Some questions about Pantsir

[Sternlos]

Lead vs LOS mode?
I have never messed with lead mode, just seemed kinda bad? But is this what I need to use to hide side aspect shots? Anyone flying at around a 90 degree angle or so at virtually any range seems pretty much impossible to hit them even throwing in some manual lead in LOS mode if they are going mach. Is this the use case for it?

IRST/SRC tracking radar?
So IRST seems to give a better lock, but you have to visually find the target, which isn’t too hard and doesn’t set of RWR but the K band search radar will still pings most planes now? Is it worth turning off my search radar and just using track IR and staring at airspawn/checking heli spots? I figure most pilots up here probably are gonna notice the giant smoke plume coming from the small part of the map vics can even be on.

SRC track radar seems to completely go haywire if the target starts launching AGMs and it will switch locks onto them a lot, is this what is happening or am I going crazy? Also obviously because IR track can’t do multi track for shooting down AGMs etc. do I need to immediately swap to SRC track after hitting the plane to do this? I have trouble understanding the conditions for getting the multitrack going, like I can only see the fired AGMs etc. if i have the plane locked up in SRC, can’t seem to individually lock onto say a mav etc, and get them all to pop up.

Like lets say I use IR track to kill a plane that launched AGMs what do I do next? Am I gonna be able to swap modes to SRC and shoot those down, do I lock on the planes corpse? Or can I lock onto the AGMs?

[AlvisWisla]

LOS mode + manual adjustments is the way to go IMO, especially once you have thermals unlocked.

[Sternlos]

So do I have to have something locked to get the TWS effect? Is there no way to just have this on somehow? I’ve spotted things with it that I probably wouldn’t otherwise. For instance I locked and killed an f18, then the TWS thing tracked a heli for me that I had no idea was there painting a box around him.

Also its REALLY hard to tell what is hard locked sometimes when there is like 5 objects in a single space like a plane launching a bunch of AGM, its like a very slightly more thick border on the box and that keeps messing me up.

And is IRST worth using for anything other than trying to kill people in their airspawn? Its getting me or other people killed a lot because I can’t shoot down missiles, and can you use guns to shoot down stuff? Ive never been able to and its kinda annoying to use 6+ missiles on a single kill (plane + AGMS) when you only get 24 in total after rearming, add in misses etc. and you run out fast.

[AlvisWisla]

IR Tracking is worth using for “entirely quiet” launches in LOS mode.
You don’t need to use it though.

I don’t know what you mean by TWS effect as I’ve never done more than one target at a time with anti-air systems myself, that would be someone else’s answer in that regard.

[Sternlos]

TWS thing i mean when you lock a target in regular track mode and you get boxes on everything like sometimes a dozen different ones on the plane, on missiles, on friendlies etc. Like why is that tied to being locked onto something in the first place?

[jjnmr]

I usually stick to LOS mode most of the time. For high-altitude, long-range passive CAS (where the target is far and not reacting much), I switch to Lead mode it helps with hitting fast movers at a distance. But when it’s aggressive, close-range CAS, I prefer LOS combined with the cannon. It’s faster and more direct in close engagements."

Got this from GPT →

Lead vs LOS (Line-of-Sight) Mode

TL;DR: Use Lead mode against fast-moving, side-aspect targets. It calculates proper lead automatically, which LOS does not.

LOS Mode:

• It’s “dumb fire with guidance” — the missile flies exactly where your crosshair is pointed.
• You’re responsible for manually estimating lead, which becomes nearly impossible at high speeds and oblique angles (e.g., Mach 1.5+ at 90°).
• Great for head-on, hovering helis, or predictable paths.
• But… terrible for high-speed perpendicular passes (your complaint about missing side-aspect targets).

Lead Mode:

• Automatically calculates lead based on target speed, angle, and vector.
• Perfect for those Mach 1+ 90° fly-bys you mentioned.
• Not good at dodging or weaving targets, as it can be a bit “laggy” or miss small adjustments.
• Also more vulnerable to countermeasures since it’s tracking more predictively.

✅ When to use Lead Mode:

• Side aspect targets (especially fast movers).
• When you want to hit someone flying laterally across the map at range.
• When you’re not confident manually adjusting lead in LOS mode.

---

📡 IRST vs SRC Tracking Radar

IRST:

• Passive — doesn’t trigger RWR.
• Needs visual/manual acquisition (point the crosshair and press lock).
• More stable and precise lock in some conditions, especially in cluttered radar environments.
• Cannot track multiple targets (AGMs, planes, etc.) at once.
• Excellent for sneaky kills, especially heli hunting or airspawns.

SRC Radar Tracking:

• Active — sets off RWR.
• Susceptible to clutter, chaff, and gets confused with incoming AGMs (which is why your lock switches).
• Can multi-track, meaning it can track both the plane and its ordnance like AGMs/Mavericks/etc.

✅ Turn off search radar?

• Yes, it’s often smart to turn off your search radar (K band) unless you’re hunting.
• The search radar alerts enemies with RWR.
• With it off, only your IRST (passive) is running, allowing you to silently acquire and engage.

---

🚀 AGM Defense & Multi-Track Use Case

The issue you’re facing:

• You lock the plane with IRST.
• The plane launches AGMs at you.
• You now want to shoot down the AGMs… but can’t see or lock them because IRST can’t track them.

What’s happening:

• You need SRC Track Radar active to see and engage AGMs, GBUs, or Mavericks — IRST won’t cut it.
• If you’re in IRST, the system can’t detect or switch to the incoming missiles.
• Switching from IRST → SRC after the AGMs are inbound may be too late if you’re not quick.

So what should you do?

If you’re using IRST and a plane fires AGMs:

1. Immediately switch to SRC tracking (tap the mode toggle keybind).
2. Try to get a radar lock on the AGMs — they should appear if your SRC radar is still focused in that direction.
3. Once you lock one, you can cycle through (if multitrack is enabled) or manually lock and shoot.

Can you lock the AGMs directly?

• Only in SRC Radar mode.
• If AGMs are flying at you, you’ll often only see them if you already had the plane locked before it died. They can become “track ghosts” if the plane is gone.
• The Pantsir doesn’t allow you to cycle through “unassigned” radar contacts like some other SAMs do.

---

🧠 Summary Flow:

Scenario	Best Mode
Plane flying straight at you	LOS or IRST
Plane doing a side-aspect flyby	Lead Mode
You want to sneakily kill helis or jets	IRST (with search radar OFF)
Plane fires AGMs	Switch to SRC immediately after launch
You want to shoot AGMs	Must use SRC Tracking Radar

[Necronomica]

@Sternlos

Lead vs LOS mode?

Lead mode is useful for helicopters, attack drones and missiles/bombs on their way to you, not much else.

LOS mode is for anything that might maneuver effectively and try to dodge.

@Sternlos

Anyone flying at around a 90 degree angle or so at virtually any range seems pretty much impossible to hit

You can manually lead the missile here to make it lose less energy on the way, and if they are within 5 km it’s almost required as the missile otherwise doesn’t have time to get up to speed enough to turn and keep up, try firing a fair bit Infront of them and then slowly aim more and more towards the target, you can see how far the missile has flown on the radar hud to know if you need to speed up the aiming or slow it down a bit :)

@Sternlos

IRST/SRC tracking radar?

IRST is mostly useful if the target is really far away. 13+ km, at that point its worth it to not give warning as they then don’t maneuver to dodge and you save a lot of missile energy, anything closer and the radar tends to get a better lock and hold it once they release countermeasures.

@Sternlos

if i have the plane locked up in SRC, can’t seem to individually lock onto say a mav etc, and get them all to pop up.

If they show up as their own “TWS” targets (I don’t know how to better explain it, they get their own little green box around them) you are tracking them, you can switch target with the key bind “Select radar/IRST target to lock” and any fired missile will keep flying towards the previously locked target. If you go out of lock mode though all of the locks disappear and all the missiles stop tracking.

The above cannot be done in IRST mode, you have to use the Radar to multi track.

[Sternlos]

Finally had the thing happen to me I’m talking about, I launch at a Heli, he’s firing missiles the track gets pulled off the heli and goes for the missile at the worst moment and I miss, so im not going crazy. Is this just something I have to deal with?

Also thanks for all the help everyone its appreciated.

@jjnmr

You need SRC Track Radar active to see and engage AGMs, GBUs, or Mavericks — IRST won’t cut it.

So I should be able to lock missiles fired from a plane I never locked up? If I cant its just the radar or player issue?

Also I’ll try out lead mode for those side aspect shots and see if it works thanks, was thinking that but its not too often a situation I run into anyways.

@Necronomica

If you go out of lock mode though all of the locks disappear and all the missiles stop tracking.

Ya I have a bad habit of dropping lock after killing a plane/heli, and it seems when I do that I can’t reacquire the stuff they launched, at least it seems that way.

[Necronomica]

You should still be able to lock missiles on their own without having locket the plane first, it is a bit harder though, not sure why. Seems to be easier in third person mode as well and using the “Select radar/IRST target to lock” in third person to select what you think is an AGM before locking it.

[SFmerc]

Personally I hate that irst mode in pantsir.
It wobbles sometimes so much that I think it’s on meth or something.
And also big downside compared to flakrad is that it doesnt show speed, and distance at all in it. 1
TWS is also a bugged on pantsir , so many times I got lock on helo or plane and something flyes near locked target , no matter is it missile, bomb, jet or even scout drone and then it goes after that.

[jjnmr]

@Sternlos

So I should be able to lock missiles fired from a plane I never locked up? If I cant its just the radar or player issue?

Yes, you can lock onto missiles (AGMs/bombs) even if you never locked the plane that fired them. Try using radar lock in third-person view and aim near where you think the missile or bomb was launched. Then switch to scope view and use the ‘select radar target’ key to manually cycle between the AGMs or bombs. Once you’ve locked one, switching to another won’t break guidance — the first missile will continue tracking automatically."

I’ll try to make a short video when I have time.

[Sternlos]

Thanks gamer.

Anyone have tips for fighting typhoons? I’ve ran into 2 that just sideclimb and laugh at my launches wile slinging a million brimstones. Like a 45 degree angle, trying to lead my shoots in LOS mode I just can’t hit them when they are ~15km away.

Also sometimes I get overwhelmed by this stuff

Spoiler

Somewhere in this mess an f15 threw a gbu at me and there just no way im seeing that there.

[Necronomica]

Yeah, no. Anything over 13km is going to be hard to hit but still possible, anything 15 km or more it’s one turn and the missile does snail maneuvers and misses 95% of the time. At that point i turn off the radar and hide behind buildings if there are any, if there aren’t then i just try to shoot down the AGM’s to get the RP and SL from that before i explode.

Best way to differentiate between munition and plane is to keep track of the speeds the track moves at, if it’s almost constant towards you it’s likely a missile or bomb, if it changes to go away from you or at almost no speed at all towards you then it’s most likely the plane.

[jjnmr]

A good Typhoon or Rafale pilot is scary — especially when multiple spawn at once. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and that’s one of the Pantsir’s biggest weaknesses. The Pantsir is amazing, but without air superiority, CAS will break through. That’s why you still need one or two teammates to jump into planes. Even if they don’t get a kill, firing a few Fox-3s will force the enemy on the defensive

@Sternlos

Somewhere in this mess an f15 threw a gbu at me and there just no way im seeing that there.

Try lock the plane, fire a missile, then switch selected targets — it’ll guide itself. Move away after that, especially if it’s a dumb bomb

[Sternlos]

Think it was a jdam, I locked him for about 2 seconds and never saw a box for it, maybe he fired it before I locked him?

Is there a way to easily navigate server replays without just fast forwarding? Client replay seems to lack a lot of stuff. It would be real helpful if whenever something happened and im just clueless to go look exactly what was fired, when, what i was doing, etc. and obviously if I could clip that it would be a lot easier to ask for help what to do and what I did wrong.

Looking at client replays there is a ton of stuff missing from my PoV and it doesn’t show launches etc.

But from my understanding with server replays I just have to fast forward and I can’t rewind and have to do it all over again etc. and its a bit much.

[jjnmr]

@Sternlos

Also I’ll try out lead mode for those side aspect shots and see if it works thanks, was thinking that but its not too often a situation I run into anyways.

Not to mention, i think the Pantsir radar works like a pulse-Doppler radar. I tried this in a custom match and had a hard time locking onto planes flying perpendicular, and sometimes the radar lost track.

@Sternlos

Think it was a jdam, I locked him for about 2 seconds and never saw a box for it, maybe he fired it before I locked him?

Try using the Radar Search Mode 360x30. As I mentioned earlier, you don’t need to lock onto the aircraft to track incoming munitions, such as bombs or AGMs.

@Sternlos

Is there a way to easily navigate server replays without just fast forwarding? Client replay seems to lack a lot of stuff. It would be real helpful if whenever something happened and im just clueless to go look exactly what was fired, when, what i was doing, etc. and obviously if I could clip that it would be a lot easier to ask for help what to do and what I did wrong.

Set the interval in replay mode. Keep in mind that replay mode can sometimes be buggy

[Sternlos]

I think thats only for client side replays. Actaully im not even sure server replays have what I want. I want to see AGMs as they are flying and when they get launched, etc. Ill check later. Kinda like how replays work in ARB shows all the missiles flying.

[Sternlos]

IDK gamers I just get bullied in this thing every match, sure I can kill braindead CAS players, but I’d say about half know what they are doing and don’t let themselves get easily hit, and a qaurter do stuff like this. Just one example but it happens nearly every match. Not the same situation, but pretty similar.

https://files.catbox.moe/3z4t4f.mp4

I have no idea how to combat this, and this was his last hill peak were he snipes me with zunis. Every time he peaked my radar was basically useless, every lock was done visually, radar seems to almost never pick up stuff before I do with my eyes. The pantsir is so slow its painful, I had an absolute blast playing the 2s6 just because it actually could move when it needed to. I was playing this corner, I had a little alcove I could have moved into here but not in the pantsir. So situations like this I just have to hide and ignore these guys? And just let them rape my team? People that say this thing is an 18km death bubble have some severe case of skill issue going on I swear.

The only options I can think of is

1. Keep sending out missiles raw towards that mountain range and pray he peaks when one is already halfway there and the guess where he would peak was close enough.
2. Just hide

Other thing I run into a lot is players behind behind terrain just waiting for you to launch, and the second you do they just zoom over you and drop bombs. A couple games ago i launch on a drone in goldmine, about 5 seconds later a japanese f5u just hones in the origin of the smoke trail and delivers me some 500 pounders.

SPAA is already unfun enough to play I don’t think any SPAA I’ve played recently was fun besides the 2S6, and the 8.0 ZSU, and of course all the gepards are fun. But everything else was just complete dogwater where you are a bad player killer and food for good ones.

I have a feeling these new SPAA are going to be the same thing, fat immobile sitting ducks that get danced on by players like this every match, or helplessly killed near spawn by tanks. It will be really interesting to read the feedback when the patch hits, I assuming its going to be a bunch of players that never faced 12.0-13.0 CAS in SPAA and get absolutely blasted every match. The difference in skill and just capability of the planes you face at the 10.0-11.0 bracket is completely different than 12.0+.

So idk do I just have to hide in the pantsir and wait for people to make mistakes and not take fights? If thats the case I just don’t think thats gonna be fun, 5 minute sessions where im just hiding in a hole waiting for CAS to fly over if they ever do while they sit on the edge and just rape my team?

[Sternlos]

Was able to get a video from a server replay with the weird lock stuff im talking about going on

https://files.catbox.moe/o72o99.mp4

You can see when he fires an AGM my lock gets pulled off the plane and I have to fight the radar trying to pull the missile over to the plane while it keeps trying to drag me to left towards the missile that was fired. When I try to cycle targets it does a gigantic overcorrection and at that point its hopeless to hit anything so I find its better to just fight it like in this clip.

Should I just cycle and hope that automatic guidance will hit the plane? Or am I doing the right thing by just not touching anything and fighting the pull from being locked onto the wrong thing?