is:
Radar tracks a target.
CW signal is sent out by the radar, (there are other guidance mode but we will keep it simple)
Since seeker may not see its target, missile must be able to lock on after launch (most of the AIM-7 are carried in semi- recessed launcher, such as F4E or Tornado, so missile must be able to lock on despite seeker having no line of sight)
The radar input the targets Doppler frequency to the seeker.
Missile is launched
Missile seeker uses a narrow band to filter out unwanted signal
Missile sweeps its speed gate over the designated Doppler frequency
Lock on is achieved (either frequency or phase lock loop)
The main issue in game is due to saturation of targets, in the designated Doppler frequency, there can be multiple target frequency overlap. (Depending on how narrow the search band is)
Obviously a case by case basis should be determined. This is a massive simplification as I don’t even consider angle tracking.
As such, when firing a missile, it may not lock the player’s intended target.
However for long range firing, the target Doppler frequency would be stable and the search band will be small, a 90 degree turn is likely NOT an intended behavior. Reports on that is welcomed.
I explained in another post why CW missiles don’t always obey the radar lock, imagine it’s like a heat seeker but instead of heat it sees speed inside the radar CW cone that is created on launch
the 90/180° turns usually are caused by sudden change in speed and direction or a notch that causes a over correction to the point that the missile seeker can’t see the target anymore, since sparrow family don’t have DataLink until 7P block 2 when the seeker can’t see the target illuminated anymore it is basically a dead missile, to mitigate the dead missile problem gaijin extended the break lock time of the 7F and 7M to increase the time the missile can just fly dead in case the target can be seen again by the seeker head later on as you can see on Guided Weapons Datasheet the maximum lock break is even greater than R-24R that has inertial navigation but of course since the missile don’t have datalink nor inertial navigation on those launches where the seeker can see the enemy plane(cause he is notching for example) only for short bursts of time the missile can easily overcorrect itself to be out of route
This i need examples
this is more related to ping since it can take a small time for the between you unlocking a target and the server computing the unlock and the signal wave stop flying(since in the same way you don’t close a tap and the water vanish the signal will just run out of energy but it still be in the air for a couple of miliseconds) so it can track something even without lock for a couple of seconds(usually not more than 1~2 after lock break)
obs: This is all based on my experience and the experience from people who play with me, you don’t need to take all as absolute truth but can use this info as a path for testing and experimenting what you want to know
obs²: imo gaijin could just move all 12.7 planes to 13.0 and move all F-15’s to 13.0 and give them the 7P
Actually for long range/ medium range firing, this is not an intended behavior, against a constant speed target with a constant heading, A narrow search in the Doppler frequency should result in lock on against the intended target.
Reports on this are welcomed
Thanks for joining the discussion!
I feel confident to say that (most) people are aware of these things:
And dont have problem with that.
Issue is with cases where missile does 90° degree turn even if there are optimal conditions for tracking the target, or similiar cases such as AIM-7F transforming into air to ground missile while tracking target at high alt under ideal conditions.
https://wiki.warthunder.com/Knowledge_Base
Whenever those issue happens, take a screenshot using the in game methods (the file name should start with “shot ……” )
and get the clog and replay and submit a report, I will take a look.
I will start trying to be better about this. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking of the scientific aspect and recording my observations, when I’m trying to do my best against other players. Taking the time to record the issue is something I think about later on 🤦.
I really appreciate you coming into this discussion with the information provided. Breaking down the technical performance in the game is helpful to understand the situation. It does make sense that in a highly sense environment there is enough noise to confuse these sensors.
The issue is still definitely present in highly ideal situations unfortunately (which I need to get recorded). I’d say 10-15km head on engagements without any attempts to avoid shouldn’t be a miss in pretty much any situation. This is when it is the most frustrating to see the missile suddenly take on a life of its own and make extreme course corrections.
@anyone else with more incidents please chime in with any recorded evidence.
Problem I have, is that it’s almost impossible to see if it’s doing anything whacky in SB, but I am keeping an eye out
This is where I’ve had the best luck so far (when IFF works 🤣). Sometimes I use the missiles BVR to get an idea of where the target actually is. Actually I think in sim I’ve only seen this issue twice now? ARB I see it very frequently.
Someone might have already said this but;
I’m pretty sure the sparrow currently has lackluster performance due to slow acceleration and speed bleed making getting to higher speeds to pull those Gs quite hard. Additionally now that we are facing faster and more agile aircraft it feels like they suddenly suck now, but I think it’s been like this for a long time. Had my sparrows dodged by a 104 a year ago once if I recall
From reading various threads here on the forum and on Reddit, it looks to have been noticed right around 7 months ago (July). The complaints have gotten progressively worse but there hasn’t been much documentation of the issue which is a problem. It’s talked about in A LOT of the matches I go into. I try to direct people with the issue to the big report section and the forum. I don’t think a lot of people honestly care enough to do so or just get distracted.
Yeah, surprisingly, SB does seem a tad more stable in this regard. Though I do have the odd shot that misses when I think it probably should have hit, but because replay causes me to CTD for SB matches. I never go back and check
that’s the problem of the majority of this community, they love to complain, throw a bias here and a op there and boom ecstasy, but when it’s time to collect documentation and open a Proper bug report they just leave, don’t even try on the best case, on the worst case is the rivers and rivers of bugreports that are basically “Me nation strong, dev dumb, buf nation unga bunga” instead of a proper complain, hell even about this same issue on sparrow that i decided to start collecting stuff and come across this post on forum i saw a report that was basically “Sparrow can’t track the enemy” and that’s it
Locked someone in a training room, and the missile just avoided the lock and went after someone else. This was in my f16 Aj, and i was firing Aim 7f sparrows
the other plane was in the same frequency and faster turning into the target for the missile, if you had unlocked and re-locked the missile would have fixed itself going for the new target
The thing is that there is bias towards russia because of the R27 seeker that should not be that powerful but i say we wait until we get fox 3’s and see if gaijin does the funny bias thing (as far as I am aware the Amraam and R77 is very close in performance)
My brother in warthunder, except for some diferences in PID(all except the integral term limit), the Doppler gate search range(AIM-7F/M have a bigger value), they have “almost”* the same seeker, the diference being 7F/M are better since the seeker has a way better range(40~45 km or 21.5~24.3 nm) compared to 27R/ER(25~30 km or 13.5~16 nm), what makes the missile good is the inertial navigation that can make it be on track to the last target while unlocked, and the datalink that can give mid course correction to the missile even when the target is outside the seeker range
*edit: remember that every SARH missile on warthunder is coded as a inversed monopulse seeker as a post on the old forum explained why the devs did it
It’s more that for a few particular topics, we either get told;
That things are functioning as intended.
They won’t be changed due to balance, or can’t due to engine limitations.
To pound sand.
Or they simply never get actioned.
That or they just misinterpret the sources / report and do what they want.
It’s really not that hard to find examples just ask @MythicPi about the AIM-54 or AN/AXX-1 TCS
and @MaMoran20, about radar performance in general.
or Myself about the AGM-65’s / TOW-2B’s performance.
The unintended target was probably approaching at similar velocity when you obtained the lock. When multiple targets are approaching your PD lock at similar speeds, the missile in game basically treats it as one big signal and targets the center of that return.
As you and the other planes maneuvered, the stronger signal came from the unintended target based on the relative velocities. So as that centroid dissolved, the stronger signal came from the thing you werent trying to hit.