MANPADS -Dimished Efficiency at Night?

[MikeNolan]

Hey Guys,

 

Recently I've been having an absolutely blast playing my first paid campaign, the excellent "Enemy Within" campaign. I just had a quick question prompted by a few of the mission briefings - I apologise if this is in the wrong section, I've done some googling and forum searching and come up with very little useful information.

 

My question relates to this part of the ROE:

 

"Hold orbit pattern at safe altitude and maintain the hard deck

of 16 000 feet MSL. Due to limited efficiency of MANPADs at

night the hard deck limits can be lifted when providing CAS.

Discretion of FORD 1-1."

 

Is this an accurate representation of MANPADS in reality? I was under the impression that most of the MANPADS in the sim were IR or even IR+UV guided, and if that was the case wouldn't the IR seekers work just as well at night? Or does the 'limited efficiency' simply refer to the fact that it would be more difficult to visually ID aircraft at night from the ground?

 

If anybody could clear this up for me I'd greatly appreciate it,

Thank you :)

[Cik]

Hey Guys,

 

Recently I've been having an absolutely blast playing my first paid campaign, the excellent "Enemy Within" campaign. I just had a quick question prompted by a few of the mission briefings - I apologise if this is in the wrong section, I've done some googling and forum searching and come up with very little useful information.

 

My question relates to this part of the ROE:

 

"Hold orbit pattern at safe altitude and maintain the hard deck

of 16 000 feet MSL. Due to limited efficiency of MANPADs at

night the hard deck limits can be lifted when providing CAS.

Discretion of FORD 1-1."

 

Is this an accurate representation of MANPADS in reality? I was under the impression that most of the MANPADS in the sim were IR or even IR+UV guided, and if that was the case wouldn't the IR seekers work just as well at night? Or does the 'limited efficiency' simply refer to the fact that it would be more difficult to visually ID aircraft at night from the ground?

 

If anybody could clear this up for me I'd greatly appreciate it,

Thank you :)

 

while the seekerhead of the missile can see in the dark, the eyes of the human holding it cannot

 

unless they have goggles, but most insurgents don't.

 

you're correct though in that the missile won't have problems tracking in the dark. in order for the missile to acquire the target it will have to be pointed at the target, which requires either a radar to track + acquire or mk1 eyeballs alerting you to the fact that there is an airplane there.

[MikeNolan]

Ahhh that makes sense, thanks so much for clarifying

 

Hope you have a good one :)