Why does the IRIS-T SLM have a bug that doesn't get any attention?

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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Since a recent update, the IRIS-T SL launched from the IRIS-T SLM appears to have a serious issue with its seeker and guidance behavior. I already reported this, but so far the issue doesn’t seem to have received much attention.

The missile is supposed to start with IOG + DL guidance and then transition to its IR seeker once the target is within seeker acquisition range. However, this transition seems to be unreliable or simply not happening. The missile can remain in IOG, randomly switch to TRK, lose guidance completely, and then fly straight past the target instead of acquiring it with the IR seeker.

I’ve been able to reproduce this against several different targets. An AIM-7P was approached at close range but the IRIS-T never properly acquired it and flew past. The same happened against an F/A-18, despite the missile having a good intercept and the aircraft being directly in front of it. In another engagement against an F/A-18, the missile only managed to hit after receiving continuous TRK guidance, which makes it even more suspicious that the actual terminal IR seeker isn’t working correctly.

The clearest example is an engagement against an F-15E. The missile got to around 3.1 km from the aircraft while still showing “Seeker: IOG”. The aircraft was directly ahead and wasn’t using flares, yet instead of acquiring it with the IR seeker, the missile lost guidance, made a large turn and later switched to TRK even though the target wasn’t even in its field of view at that moment. After turning back towards the aircraft, it switched to IOG again instead of acquiring the target with its IR seeker and eventually missed for a second time.

This makes the behavior of the guidance states look completely inconsistent. The missile can be well within seeker range, have the target directly in front of it and still fail to transition to terminal IR guidance.

This isn’t just an occasional missed missile. If the IR seeker isn’t reliably activating or maintaining acquisition under these conditions, it directly affects the main function of the IRIS-T SLM.

The full report with all screenshots and the different scenarios can be found here:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/b9Bz7DPH07QL

I’d really like to know if other IRIS-T SLM players have noticed the same thing, because right now it seems like a pretty serious issue that is being overlooked.

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If your report hasn’t been handled in that long you can contact the Technical Moderators in a private message and ask about it.

You can find all the teams and the areas they handle listed here: (Who is who and Reporting Procedure). If you don’t get an answer within a few days you can add more moderators from the list to the original message instead of sending a new message (that way you preserve the date of the message and it doesn’t look like a new request), adding one of the moderators to the message every 2-3 days or so until you get an answer.

Please do not to add the seniors until you have tried all other regular moderators, the Seniors likely won’t answer unless they are added and pinged by the regular moderators but if you’ve added all the regular moderators with no answer then you can add the seniors.