@_Adrien94 Appears that there are multiple models of the Fakour, the initial ones being essentially a Shalamcheh shoved into the AIM-54A frame. At least, according to the Iranian news sources.
https://iranpress.com/content/35720/fakour-air-to-air-missile-achievement-iranian-creativity
A later iteration was supposed to be fully actively radar guided. Not sure if it’s in production or not.
Battery life is sufficient. Why would the missile have a hard time hitting a maneuvering target? Its motor has burned out and traveling near Hypersonic when it enters the terminal phase unless launched in ACM Active.
You can perform all the maneuvers in the world if the missile is Pitbull and Mach 4.5 and RWR warns, its already too late to do anything. This was a great fear and reported by the Iraqis.
Additionally, a missile is most maneuverable the period right after its motor burns out. As long as it maintains its energy in which the Aim54 is known to do and designed to do. The missile is most deadly in this phase. The aim54s platform is designed with high-speed maneuverability in mind.
The tracking of the radar and fire control was very good and should be much better in game. You even conceded that.
No, that one is based on the performance of the missile. The maximum limit of 125nm is due to battery life. It still has sufficient energy (albeit already subsonic) to hit a fast high alt and head-on target at around 150nm. It won’t be hitting maneuvering targets from 100nm.
Battery life is what limits range on most early fox-3 missiles.
That simply isn’t true at all. Missile isn’t THAT maneuverable, with sufficient warning it’s very dodge-able. Especially if you’re not in the sweet spot where it’s maneuvering at maximum G forces.
Typically when you state “wrong” you should come prepared with some basis for your rebuttal.
interesting I will look more into it and change my opinion if be the case
If you have a copy of outsiders view of the awg-9 / Phoenix weapon system it’s a good reference point but has some littered misinformation. Apparently there are some ads from Grumman as well as Hughes discussing the battery life and range figures somewhere.
When the aim7P Will come to f14?
The AIM-7P will only come to F-14D, if fired from earlier models it must be fired as “AIM-7MH” configuration which doesn’t support it with datalink or inertial guidance… so would do nothing more than AIM-7M.
Was comparing loft profiles of missiles in-game and noticed the AIM-54 still has an atrocious “target elevation” value of -7.5deg, which seems to largely invalidate its lofting unless its manually lofted and TWS guidance is forfeited in exchange for hoping inertial guidance will be enough.
Reason I looked into this is the new Spike ER, which if none of you have seen fired, lofts AGGRESSIVELY, unlike all other missiles in-game that “loft”.
AIM-54 loft values:
PARS 3 LR (blue) and Spiker ER (red):
AGM-114 Hellfire (all are the same):
From my understanding, the “Target Elevation” is the max angular separation between the missile and the target. This is why the Spike ER drops on the heads of targets (-40 deg) as does the PARS 3 LR (to a lesser degree) (-25 deg), but the Hellfire and AIM-54 all loft rather meekly before ducking down and taking a quasi direct trajectory (-15 deg and -7.75 deg respectively).
Itd be interesting to see how the Hellfire and AIM-54’s perform in their respective roles if they lofted more aggressively instead.
The loft issue with the AIM-54 also poses an interesting conundrum, do you;
a) Guide the missile to target as much as possible using TWS, sacrificing loft, and therefore speed, range and energy in exchange for being able to more accurately account for target maneuvers?
or
b) Free launch the missile at an optimal 45 deg manual loft with little to no TWS guidance to maximize kinetic energy while relying entirely on the target not changing course substantially enough for the the missile to miss?
The issue with high target loft elevation is that it causes misses and issues worse than what it has already. It’s adapted for air to ground missiles specifically in the game. I was certain they were going to focus on improving lofting sooner, but they didn’t.
Is it even feasible that the AIM-54C incorporated this tech at introduction? It was produced from '82 if I recall. I think NCTR wasn’t seriously even discussed until the late 90s?
You can’t manually loft it. Angle for launching is too small and the Phoenix drops and stays inactive for a couple of seconds.
NCTR was introduced in 85’ to the F15C’s APG-63, 54C came in service in 86’. Both were made by Hughes. Perhaps there was a cross over during development? I honestly don’t think so, haven’t heard the amraam( by Hughes) having it and the amraam was a development from the 54.
It just seems to me that onboard memory would be the primary issue. I think the AIM-54C would only have similar technology to the AIM-120A wherein it can determine target size prior to launch and then use that information among a couple other parameters to know which target is the correct one when there is other potential targets in close proximity or something.
Although the technology is highly classified, we may not know until after 2036 when the AIM-54 series is supposed to be fully declassified. (Pending further extensions).
My bad, you’re correct. For whatever reason I thought the pre-launch gimbal was 45 deg in-game (which is the optimal launch angle for it stated in multiple documents iirc) but its actually 15 deg in-game despite the full gimbal limit of the missile being 60 deg…
Sounds like you just found another bug to report about the AIM-54… lovely.
NCTR is also the definition for multiple different methods (or combination of multiple said methods) at target recognition.
NCTR can be done by JEM (Jet engine modulation), optical determination (such as seen with IIR seekers like the IRIS-T, which holds a database of known adversary aircrafts to compare to), SAR imaging, unintentional modulation on pulse based specific emitters, etc…
Its obviously impossible for the 54C’s NCTR to be as advanced as something like an F-15 or F-16’s, but dubious that its “impossible” as claimed by some, particularly considering the timeframe.
Also, pretty sure regarding the AIM-120 that its capable of identifying/targeting helicopters via the main rotor’s doppler shift, which is in itself similar to JEM based NCTR, but I’m not 100% sure of that fact, I just seem to remember having read it somewhere, so take it with a grain of salt.
I’ve seen that NCTR was VERY unreliable even today (or at least in the 2010’s). I’ve seen that only 25/30% of time the target was correctly recognised.
That’s why NATO needed visual recognision of an ennemy airplane before firing anything toward them to reduce blue on blue fire.
Now with modern sensor sutch as EOTS, there’s not this problem anymore (probably)
Back to the topic, do you thing a missile introduced in the mid 80’s would have any kind of realiable NCTR?
Because i feel like not and it was more niche than anything.
And what would be the impact on War thunder?
No, thats made up nonsense. It was used in combat. F15C being the only one having it on the coalition was the reason they were the only ones allowed to do BVR over IRAQ without AWACS authorization.
You can see the criteria of BVR shots when there’s a lack of IFF
Mode 1: military only; provides 2-digit octal (6 bit) “mission code” that identifies the aircraft type or mission
Mode 4: military only; provides a 3-pulse reply, delay is based on the encrypted challenge
I don’t think JEM only. F15C’s were able to lock on helis and shoot one with a sparrow. Then you have later on where the F15 locked the blackhawk at 60N.M and go the kill with the amraam. If NCTR got were able to detect specifically the nationality of the heli through the JEM then the kill wouldn’t have happened. In any case it would HOJ.
Personally what MIG23 says makes sense.
Yeah target size makes the most sense, though I’d question what the point of the tech would even be for?
Would it just not lock a ‘wrong’ target? Or was it used for guidance values?
My best guess would be that it is an extra means of countermeasure/clutter rejection, as a cloud of chaff or surface return would not be the same as an aircraft or AShM.
It may also be to improve the missiles ability at retaining targetting of the initial target it was launched at instead of switching lock.
We know for a fact that many of the improvements to the 54C’s seeker (and warhead/fuze) was for “expanded capabilities against electronic countermeasures, high altitude targets, maneuvering targets very low altitude encounters and clustered targets.”
Making sure the missile can identify the appropriate target in cluttered environments such as very low altitude intercepts or areas in which large numbers of targets are clustered seems to be (in my opinion at least) one of the most logical reasons for a type of NCTR to be used.
Depending on how accurate the NCTR was as well, granted as I stated before, it was most likely incapable of some of the more advanced NCTR techniques such as JEM seen on F-15/F-16’s, its possible NCTR may have been used as an additional safety feature to prevent potential blue on blue incidents, seeing as from my understanding the F-14’s AWG-9 did not have NCTR, though the F-14D’s APG-71 should and the aircraft began development back around 1984, so it may have also been a feature meant to be paired with the APG-71 as well.
I thought about it some more and I dont think the NASA document proves theres a bug necessarily with the pre-launch gimbal limit of the AIM-54.
What is usually referred to as “lofting” is technically referred to as “trajectory shaping” in missiles, whereas the missile flies an optimized trajectory, not a simple predetermines flight angle. Particularly in the case of missiles with larger cross sectional areas to their motor and longer burn times such as the AIM-54, there is a larger advantage gained when flying at high altitude than smaller missiles with shorter burn times, as detailed by this equation:
This is why loft angle would have such an effect on actual kinematic performance of the missile, and iirc, the AIM-54 is meant to aggressively climb once fired, particularly when fired against a very long range target.
This brings me to my reasoning as to why the NASA paper doesnt really prove anything necessarily. We have no idea in what method the AIM-54 used by NASA is launched, as the missile body was used due to the achievable speeds and altitudes it operates at, and it therefore carried test payloads, the warhead section, and likely the radar guidance section were likely removed, as I doubt NASA was firing the missile with a radar lock on a target with the missile guiding itself towards said target. Therefore, the missile was more likely used as a rocket, making manual lofting a necessity, as the missiles typical trajectory shaping profile was likely not being used.
I could be completely wrong on this point though, as I do not know the exact method in which they employed the AIM-54 for their experiments. I do think that this is the most logical reason behind the drastic difference in performance based solely on the launch angle of the missile by NASA, and also explains the discrepancy in stated max speed of the AIM-54 and those stated by NASA, as it was likely more used in a parabolic trajectory as a sort of dumb fire rocket with an experimental payload, rather than an advanced guided missile with trajectory shaping for optimizing intercept probability.
