Yeah, there are 2 types of clouds in War Thunder.
one that blocks all IR signatures including from systems like IRST the other does nothing.
I think generally the low alt “mist/fog” is the second kind that doesnt block the signature, but can sometimes occur at higher alts, but most of the clouds at the higher alt are the first kind that blocks most signatures.
no IR missile can consistently lock through clouds, this is a feature
I played all IR missiles except AAM3 and they behave all the same.
You can’t lock on through or in clouds except some very rare situations written before.
If you locked on and the enemy hides into the cloud, the lock remains. Imo this is a bug over all missiles.
For sure, sometimes it looks very weird because client cloud is displaced to servercloud.
It’s likely just you seeing them too late and some server lag. Problem is that once you see them they’re probably 0.5km closer, combine that with a little delay and it’ll get you. It has the exact same flare resistance as the Magic I in the files though.
it’s quite literally not a bug but a Feature
this was intentionally modelled for realism, Just like that the Sun’s Heat signature will pull some IR missiles completely off course
We do have a “feature” or something that keeps missiles tracking through clouds after lock
Strangely accurate for this example
If I were to hazard a guess, part of it is the limitations the Americans put on the missile to acquire a lock. Britian actually modified their missiles to remove this limitation.
Over in the Tornado thread I’ve alluded a couple of times to a previously unknown British modification to the AIM-9L. Now that I’ve got a bit of time I thought I’d write a proper explanation for what it was.
As a bit of background: the AIM-9L seeker produces an acquisition audio tone whenever an IR source irradiates the detector cell. The pilot can then fire the missile in boresight mode (where the missile will just fire and try to lock onto whatever is in front of it), or press a button which will cause the seeker to attempt to the lock onto the the target and then uncage before launch (like we have in game), the latter being the normal mode of operation. In the case of the Tornado F.3 the button the pilot pressed to lock the seeker on was known as the “Target Acquisition Enable” (TAE) button.
The absolute minimum IR intensity the AIM-9L can detect is 15pw/cm -2 , but it needs about 35 pw/cm -2 in order to track a target reliably. It seems that when the AIM-9L was in development the Americans were concerned that the pilot couldn’t easily tell from the audio tone what the IR intensity of the target was; so the pilot may end up firing the missile without a strong enough return for it to track properly. They therefore implemented the “chirp” system into the missile (so called because it made the missile make a chirping sound when locked on). Basically (I’m simplifying a little) when the pilot attempted to lock the missile onto the target before launch the seeker would be repeatedly driven off-centre from the target, meaning that the target needed to have an IR intensity of about 70 cm/pw -2 before the missile could successfully lock on it, as the seeker wouldn’t be looking straight at the target. This would ensure that if the seeker had managed to obtained a lock it would easily be able to track the target after launch (because the IR intensity required for lock was much higher than that required for tracking).
The British decided that the chirp system “constitutes a very conservative confidence factor”, and that it wasn’t even needed because the pilot could use the sidewinder seeker symbol on the aircraft’s HUD to determine if the missile was tracking properly before launch. They therefore set about developing a way to remove the chirp system from the AIM-9L so that they could lock and fire it at greater range.
This is where the Tornado F.3 STF 113 de-chirping modification comes in (a proper British bodge job). They worked out that by modifying the wiring inside the LAU-7 missile launcher they could trick the AIM-9L seeker into thinking that the missile had already been launched (even though it was still attached to the aircraft) meaning the seeker could be made to lock-on to targets without the chirp system coming into play (as chirp was disabled as soon as the trigger was pulled). This modification to the launchers enabled the Tornado F.3 to lock onto targets with the AIM-9L at much greater ranges than other AIM-9L equipped aircraft could. According to the Tornado F.3 tactics manual the lock on range of the AIM-9L was essentially doubled under some conditions (which makes some sense as it now only needed half of the IR intensity it previously did in order to lock on).
I’m aware that this sounds like bit of a wild story, so here is the proof to back it up.
So its probable that, at least for some of the later missiles, the heat requirement to fire is/was a LOT higher than what the missile strictly needed. Also missiles are fast, and the closure rate is high, so a tenative lock at longer ranges just gets stronger as it chases after the target
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