Soft vs hard lock and radar range

Yesterday I was testing the radar with a friend and we had radar lock warnings with soft and hard radar lock. Is this normal? I thought that this warning was only with a hard lock.

And also, where is the radar distance indication to the target? Is it only the "rought" distance indication on the HUD when the target is lock?

Thank you.

There is a range scale on the right side of the FCR and depends on the scan range you've put the FCR into. Also there is an exact range indicated on the HUD I believe.

There is no “Soft Lock” until TWS is implemented.

Emmy meant to say TWS. :)

We don't have TWS yet, you're referring to SAM mode. There's an ongoing discussion about this, but the tl;dr version is that SAM still centers the antenna on the bugged target once every few swipes and that generates a lock warning.

The FCR page is largely incomplete, but you can get a rough estimate of the range, sure. On the HUD, if I'm not mistaken, only STT locks display range information.

EDIT: Nope, SAM also provides range info on the HUD

EDIT 2: The above is for DCS, not how SAM works IRL. Sk000tch explains it well in his post below.

Look for the "F" range on the HUD, lower right info block. "F" stands for FCR while "B" stands for barometric (e.g. to waypoint).

Emmy meant to say TWS. :)

Yes I did... My Bad

We don't have TWS yet, you're referring to SAM mode. There's an ongoing discussion about this, but the tl;dr version is that SAM still centers the antenna on the bugged target once every few swipes and that generates a lock warning.

The FCR page is largely incomplete, but you can get a rough estimate of the range, sure. On the HUD, if I'm not mistaken, only STT locks display range information.

OK let’s clear up the confusion on this. Not picking on you, but this is incorrect. There should not be a STT warning.It’s not on ongoing discussion, it took a little bit to verify the inverted T behavior/pause was correct and to reproduce RWR behavior. There is some ambiguity because of how much DCS has to gimp spike management & self protection systems (not their fault). So it’s hard to compare real world with DCS at times, but on this point there is no such ambiguity.

SAM and DDT are RWS submodes, but otherwise they are the same as TWS Multi Target Track. In the former, you get velocity vectors on one or two targets, respectively, plus a smaller scan volume, in the latter you get vectors on all tracks within scan volume plus tracking on one or two outside the volume. But regardless of mode, the inverted T shows gimbal location, but that’s it. It tells you nothing about what energy that target is receiving, and has nothing to do with whether a STT lock would be detected.

Remember how a radar works. Its not a laser like the inverted T would imply- its a cone. Further, the light is not continuously on. It pulses on and off according to a certain pulse repetition time. The antenna cycles back and forth obviously, it’s location represented by the inverted T. That t, however, represents the center of the beam. The width is different for different types of radar, modes, etc., but again, think of it like a blinking flashlight. Some flashlights are narrow, others wide. The time between pulses can also change (PRF is just the inverse of PRT). The beam width when combined with the angular velocity of the sweep, determines the dwell time that the target is in your beam. Dwell time multiplied by PRF determines the hits per scan. It takes a certain amount of hits for a radar to collect enough data to process different things. Range requires less than velocity and heading, for example (I just got my warnings cleared... google this if you care). The point is that the target sees no difference between 100 pulses as an antenna scans past it, or 100 pulses from a stationary radar pointed at it for a fraction of a second- it can’t “see” your gimbal stop momentarily before it jumps back to the scan volume.

The last wrinkle is the difference between receiving enough hits to process a trackfile (i.e. ltws in hornet), and update frequency sufficient for firing solution quality trackfile (the limiting variable for scan volume in TWS). SAM and DTT, or TWS multi target track, are just a hybrid of the two. Targets as we see them aren’t really scanned, they are processed: From the 90s to, well eventually aesa, processing improved significantly, decreasing the data required (dwell time) allowing for more efficient allocation of radar resources, like these hybrid modes. The various SAM modes are just variations of this hybrid search and track. Bugging a target in SAM vs TWS will marginally increase the probability of your detection, but it will not generate a STT warning. The current implementation seems to (though not always?), and is therefore not working correctly. I’m sure it will be fixed, WIP, etc.

Hey Sk000tch, I agree with your post, a SAM designation shouldn't generate an STT warning, of course. I was just describing the current behavior in DCS, because OP was asking about getting RWR warnings with SAM, I should've clarified that I wasn't talking about how it works IRL. Same for the range info displayed.

The thing is that currently, both SAM on the F-16 and LTWS on the Hornet work very differently that IRL. I don't know if you've seen this, but you can straight up guide an AIM-7 all the way to impact with LTWS in the Hornet... Also get an NCTR print, just with LTWS (which I think requires STT). Both just with LTWS, on a full 140 degree azimuth scan. So there's definitely something up with the way the radar behavior changes in DCS upon either SAM or LTWS designation.