First off, its aircraft exhaust that you lock onto, not the engine.
Second off, below mach 1, airflow cools.
Third off, choppers rarely have any sort of heat masking (aside from maybe the RAH-66 Comache). The F-117, on the other hand, does. If it were even somewhat easily lockable by IR missiles, then I highly doubt that the only ever downed Night Hawktuah would have been to a radar missile.
you cant pull off conclusions from that because f117’s flied at high altitudes when they were over hostile territory to avoid being shot by such weapons, the missiles had no range to get there thats why they werent shot down. it would be different if they flied low enough where they could have been shot at by ir missiles, but it wasnt like that so your conclusion is pointless.
The F117 at that time was flying at 8000m, no manpads can reach that high, and medium range IR SAMs such as IRST didn’t exist so that’s a moot point. BTW, that’s a valid technique in game : climb.
Tiger heli also has IR reduction, dunno about others
That’s only true for early manpads, not for IIR imager, which in fact do lock on the airframe. As for the airflow, it doesn’t matter, the airframe is still hotter than the sky in the background any way, and even if it wasn’t it can recognize it via contrast, a bit like a TV missile, that’s the point of IIR.
As for early manpads, they can still see the exhaust, since it still exists (and then again, the airframe is hotter than the background).
I’m still flabbergasted some could think a nighthawk couldn’t be locked by a class of missiles that can fire at pick ups in the desert and small watercrafts. Stealth isn’t magic, it’s physics, and its laws are implacable.
If they really lock the airframe rather than exhaust, then yeah, there’s no way in hell they should be locking F-117 from distances, even further than most aircraft in WT.
Because pickups and watercraft have no heat masking, aren’t being fired upon by > > STINGERS < < and aren’t flying 5 miles out. You do know things such as the Javelin have significantly more sensitive seekers than SAMs, right?
the discussion was about manpads, not stingers
mistrals can lock on pickups in the desert (you know, hot background ?)
that one doesn’t even make any sense
Doesn’t matter, they are far far colder than any jet will ever be, heat masking or not
Expect these two to have a similar heat signature.
The B-2 has more engines and even in that image, things like stingers wouldn’t be sensitive enough to lock on.
At the 7 second mark I what I find most interesting. You can only see the exhaust from the engines really besides a slight outline. That being said this it is in a bank and you would not see that exhaust from below.
Both the 117 and the B-2 are subsonic to reduce IR signatures and both use ambient air to cool the exhause the one difference being the 117 has internal fins that help disperse the heat rapidly. While the B-2 angles the airflow into the exhaust to cool it.
Mistral can’t lock on this
or this
but can lock on this
and this
yeah that makes sense (no it doesn’t)
And btw, don’t expect it to get better with 5th generation :
2 things :
the distance here is unknown, i would remind you a manpads only need to see under 10km
I see 2 very bright points, and recognize the shape of the aircraft. Considering the state of my eyes, i would hope an IIR seeker could do better, i therefore don’t see anything unlockable here
The distance of the 2 images you shown is unknown.
You mean the 2 bright spot only visible when you see the top of the aircraft.
singers* can’t.
You can make a pretty good guess based on the pixel count.
Mistrals, and ESPECIALLY > Stingers < aren’t as sensitive as your eyes (in real life anyways). remember, these missiles are decades old, aswell as their seekers. And keep in mind, thermal cameras sucked even harder than normal cameras back then.
This jet in test drive isn’t being locked by stingers from 5.4 mi out despite being very clearly visible to us, and bear in mind, stingers ingame are far more sensitive than stingers IRL.
they actually are worse than irl and gaijin accepted it
in terms of lock range they underperform, as shown by Nike Anax in the previous post
and the shape of the aircraft, which mind you would still be visible in side aspect
“stinger & mistrals” doesn’t even mean anything, comparing a mistral 1’s seeker to a mistral 3’s seeker is like comparing an aim9l/m to an ASRAAM, MICA IR or IRST, the same goes for stinger (although that one may not have IIR on its last version)
The mistral 1 was given with a range of 6km against a jet, and 4km against a heli with thermal reduction, the mistral 3 range is given for 7.5-8km and the distinction between heli and jets isn’t specified anymore. Why ? simply because the limit is now the kinetic energy available, not the seeker
No one even mentions it but the fim-92k with a proximity fuze was made to counter small to medium sized drones. those definetly have nearly non existent heat signatures compared to jet engines and yet can be engaged irl.
in 90% of scenarios, the overperform. There may be a handful of aircraft that Gajin made super cool for some reason, but stingers without a doubt overperform.
nice claim. now its time for you to submit evidence and make a bug report. if you cant ill assume you dont actually have anything major to back your claims.
read this from a technical moderator
