harpoon flight path and use(less) ?

To be honest, I wonder if the devs WANT the harpoon to be useless. Let's face it, I understand they are Russian. And there is a nice rivalry between US and Russia about each other's equipment.

But one fact you can't ignore. The USN would not have kept the Harpoon if it was useless. They know exactly how capable it is, and still want it. They didn't develop a sea skimmer because they couldn't do anything better. And these harpoons should be flying lower than they are. Under fifty feet.

Yep I'm sure its a huge conspiracy. What should we do about it?

To be honest, I wonder if the devs WANT the harpoon to be useless. Let's face it, I understand they are Russian. And there is a nice rivalry between US and Russia about each other's equipment.

But one fact you can't ignore. The USN would not have kept the Harpoon if it was useless. They know exactly how capable it is, and still want it. They didn't develop a sea skimmer because they couldn't do anything better. And these harpoons should be flying lower than they are. Under fifty feet.

Really?

To be honest, I wonder if the devs WANT the harpoon to be useless. Let's face it, I understand they are Russian. And there is a nice rivalry between US and Russia about each other's equipment.

But one fact you can't ignore. The USN would not have kept the Harpoon if it was useless. They know exactly how capable it is, and still want it. They didn't develop a sea skimmer because they couldn't do anything better. And these harpoons should be flying lower than they are. Under fifty feet.

The Harpoon is actually simulated pretty realistic in terms of hit probability. You do neeed a lot of Harpoons to break through the defenses of modern warships. The problem in DCS are other anti-ship missiles, carried by the Viggen and the JF-17 are more or less immune against enemy ship defenses for some reason. They need to be fixed, not the Harpoons!

The only issue with Harpoons that I can see is their damage output which seems to be pretty low.

The damage of the Harpoon is definitely something that needs addressed; at the moment, the Harpoon has the largest warhead out of the RB-15F and Sea Eagle (EDIT: RB-04E has the largest warhead), but does the least amount of damage, by far. Though this isn't helped by the damage model of ships, which apart from graphics (in a select few vessels) have very crude damage models.

I mean, for one thing, Tarantul-III and Grisha-V corvettes should be crippled by a single one, if not destroyed, not soaking up 3-5 of them. Here's what a Nanuchka-II (looked like after taking 1 (I think it later sunk but citation needed)

The flight path I'll mention but I'm not sure about it, so take this with a pinch of salt...

Does it make sense for the Harpoon to only sea-skim on target acquisition? The whole point of sea-skimming, as I understand it, is that it shortens the reaction time for a defending vessel, because when sea-skimming, the missile effectively hides within the RADAR shadow caused by the curvature of the Earth. Obviously this only works at longer ranges, and the missile can't pick up the target either. When the missile gets close enough, there's no RADAR shadow for it to hide in, and therefore sea-skimming loses it's principle advantage (it's only got limited clutter to hide in, if there's even any at all).

At the moment, the Harpoon flies significantly above sea-skimming, and only drops down to sea-skimming at a range where sea-skimming would lose it's advantage.

Given the range of the Harpoon's seeker ~20nmi, it makes sense for the missile to be at 200 feet when searching; as roughly speaking, this is the minimum altitude where you just about get 20nmi LOS on a 50 foot tall target (ballpark number for the height of a ship's hull + superstructure).

Idk, to me it seems that it would make more sense if the missile dropped down to sea-skimming at it's search distance or at its turn point (which isn't too far off from the RB-15F, only it has a dedicated point for descending). So the missile will fly at HI/MED/LOW up until HPTP or at the distance when the seeker turns on, this would better maximise the Harpoon's chance of remaining undetected.

EDIT: It seems, from what I can find, it actually does only sea-skim in the terminal phase... I guess I'm wrong.

I have already posted this before, here are actual observations by a Tomcat RIO about the Harpoon's cruise alt:

http://www.topgunbio.com/harpoon-cruise-missile-escort/

 

"The Harpoon's profile was for a low altitude flight to the target, 200’ or less guided by a radar altimeter, at the high speed of 0.9 Mach – about 540 knots."

 

"After all, we had to plan on five minutes at high speed and low altitude" (regarding following the Harpoon with the chase plane)

 

"The missile climbed to several hundred feet, then arced over and quickly descended to its cruise altitude, gaining speed." (describing Harpoon launch by the submarine)

 

"it flies at 200’"

 

"and now we were chasing a cruise missile skimming across the ocean. I know people have been lower and faster, but 540 knots at 200' is low and fast."

 

"In three minutes we had covered almost 30 miles and were more than halfway to the target ship"

 

This is regarding a submarine launched Harpoon, which clearly cruises all the way from launch to target at low altitude.

 

And here, regarding almost colliding with the chase plane which was following an air launched Harpoon that was fired at the same target simultaneously:

 

"John Boy and I saw Cowboy’s jet, but didn’t gain sight of the small Harpoon he was chasing. Both fighters were flying formation on our respective missiles when Cowboy’s crossed directly behind ours, very close. Cowboy became concerned and called for us to execute a max-performance collision avoidance turn: “Break left!”".

This clearly shows that the sub-launched Harpoon can cruise all the way (around 60 NM) at 200 ft. Since this was in 1981 the specific Harpoon variant must have been a UGM-84A. The anecdote about almost colliding with the chase plane of the air-launched Harpoon suggest that the AGM-84A also cruised at the same (200 ft) altitude.

The damage of the Harpoon is definitely something that needs addressed; at the moment, the Harpoon has the largest warhead out of the RB-04E, RB-15F, and Sea Eagle, but does the least amount of damage. Though this isn't helped by the damage model of ships, which apart from graphics (in a select few vessels) have the most crude damage modelling possible.

 

Another thing I'd mention but I'm not sure about it, so take this with a pinch of salt.

 

Does it make sense for the Harpoon to only sea-skim on target acquisition? The whole point of sea-skimming, as I understand it, is that it shortens the reaction time of a defending vessel, because when sea-skimming, the missile effectively hides within the RADAR shadow caused by the curvature of the Earth. Obviously this only works at longer ranges, when the missile gets close enough, there's no RADAR shadow for it to hide in, and therefore sea-skimming loses it's principle advantage (it's only got limited clutter to hide in, if there's even any at all).

 

At the moment, the Harpoon flies significantly above sea-skimming, and only drops down to sea-skimming at a range where sea-skimming loses it's advantage.

 

Idk, it seems that it would make more sense if the missile dropped down to sea-skimming at it's search distance...

 

EDIT: It seems, from what I can find, it actually does only sea-skim in the terminal phase... I guess I'm wrong.

Yep. This is a major error with the way Harpoon is modeled at the moment. The fact that currently the missile only descends to sea-skimming upon detection is ridiculous.

The 3 flight FLT profiles (HIGH, MED, LOW) are only supposed to apply to the initial part of the flight. You can't have a missile fly HIGH (circa 30000ft..remember!) and then detect a target at a few miles range and then transition to sea skimming or pop....it won't and doesn't work.

The reference material is a bit lacking but I think there should be a third altitude. A 'search' altitude (common to all 3 flight profiles) that the missile is programmed to descend to, to reach by the start of the 'Search distance'. Given the radar horizon and the range of the active seeker, this would only be a couple hundred feet at most.

This is the biggest problem with Harpoon at the moment.

I’m super glad to know it’s not just my inferior pilotage. I enjoy using them, just can’t get too many hits, as others have said.

Harpoons are useless in DCS. Two RB15F's from a Viggen can sink any carrier.

Actually this brings up a great point for ED to look at the various issues with anti ship missiles.

Harpoon damage vs other in game missiles, If you look at the warhead sizes for most of them its pretty close, yet harpoons do far less damage than other missiles (this at least short term should be equalized, and I don't really care who is wrong here). I know the RB04 has a bigger warhead, but everything else is in the same ballpark)

802-AK, not attacked by US SM-2's (are they stealth missiles?)

RB-04, can soak up a ton of CIWS damage (is that real?)

Harpoon damage is off relative to everything else (about half of the 802AK)

I don't know about missiles not being engaged by defenses, it might be due to the crude RADAR modelling of DCS, which might be brought on by the fact that we don't have curved maps (please let the Marianas map be curved). I mean the RB-15F flies through waves on my end.

And no, the RB-04E shouldn't be soaking up 20mm and 30mm rounds, we have a crude damage model for weapons but <10 rounds at the very most should be all that's needed to completely destroy the missile assuming the warhead (for some reason) doesn't get triggered. Otherwise, it's a couple at best.

The Harpoons when launched by the AI fly all the way at 49ft, so OP might be onto something.

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harpoon skim alt.trk