Missile performance acuracy

Just started messing with DCS again in 2.5 in anticipation of the Vive Pro. How accurate is the performance of AA Missiles? I think they are way too maneuverable compared to the real thing. The only way I can avoid one head on is dive for the deck at 9g about 2 miles out. Anything else including beaming and tight turn into the missile doesn't work even with chaff and flares and I mean a 9g turn with no blackout cheat enabled. From what I've read even an amraam shouldn't be able to keep up in this situation.

No, you're not going to out turn a missile at the last minute unless it's been fired from the extreme edge of its effective range and barely has any energy left. You do any maneuvering well before the missile gets there to force it to bleed off energy, which you can recover but it cannot. With close range shots, it really boils down to the circumstances under which the aggressing aircraft fired his weapon : if he fired within good parameters, you're probably toast, if he didn't you can probably evade it.

All that said, the missiles in DCS at present are affected by drag too much, as I understand the various analysis performed by others, basically meaning they lose energy too fast and don't have the range they should. This is something that will eventually be rectified down the road as ED continue overhauling the game, at which point missiles will be even harder to evade and will have much longer range. Enjoy :)

I thought missiles have much larger turn radius because of the smaller control surfaces:

https://defenseissues.net/2013/08/17/evading-air-to-air-missile/

I thought missiles have much larger turn radius because of the smaller control surfaces:

https://defenseissues.net/2013/08/17/evading-air-to-air-missile/

Turn radius by itself does no good.

What you're trying to accomplish is to make it so that volume covered by the missile's fuse sensor doesn't intersect with the volume of your aircraft.

So if you turn early, it's very easy for the missile to adjust course to compensate. It might only need 0.2 g acceleration to compensate for your 9 g turn.

If you turn late, even if the flight paths are starting to diverge, your airplane won't move far enough to exit the fuse trigger range and the subsequent warhead blast range.

The space of time between too early and too late to turn is very short, and humans are generally not good enough at judging size, range, and speed to get it right.

In principle, if you had an autonomous drone with a radar or other ranging tracker that monitored the incoming missile, and a pilot AI that could calculate the exact proper time and rate at which to turn, then this might be a sufficiently reliable tactic.

In practice, it can be a last ditch desperation move, but a human pilot is unlikely to get the timing right.

Exactly. Maneuvering after a missile launch is about forcing the weapon to bleed off energy it can't recover, effectively rendering it unable to continue maneuvering to pursue you. Whether or not you can actually do that is highly circumstantial, though.

As I said, it really boils down to the range the weapon was fired at, and the conditions under which it was fired.

For example, a weapon fired at close range, but at a 90' angle to you has several factors at play. The weapon fired at close range has the most energy with which to pursue you, this is bad. On the other hand, the high angle decreases your exposure to both radar and IR tracking, maximises the amount of maneuvering the missile has to do in order to track you, and increases the possibility of the missile losing track of you altogether due to maneuvering out of view of the seeker.

As esb77 mentioned, many weapons are proximity detonated, they're not making physical contact with you, especially larger surface launched SAMs. It is not enough to simply "avoid being touched", it's necessary to actually escape the range at which it will trigger. With a small missile like a Sidewinder or R60, this is a very small area, but with say, a Buk, it may be willing to detonate well before it makes physical contact.

At this point, the factor becomes the size of the warhead. A 7lb R60 has very little explosive force, so if you are maneuvering to leave the blast radius, you may avoid most/all the blast. A Buk on the other hand has 150lb+ warhead. If it gets close enough to detonate, you're dead, as the blast radius itself is likely to be a couple hundred meters across.

Like said, it's all very circumstantial, if it was a bad launch or conditions were ripe for it, yeah, you might be able to maneuver out of the killzone, but in principal you're not going to "evade" a missile from hard maneuvering alone. It's true they have smaller control surfaces, but they're also vastly smaller, lighter, and moving several times faster than you (they are, afterall, specifically designed to hit small, fast moving objects like you)

In conclusion:

Range weapon was fired at (if near the edge of its envelope, it will have less energy when it gets to you)

Offset angle the weapon was fired at (90', or partially head on will help you defeat it, with a chase profile being worse for you)

Altitude of the launch vs your altitude

Speed of the launch vs your speed

Various combinations of the above

Some profiles will be in favor of evasion, some will be in the missiles favor. It's not a simple equation

Got it, thanks guys. Speaking of timing the turn right; would an incoming missile show up on the radar if you are facing it(in actual combat)?

They can, yes, and you can launch on them. IR missiles can potentially home on another missile, as well, thus when ripple firing R27s on a Su-27 (which have both radar and IR variants) you always fire the IR missile first, then the radar, so it will track the target aircraft instead of the missile directly in front of it.