The Gazelle Air-Air missiles

I was shoot down by a Gazelle when I was sneaky. How come the Gazelle can guide a missile or what kind of guidance have this missiles to track a fighter?

The SA342 Mistral is equipped with 4 IR guided missiles, and I believe they are all aspect. It’s likely this is the type of Gazelle that shot you down :).

What is the name of those missiles?

What is the name of those missiles?

The clue is in the name - it is based off the Mistral manpad system.

https://www.mbda-systems.com/product/mistral-atam/

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Mistral_(missile)

Nice to hear we have a Helicopter with A-A missiles.

just dont go nuts against hornets or eagles

Mistral missile:-

Length 1.86 m

Diameter 90 mm

Effective firing range up to 6 km

Warhead High Explosive with high density tungsten balls

Warhead weight 2.95 kg

Detonation mechanism laser proximity or impact triggered

Engine Solid Rocket Motor

Speed 800 m/s, approx. Mach 2.6 (high supersonic)

To summarise that's a nearly 3kg warhead and IR homing with a range of up to 6km sounds pretty effective to me might give the Mistral version a go in multiplayer a bit more see how it goes.

Effective firing range means that this is the NEZ of the missile. So basically 6m NEZ, and a higher range on head on engagements

6km NEZ? That's better than most fighter launched BVR missiles in DCS.

I love when Fixed wingers suddenly realized that the party is over with choppers. :P :)

Yeah, I love using those on escort missions with the GAZ online. Though I find myself getting killed by radar homers alot, even on the ground.

Effective firing range means that this is the NEZ of the missile. So basically 6m NEZ, and a higher range on head on engagements

I wouldn't recommend including it in any MP scenario given that this lightweight ourperforms a Matra magic.

I love when Fixed wingers suddenly realized that the party is over with choppers. :)

@GGTharos:

We have been there before right ? So please provide us documents about your knowledge about the Mistral missile used by the french forces, including the info you have about the burntime of its engine and drag coefficient. Then we can compare our info with yours, thanks.

Anything about asking me not to make anything up does not help the conversation ;)

About Matra and the other missiles included in a module of a different developer I am not saying anything, cause it is not my bussiness to judge it either.

@GGTharos:

We have been there before right ? So please provide us documents about your knowledge about the Mistral missile used by the french forces, including the info you have about the burntime of its engine and drag coefficient. Then we can compare our info with yours, thanks.

You don't have info, you have a bad guess that's based on not understanding the first thing about missile flight dynamics.

I won't write a long diatribe about this, instead I'll say this: Take this to your aerodynamics guy, have him compare it against other missiles. There is a LOT of information out there, including very detailed propulsion information on a number of missiles, including AIM-9L, Magic, and a few others.

You're getting the equivalent performance of an SA-15 missile that weighs 170kg from a 20Kg missile. You might want to believe that this is ok, but that's just hurting your credibility.

Effective firing range means that this is the NEZ of the missile. So basically 6m NEZ, and a higher range on head on engagements

MBDA describe the Mistral as having a Maximum Intercept range of 6.5 km, which AFAIK is very different to a NEZ.

... the equivalent performance of an SA-15 missile that weighs 170kg from a 20Kg missile.

Perhaps more similar to the 73.5 kg RIM-116 ?

Some of the figures in 'Mistral.lua' don't look far off i.e. 3 second acceleration time, 18.7 kg mass - while others such as D_min = 200.0, are obviously wrong (as min range for the missile is 500m) but shouldn't effect the pK of distant targets.

but the acceleration burn lasts for ~5 seconds, rather than then the 3 seconds of the Igla or as seen in youtube videos.

Do you have any idea what's wrong or which values might be suitable to adjust ?

If not, I might ask the same question in the mod forum.

Perhaps more similar to the 73.5 kg RIM-116 ?

I just looked at the file. Actually I take it all back and I have no objections to it overall. The drag might be too low here and there, but the motor and basic drag seem ok.

Unfortunately with the change in FM, there are values in there that I no longer know how to intepret (but I will certainly try to find out :) )

Essentially this missile should be down M1 at 19 sec or so. Maybe slightly above, maybe slightly below. On an 'average launch' that should give you around 9km head-on capability, though I suspect the rule of thumb doesn't apply here as cleanly and it will come out to 6.5ish.

But that's no NEZ, after reaching this speed the fins won't be able to maneuver the missile much - so it's possible the lift coefficients are what's incorrect ... it's a complicated matter and right now I take it all back until I do more testing. The missile was quite sprinty before, and I don't know if and when any changes may have been made to its definition.

@Ramsay: Thanks you.

@GGTharos: Our pleasure.

So I hope this huge discussion can be settled to a more professional tone ;)

Just FYI that Mistral.lua was only relatively recently added, I believe by ED themselves. It’s not the same file that is used for the Mistral that the gazelle uses. You can tell because it doesn’t have a magical second stage that burns for 6.8 seconds but doesn’t produce any thrust. EDs Mistral might look correct but the real FM is hidden compiled in another lua somewhere else.

Just FYI that Mistral.lua was only relatively recently added, I believe by ED themselves. It’s not the same file that is used for the Mistral that the gazelle uses. You can tell because it doesn’t have a magical second stage that burns for 6.8 seconds but doesn’t produce any thrust. EDs Mistral might look correct but the real FM is hidden compiled in another lua somewhere else.

Correct, if you compere the FM performance between ED added one and current one that mistral uses there is a BIG difference... the current one reaches 7,5 km while still traveling 2400 km/h when it self-destructs, it is out-performing the manufactures calmed 6.5 km effective range on a non-maneuvering target by a quite a margin. We could argue that ED one is under-performing it a bit but by a very small margin.

MBDA Mistral promo page:

https://www.mbda-systems.com/ground-based-air-defence/mistral-atam/

Also looking at the previous graph and the following manufactures video with the full flight of the missile... reducing the burn time from 5 to 3.5 sec should remedy a lot of performance issues... and of-course adding the same Smoke as for Igla/Stinger.

Manufacturer video

I really hope ED steps in a forces a fix, its pretty terrible for multiplayer, especially in a game that is trying to grow a competitive multiplayer scene.

Is the mistral tone and RWR tones still non functional?

@Kazansky222 and others that come up with wordslik, I hope x y z steps in and takes over or fixes stuff.

How would you feel about owning something and your neighbour says someone has to step in and take over, just because the person thinks he knows something about you but basically does not know anything about the facts given and only has his assumptions?

So please, first of all, stop talking trash, thank you.

Other then that, we have x y z data available about the missile, and even if you do not like it, according to the data, which can partially be found in the internet aswell, we have build a missile close to what we have as information given. Other then that, Mistral has not been in the game and we hit limits, but that is something we have to clear with ED and how much access we had in terms of weapons.

Thank you a lot for your comprehension and as long as you can only base your complains on pure assumptions, or words like, imho common sense, etcetc, we have a ton full of common sense talk from customers, may it be weapons, flightmodel or rwr or else, but nonof them ever provided hard fact numbers or papers. So thanks, we have a bag full of that, but nothing ever helped, so itis useless baggage.

we take critisism very serious, but when you have only an opinion andcan not provide papers, then it is useless and only filling forum post for nothing.

Thanks for your reading

Have fun in the virtual skys