SAM shootdowns of HARM missiles

No Hunter this is a game. While ED strives to achieve as much accuracy as possible, they are not building a military grade simulation and giving it away for free on the internet. That being said, The capabilities of each weapon are an approximation of their capabilities based on the opinions of the testers and programmers.

Both of you guys are correct. It's a game that's trying to simulate things.

Digital Combat Simulator World (DCS World) 2.5 is a free-to-play digital battlefield game.

 

Our dream is to offer the most authentic and realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles and ships possible.

When S-300 shoot down so easy our HARMs I cant imagine what will do S-400 or S-500 which are much more advanced SAMs....:(

I haven't been able to find a single example on the internet of ANY Advanced Soviet SAM systems ever being engaged by HARMs. None. Zilch. Nada. With that in mind I'd say the position they can be easily shot down is inaccurate...based on the available data.

Real world events would also indicate much greater fear of HARMs by SAM crews than stated. During Operation Allied Force we were supporting a SEAD package one night near Gospic. Each F-16CJs was equipped with 2 HARMs each.

After refueling the receivers went on their way and while listening to the strike frequency we heard numerous "MAGNUM" calls and expected to go home early. When our receivers returned, They still had all of their HARMs. When I asked the pilot over Boom Interphone about the "MAGNUM" calls the pilot said they were making those calls "in the clear". Whenever the Yugoslavian SAM sites heard the word "MAGNUM"...they IMMEDIATELY switched off their radars...why waste a half million dollar missile when simply saying a word on the radio eliminated the threat.

This is a game...The HARM is new and needs tweaking...But to imply because they are easy to kill in real life because they are easy in the game is not realistic.

I found quite easy to kill unprotected S-300 with F/A-18 with HARMS.... I approach at low level, using terrain masking to be within 10 NM then shoot two HARMS at each radar and S-300 will not react in time to defend itself... repeated couple of times at quite open terrain.

I will try to place 3-4 Tor systems to se if they can protect S-300... but S-300 alone is not difficult to kill.

So ED needs to implement the feature that enemy SAMs listen to allied radio frequencies and shut down their radars upon that call. :) Wait, we need tha call first. AI can call out Fox 1,2,3 but I‘ve never heard MAGNUM in the game yet.

Just kidding. But indeed, by giving us the HARM, there is definitely improvements needed on the SAMs AI.

Sierra99, thats very interesting. I just wondering how much HARMs are shooted in this operation (Allied Force).

As I know Jugoslavia has very good Air Defence durring the Kosovo war. But they had only SA-3 and SA-6.

And one insteresting fact - one HARM missile has lost guidance and drop in Bulgarian territory, near Sofia (Bulgaria has S-300).

[...]But they had only SA-3 and SA-6.

...and microwave ovens!

Do you think that IADS script can work correctly when hosting MP server?

AI F-16s WILL call MAGNUM!

:)

Sierra99, thats very interesting. I just wondering how much HARMs are shooted in this operation (Allied Force).

As I know Jugoslavia has very good Air Defence durring the Kosovo war. But they had only SA-3 and SA-6.

 

And one insteresting fact - one HARM missile has lost guidance and drop in Bulgarian territory, near Sofia (Bulgaria has S-300).

For Desert Storm, HARMs numbers are quoted being around 2.000

...and microwave ovens!

Actually Iraqi mig21 radars!

Me to SA-11 sites.

Why? I just tried that new harm mission. And cycling through those targets as they pop in and out of the damn EW sceen is a chore for sure. I want my HTS Pod... And targeting that sa-10 as it is fireing on you, while you try to sort through that mess, and it literally targets EVERYTHING before the sa-10, and then you can't properly see what is being targeted because everything is all bunched up (and separation mode doesn't seem to work properly) just makes it all the more agonizing.

So I just went in with guns and killed their silly search radars. Problem solved.

One can try this to help the case: https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3761127&postcount=120

 

 

in case of errors disable LUA sanitize: https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2742336&postcount=77

 

 

Grimes has written there he is improving the system, so maybe one day it is going to be delivered with DCS by default.

Use the slightly updated version from the first post.

Or in the lua file itself change the values in iads_settings.debug and iads_settings.writeDebugFiles to false.

The SA 10 Battery shot down all 12 missiles from a flight of 3 Hornets we sent at it, then shot two of us down. I have a feeling it's not really that accurate.

That SA-10 battery has no distractions like ECM or other decoys to affect it. Yes, it is that accurate in this case.

I created a mission with a single Hornet with HARMs and a full SA-10 site. Stand off engagements ended with all 4 missiles being shot down. What it took was coming in low behind some hills 20 NM from the site and doing a pop up strike. Pop up, let the radars light you up. Cut loose 2 HARMs and duck back behind the hill to lose the missiles coming at you. My releases were at roughly 10-12Nm. At that range they didn't seem to have time to switch targets. So some old fashioned Wild Weasel action seems to work.

SA-19 Grison // Tunguska Missiles and guns were created for countering HARMs and Cruise Missiles attacking the S-300 systems. Generally CIWS capable ship-borne variants of weapons: like Kashtan, the Sa-11 Buk system based on ships (Shtil-1) should be able to counter anti-ship missiles though I don't know if we have a Sovremenny floating around and whether or not it targets HARMS.

 

Either way it depends on whether or not ED flicks the 'CIWS counterable' switch, which I think they forgot for the AGM-65F?

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3737733#post3737733

maybe some of the newer models currently in service.

the whole point of the 2k22 was a requiremnt dating back to the 70s to simply to create a more lethal successor to ZSU Shilka to counter newer helicopters gunships that could now make use of AGTMS that enabled them to stay out of effective Shilka range and to have greater firepower low flying attack aircraft like the A10. None of the design requiremnts stated anything about countering harms. They didnt exist during its development time, nor even when the very first 2k22 entered service ( 1982) . I seriously doubt a human operator using optical guidance would ever have a real shot of stopping a harm anymore than the likelihood of a tank cannon shooting down a fast moving jet. Youl probably have a better chance of winning the lottery.

what we have in DCS is the vanilla 2k22 not the 2k22 M1 or the Pantsir

In RL would they be likely to use something like an AGM-158 JASSM (or for Europe StormShadow / Taurus ) against an S-300/400 site? Supported by HARMs and ECM those stealth cruise missiles could penetrate in and detroy the radars or launchers pretty efficiently right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158_JASSM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow

I have a feeling it's not really that accurate.

As mentioned, it definatly is, even on its own. If the site is covered like it should be with shorter range protection, like SA15's, then it becomes and incredibly hard nut to crack, without advanced tactics.

Unfortunatly we cant simulate the ECM enviroment which would be the primary inhibiting factor for the site. You either going to have to get clever like Hawk said above, or combine the SEAD strike with say a cruise missile strike, ideally hitting it from different directions. Even then its going to take alot of missiles, to break through the layered defense of the S300 site, if set up as it would be in RL. Again with no jamming/decoys, its just a shooting gallery for them...

In RL would they be likely to use something like an AGM-158 JASSM

I would imagine a combination of weapons systems, with something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-160_MALD drawing enough attention to get a few missiles through.

For Desert Storm, HARMs numbers are quoted being around 2.000

Not sure if it has been mentioned before, but here is a very interesting read about it:

http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-ODS-EW.html

This is a detailed analysis of the electronic battle in the initial phase of Desert Storm.

Not sure if it has been mentioned before, but here is a very interesting read about it:

http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-ODS-EW.html

This is a detailed analysis of the electronic battle in the initial phase of Desert Storm.

That’s a fantastic read, thanks for sharing.

Our wing just flew a mission I designed tonite with a big focus on HARM deployment, with SA-6, SA-8 and ZSU-23 sites as the main threats. I would have loved to read this before I started on the mission design!!!

HARMs have a proximity fuze, but they're also quite capable of hitting the vehicle with the antenna directly.

To quote it:

 

 

HARMs ingame completely destroy vehicles, which is clearly not correct behavior.

Depends on the vehicle and how close it hits I guess. I shot a salvo of 4 HARMs at a Tor and all 4 hit according to Tacview, but there was minimal damage to the Tor. I didn't actually go back to see if it was still capable of launching, but will test it out at some point.

The question of this thread shouldn't be about the technical Pk of some SAM sites versus HARM, to be genuinely constructive, because it's solving a problem that shouldn't exist, in that free fire HARM's versus theater SAM's that remain broadcasting isn't the kind of mission that is either realistic or a good plan unless the mission designer did not use the layering doctrine and selective human emission control.

The difference between the Balkans and the first Gulf War are night and day in terms of SAM behaviour. It took one complete massacre of a countries IADS for the world to realise you don't get trolled into switching on your tracking radars. The Serbs really demonstrated the counter play very well. HARM is not a silver bullet, for sure, and DCSW has no ECM or ECCM game to speak of. It's probably just so complex, it's out of scope, before you get to the point of knowing the effects of either outside the shroud of secrecy and security.

Scripting has some solutions and the Mission designer holds the cards ultimately, in realism. But let's face it, we shouldn't be dogfighting with Grumbles with 9X's, or performing risky solo popups of heroism at low level (hello manpad/SA9/SA8/SA15) and then saying, "I have the ultimate counter to use", because the world isn't like that. A pity, tech has come on so much we won't see much of the classical wild weasel, even in 1991 there were drones, decoys, ECM at multiple levels, and all sorts of secret shenanigans that DCS cannot really model. This is why the 60's to 80's were a beautiful era for sims like DCS.

It might be worth a suggestion to ED to make radars fragile in the damage model, i.e. any damage and the unit can't use it's dish. It's possible with scripting to track any damaged radar equipped units and flip the ROE off. This is probably a gap that could be addressed.

Depends on the vehicle and how close it hits I guess. I shot a salvo of 4 HARMs at a Tor and all 4 hit according to Tacview, but there was minimal damage to the Tor. I didn't actually go back to see if it was still capable of launching, but will test it out at some point.

They don't need to address that at all. It isn't going to be repaired by the time your in-game mission is over. A mission designer can add that capability via script if they really want to.