Given the insane detection range of F-14 irst, it also make me wonder if they ever pit it against F-22 in exercise. 102 nm detection range against supersonic fighter would be more than AIM-120D max kinematic range, it also impossible to jam
Noooo, we were so close to have good phoenixes. I’m sad
edit: better fins aoa should provide more G?
Depends on the type of Jamming, if a more advanced energy conscious type that reacts to the detected frequencies can be gamed to reveal their doppler, which provides closure rate(since outgoing, and incoming frequency is known the difference in the frequency plot can be determined, thus doppler shift found),
With how the ionosphere interacts and bends returns based on frequency, if the fighter is lower than the Jamming source (so there is sufficient look up angle), there is only one possible solution that satisfies the returns spectrum, detected Jamming angle & received power, which reveals the range in some situations.
Further with a backup non radar based sensor to take over angle tracking, much simpler, and reliable waveforms (since it isn’t responsible for angle tracking, seduction and deception techniques don’t work so tracks are much harder to break, and thus weapons employment is near impossible to defeat, without jamming the seeker itself which is much, much harder to to do though possible with a proper understanding of how it works) can be employed to recover range and closure rate to provide a proper weapons grade track, suitable for full weapons deployment.
There are methods to passively estimate the range to targets via triangulation of multiple sensor(s); The F-14A was was the first fighter with a proper datalink (Link 4C) after all, as well as a variety of Temporal / Spatial methods that take multiple angular readings (look up Synthetic Aperture Radar for a similar application) be it HoJ or IRST, and since wingmen are comon a combat spread is often more than enough to get a suitable reading.
Of course you wouldn’t get full performance out of the system, but for Active Radar missiles you only need to ensure the midcourse guidance is good enough to ensure that when the radar on board the missile goes active it detects the target, so the required accuracy, and rate of guidance commands updates are very much relaxed vs a SARH missile, and further the projected intercept point can be refined over the missile’s flight downrange.
Stealth is very much useful for avoiding getting detected, but once that happens (and it will, be it either by a long wave radar, AWACS / ship that can either utilize massive computational power / passive radar techniques or abuse Aspect angle, IRST or sheer dumb luck, aural detection, spotters or intercepted communications, or properly planned BARCAP etc. ) it is leveraged to reduce the opponent’s engagement range, beyond that it doesn’t really do much.
But otherwise yes, a dual band IIR IRST would be very effective against Stealth airframes, apart from hyperspecialized airframes like the F-117 that trade of performance for very low IR signatures (and even then there are limits to what they can do to deal with skin heating, which constrains performance)
Which is exactly why there is a resurgence of IRST’s like the TALON HATE (Legion IRST) pod among others with recent Teen series developments if they are not being integrated wholesale.
I don’t think so, but for a given G loading drag should be reduced since maximum pull is retained.
1 Like
it also should help getting max G load with less air speed
At least it proves that they are looking at the Phoenix again so other things might change, I have a feeling that the AMRAAM update might be this patch not the next at this point so we might see revised capability and some number of outstanding reports be actioned.
2 Likes
I hope so. If they make the Aim-54’s family more lethal, they might be preparing the comunity for better fox 3s
It did, acquisition in TWS happened at 128NM if I recall correctly. But then again it would depend on jamming technique it used(which we don’t know).
The missile lofted and fired exactly at RMAX( of battery) due to the time of flight(~157s). So it can be said it wasn’t in HOJ
@tripod2008
The jamming is blinking noise jamming, so I think it would be barrage noise anyway. I don’t think It possible to determine the doppler effect in that case given the jamming signal will cover the whole bandwidth anyway.
Ionosphere only reflect very low frequency so it won’t have any effect on fighter radar which operate around X-band. In this specific test, there was 1 F-14 so we can also ruled out triangulation between multiple fighters
P/s: how to use the quote function?. When I clicked reply, it does not even include the poster I replied to
It says “on-off blinking noise jammer to confuse radar defences”. Obviously it’s impossible to know exactly what jammer was used, but it’s possible the F-14 / 5AIM-54 radar simply was not particularly affected by it.
Radar jammers (generally speaking - I’m sure there’s the odd exception) do not radiate in a 360° sphere around the aircraft. For example the Avro Vulcan had a lot of jamming equipment onboard, but most of it was focussed on defeating long range early warning, and SAM guidance radars; as a result most of the jammers were designed to radiate their energy downwards towards the ground, giving them very little use against aircraft at a similar altitude to the bombers. The term “radar defences” makes it sounds like the jammer was intended to interfere with ground based radars, so the setup may have been similar, directing most of the energy away from the F-14. In addition pulse doppler radars are inherently resistant to some types of jammers.
Another thing to note is it sounds like the target was flying in a straight line at a constant speed / altitude. Therefore if the F-14 was to lose the radar contact after launch the inertial unit in the missile would have had a pretty easy time guessing where the target was going to be based on the last known speed / heading.
Some people suggest to me that: since it is a blinking jammer, that mean it mean it turn on and off, so while it was off, AWG-9 could acquire range and velocity information .
Ah ok sorry
They changed the f14 tws bug in “its fixed”
Am I the only one having this bug? Because I thought only the F-14 had it but I just tested with the F-16C and it’s the same. When I press the freelook key while having a TWS lock it causes the radar to reset and I lose all targets for a brief moment.
You’re getting the radar lock line on the left side of the radar display, making it clearly not aligned with the plane being tracked by TWS. Weird, I’d just suggest rebinding freelook/radar lock to different keys and seeing if that behavior continues.
But feels like better to use, it hit more better than before, before the missile feels like going to nonwhere direction, now feels more precise
Something interesting I noticed when rereading the NASA doc regarding the ALSM (their plan to use the decommissioned AIM-54 for testing).
The document explicitly states that the graphs (which some people have used to justify the AIM-54’s poor speed in-game) based on “publicly available information” and use “a simple in-house trajectory analysis code”. It also specifies that “zero-lift trajectories were considered with no missile guidance”
Importantly, it states “the guidance capability of the ALSM
should be used to optimize the missile trajectory in reaching the required test conditions.” and that due to public data inaccuracies “higher-fidelity performance analyses should be conducted to determine the suitability of the ALSM test
platform prior to actual hypersonic flight research experiments.”
Which is important since the ALSM idea was to perform hypersonic (Mach 5+) research, something the graph shown below would suggest the missile is incapable of doing in a zero-lift configuration based on public data:
This snuck under the radar for me before, but actually supports the idea that the poor or even borderline lack of trajectory shaping of the AIM-54 in-game is SIGNIFICANTLY affecting its performance in a negative fashion, which should be obvious seeing as the AIM-54 has a significant amount of drag, a long burn time, and a large diameter motor, all of which suggest the missile depends significantly on aggressive lofting to reach high altitudes and speeds above Mach 5, something it is literally incapable of doing in-game.
Its gonna be important for gaijin to actually get trajectory shaping right as well now that more missiles with it are around the corner.
I tested the phoenix and I think they implemented the AOA changes the reverted like 2 week ago, now the missile che pull well at low speed