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Anti-Ship Phoenix?


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ALCON,

 

I was wondering if there was a tweak made to the AIM-54 that allows the missile to kill ships. A few of the guys I fly with had tested this several months ago, since the AWG-9 can lock ships due to their large radar returns. At the time, we ran some tests where we locked the ship, then fired an AIM-54 at it. The missile tracked, but never actually struck or prox-fused (not sure if this is implemented or not) to do damage. It would always fly just barely above and miss.

 

Last night we were running a mission with a fighter sweep and a interdiction section. Long story short, things got chaotic when one of the CAP Tomcats got shot down by an unseen MiG-21 and in an effort to shoot another incoming Fishbed, I went to PLM, locked something to the North (everything from that direction was hostile, the blue forces were to the South), and I launched my last AIM-54. When I noticed the closure rate was low, I turned on the TCS only to find that I had launched on a ship - faaaaaantastic, that meant we had to deal with three MiG-21s between two A-10s and one F-14.

 

After a bit of dogfighting the pair of MiG-21s that came high to fight me (the dudes in the A-10s managed to out-fight and eventually splash the Fishbed that went after them) I noticed that where the ship had been, there were flames and smoke. After splashing the remaining MiGs in the area, I headed back to the carrier and checked the scoreboard because I was curious - 4 aircraft shot down and 1 ship destroyed. Wait, wut? The AIM-54 guided on and destroyed the ship. The A-10 guys had also noticed and indicated they saw the ship explode before they had to go defensive against the lower Fishbed.

 

Maybe it was on account of the angle the missile took; when we had tested it before we were firing at low altitude and launched the Phoenix as if it were a Harpoon, but in this case, the missile was diving from an altitude of about 20,000 feet, so overflying the ship wasn't as likely to happen, but I also thought the game logic basically made it so that an AAM wouldn't fuse on a boat, yet in this case, the missile fused and caused enough damage to sink the boat. Has anyone else run into this? Is it a fluke that the angles aligned just right, or has the missile logic changed to allow an AAM to damage a ship? I could certainly see it working - the missile doesn't really care what the radar return is; if it can see a return, it can intercept it, be it a plane or a boat, it had just never worked that way in the past.

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The Phoenix has a warhead designed to tear into what is essentially a very expensive soda can. It can't possibly do much to a Ship except make it very angry.

 

Eeehm, having served on multiple navy ships, the exact opposite is actually truer to life.

 

Ships nowadays are designed without armor plating whatsoever. This way, a high speed (anti-ship) missile will actually have a better possibility to pass through the hull of the ship and out the other side before the explosion would do more damage than it already does. Especially when compared to a missile hitting an armored deck or side in which most of its kinetic energy gets absorbed AND the warhead explodes PLUS all of its fuel still left over will spill over the deck setting everything on fire.

 

The explosive warhead in only part of the problem, once it detonates, that's it, job's done. The Sheffield finally succumbed to the fires started by the leftover fuel from the Exocet missile rather than the explosion itself (and an aluminium superstructure and other stuff).

 

Nevertheless, with multiple redundant systems onboard a warship, there's bound to be a system or two still operational after a Phoenix missile hit and you bet the ship's going to be very pissed off.

 

Civilian ships though, depending on their size, a container ship will most likely scratch the itch away from a phoenix missile hit and happily plod along its course whereas a ferry or yacht might get obliterated.

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Got some time to test again - it works with both Phoenix and Sparrow, but in a weird way. If a ship is at a stand-still, the missile tends to hit the target, or miss close, and a downward-angle seems to be necessary. I noticed if the ship was moving, the AIM-54 tended to track the last known position of the ship and hit behind it, rather than the ship itself. Also, I don't know what kind of ship I blew up during that MP mission, but in my testing in SP, I used a tanker as a target and none of the missiles that hit were able to sufficiently damage the boat to sink it, so it may have been a significantly smaller ship I sank during the mix up with the MiG-21s. So, apparently it is possible with the missile logic right now to hit a boat with an AAM and it wasn't a one-off fluke. I'd say this has no tactical significance, really (are you going to waste your AAMs to maybe possibly hit a boat just because you can?), just an interesting discovery.

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I heard on a Tomcat event last month that the Phoenix had a AG mode...maybe this is they implementation of it :)

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Please for the love of god HB do not remove and change this, this is hilarious

 

Why would they? I can't think of a reason why P-STT couldn't guide AAMs that can utilise it onto ships. In fact, to my knowledge the SM-2 can be used in an anti-ship role in much the same way as the AIM-7 and AIM-54 on the Tomcat.

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I heard on a Tomcat event last month that the Phoenix had a AG mode...maybe this is they implementation of it :)

 

 

 

Yes, I think it was in this 50th Anniversary of the F-14 Tomcat live stream (

), one of the Tomcat veterans talked about how they considered using the Phoenix as an anti-ship weapon during one of the Gulf Wars when there was concern of surface attack on oil rigs by Iraqi boats. Apparently it was absolutely feasible to destroy a boat with an AIM-54, just never required.
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Yes, I think it was in this 50th Anniversary of the F-14 Tomcat live stream (
), one of the Tomcat veterans talked about how they considered using the Phoenix as an anti-ship weapon during one of the Gulf Wars when there was concern of surface attack on oil rigs by Iraqi boats. Apparently it was absolutely feasible to destroy a boat with an AIM-54, just never required.

 

 

 

 

Pulse mode can already lock on to ships, the phoenix doesnt guide on to them, because in DCS it is probably not designed to lock on to them (DCS guidance wise). However according to "Billy" Kocher, whom you are quoting above from the stream, it was possible. The timestamp where his interview starts is 4h22min btw.

 

This has no high priority for us atm, we might look into this together with ED towards the end. But no promise for now.

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Pulse mode can already lock on to ships, the phoenix doesnt guide on to them, because in DCS it is probably not designed to lock on to them (DCS guidance wise). However according to "Billy" Kocher, whom you are quoting above from the stream, it was possible. The timestamp where his interview starts is 4h22min btw.

 

This has no high priority for us atm, we might look into this together with ED towards the end. But no promise for now.

 

 

 

Great to have you on these tiny details.

I concur on the lower priority but still nice to have this feature if possible.

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Great to have you on these tiny details.

I concur on the lower priority but still nice to have this feature if possible.

 

 

 

 

Agreed. We have to see however if this is at all possible for a2a missiles in DCS.

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Agreed. We have to see however if this is at all possible for a2a missiles in DCS.

 

Earlier this year before ED tinkered with the missile code. Before AIM-120s range was extended the AIM-54s would track on ships and hit them with PSTT. Not sure if this was intended, but it used to work. Close range at 10nm worked very reliably. Longer range shots at 40nm reduced impact rate to about half with varied results. We've had several patches since then, but last time I checked on it the 54s ignored ships unless PAL was used to lock the ship. Without PAL no track, but with PAL track. Not sure if that's the case still. Things have been changing this year. As you noted, a missile doesn't care much what it's locked onto. It just cares that it can see it. It would be great if we had that capability back, but understand if we have shrug it off.

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Earlier this year before ED tinkered with the missile code. Before AIM-120s range was extended the AIM-54s would track on ships and hit them with PSTT. Not sure if this was intended, but it used to work. Close range at 10nm worked very reliably. Longer range shots at 40nm reduced impact rate to about half with varied results. We've had several patches since then, but last time I checked on it the 54s ignored ships unless PAL was used to lock the ship. Without PAL no track, but with PAL track. Not sure if that's the case still. Things have been changing this year. As you noted, a missile doesn't care much what it's locked onto. It just cares that it can see it. It would be great if we had that capability back, but understand if we have shrug it off.

 

 

 

 

Either way this was due to nothing we would have or would not have done. It's a part of missiles we have no access to. The only thing we can assure is that pulse STT behaves as it would. In all my tests the phoenix never really guided onto ships, close range hits appeared to be more like a point a shoot kind of thing from my perspective. But I haven't tested it since release and it wasn't on my mind, until "Billy" mentioned it in the event.

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