Air to Air Missile Flight Physics and Logics, Take two!

[GGTharos]

I already pointed out that according to minizap the different between shooting some 40k to 5k and 5 to 40k is 30nm ... not reflected in LOMAC at all.

 

Specifically, 40->5 is 40nm Rmax, 5->40 is 8nm Rmax.

As AK mentioned, the slant will be longer.

 

Currently, the Rmax on 40->5 in LOMAC is barely 30-35nm, and the missile arrives with less speed than in minizap.

The Rmax on 5k->40k is close to 20nm.

 

The seekers might be 'scripted' but wether they can be made to simulate reality 'better' is questionable. The more reaistic a simulation, the slower it gets.

[Sharpshooter]

Could you tell us when he started flying the F-16, what version of the F-16 or what type of AMRAAM he talks about ?

 

We talked about all the versions. He stated that the A model has a couple of "idiosyncracies" concerning what had to be done to launch one, but he refused to go into detail, as there are still A models in the inventory. He stated that the old models were fantastic, just had the "idiosyncracies" that he wouldn't extrapolate on. He said the newest versions were out performing the old ones by quite a margin, but that the modeling we have didn't seem to be representative of the first "A" model. He flew F4's before he flew F16's, so I don't know how long he's been flying, and he was in the first Gulf War. Seems he's more important to the brass training new pilots now.

 

I spoke to him at length about the community here. He was impressed that we all know about notching, beaming, WEZ, PK, etc. He said he'd love to get me and a couple of guys up in a '16 and he thought that we'd do very well. He said his students have a hell of time w/instruments and simulators. I told him the story about how I finally figured out how to calculate the heading needed to properly beam an opponent. I explained that I used to do the addition or subtraction before I realized the HSI was there to "do the math" for me. He laughed at length and stated that a couple of weeks ago he had explain to his students the exact same process. He also said that he'd probably suck bad if he tried to fly any of the sims on the computer as they have no tactile input. He said he can feel what the airframe is doing, and what he can do just by the G's on his body. I'm thankful that this guy is a fantastic human being and that when he has time that he'll chat w/me. I thank him often for that and for his service.

 

I'm going to put a bunch of LOMAC vids on a DVD for him so he can see what "fun" we have. He was also impressed w/the TrackIR technology. He had no idea that was available.

 

It´s great to see some actual proof. There´s always progress in everything, the missile couldn´t just be born on the drawing board and be a killer. I appreciate that you share this with us.

 

When he said this: "He said the newest versions were out performing the old ones by quite a margin, but that the modeling we have didn't seem to be representative of the first "A" model"

Did he mean that the model we´ve got is an undermodeled A version or a overmodeled A version ?

 

Probably when he heard of TrackIR for the first tiem he went: "How could that be !!! The same technology as the Helmet Mounted Targeting System on civilian hands !!!" :)

[GGTharos]

He's clealy saying that the 120 we're using now is undermodelled for the A.

The B was essentially an A with reprogrammable logic (essentially ... other things changed, but we're not concerned with thigns we're not simulating, eg the fuze etc) so for our purposes the A and B should be more or less equal.

[wsoul2k]

He's clealy saying that the 120 we're using now is undermodelled for the A.

The B was essentially an A with reprogrammable logic (essentially ... other things changed, but we're not concerned with thigns we're not simulating, eg the fuze etc) so for our purposes the A and B should be more or less equal.

 

Disagree i think he is saying it is an overmodelled A model

[Guest ruggbutt]

He's clealy saying that the 120 we're using now is undermodelled for the A.

 

Correct.

[Sharpshooter]

I already pointed out that according to minizap the different between shooting some 40k to 5k and 5 to 40k is 30nm ... not reflected in LOMAC at all.

 

Specifically, 40->5 is 40nm Rmax, 5->40 is 8nm Rmax.

As AK mentioned, the slant will be longer.

 

Currently, the Rmax on 40->5 in LOMAC is barely 30-35nm, and the missile arrives with less speed than in minizap.

The Rmax on 5k->40k is close to 20nm.

 

The seekers might be 'scripted' but wether they can be made to simulate reality 'better' is questionable. The more reaistic a simulation, the slower it gets.

 

Interesting, I really didn´t pay attention to this because I thought that it was correctly modeled, even if scripted. You´d be the ones to judge if it is correctly modeled or not.

 

Quoting this phrase: "The more realistic a simulation, the slower it gets.", I would like to add the inmersive it gets, the challenging it gets.

[Guest DeathAngelBR]

So finally someone said the "XXX missile is (under/over)modeled". :roll:

 

I say russian air-to-air missiles are also undermodeled, because in Indian Air Force's site says the R-77 has a rangeMAX of 100km, R-27TE of 130km and R-27RE of 70km! I too want the R-73RDM2 which has an upgraded seeker, a rangeMAX of 40km and speed of mach 4! :lol:

 

By the way, where's proof that the R-77's seeker is worst than the AMRAAM's? :wink:

[GGTharos]

Uhm, proof? How about the ten to twenty year electronics technology gap? ;)

 

Either way, this isn't relevant to the current discussion.

 

The ballistics on all missiles are modelled incorrectly, period. Go derail some other conversation.

 

 

Sharpshooter, that's not what I meant - there ways to simualte the real effect without simulating reality such as it is. When you do try to simulate reality, you get into trouble ... when I say slow, I mean -slow- ;)

 

I mean an hour to figure out if your missile hit or not ;)

[Guest DeathAngelBR]

Uhm, proof? How about the ten to twenty year electronics technology gap? ;)

 

Either way, this isn't relevant to the current discussion.

 

You mean 1 to 2 years gap :roll: Oh yes, it is relevant. Until you can prove it, your opinion is just another... opinion.

[GGTharos]

Ten to twenty. I'm not sure where you're getting one to two. The industry doesn't just pick up and make itself poof into existance, and even if it were so, the other side had -far- more money and time to conduct R&D on these systems.

 

And hey, where's your proof that it -isn't- inferior? ;)

[coldcrew]

I got an idea. ED should just make it so that the aim120 always kills, the R27 always kills and the R77 always kills. No more complaints

[Guest DeathAngelBR]

If money meant sh*t, soviets wouldn't bother to build - far superior - aircrafts. :roll: Anyway, where's the proof I asked for?

[GGTharos]

But money does mean a lot - a lot of the electronics are either Israeli or western-european built or built under license from such. At the same time, the RuAF is barely buying any of its own stuff DUE to a lack of money. And Like I said, go away and derail some other thread, and come back when you actually -have- something to contribute. Please stop hijacking this thread.

[D-Scythe]

No offense to anyone, but the money spent on upgrading the AIM-120 in the USAF to its current AIM-120C-5/7 configuration is probably greater than the money spent by the RuAF in upgrading their R-77s by an order of two magnitudes. I'm not joking.

 

Money DOES have something to do with stuff. And I'm sorry, in this respect, the AIM-120 beats the R-77 hands down. Anyone who disputes that is delusional. Some 30 years of R&D by Hughes then Raytheon with millions of taxpayers' dollars spent on making the AIM-120 the missile that it is. You *cannot* say that the R-77 enjoyed the same benefits.

 

Back on topic.

 

I got an idea. ED should just make it so that the aim120 always kills, the R27 always kills and the R77 always kills. No more complaints

 

The problem is that they DON'T ;)

[Guest DeathAngelBR]

And once again neither of you provided any proof but your own opinion and the typical "money makes the difference" garbage. :lol: Until you can prove anything, according to Indian Air Force, the R-77 beats the AMRAAM hands down. :roll:

[D-Scythe]

And once again neither of you provided any proof but your own opinion and the typical "money makes the difference" garbage. :lol: Until you can prove anything, according to Indian Air Force, the R-77 beats the AMRAAM hands down. :roll:

 

:roll: This wasn't a thread about the R-77 vs. AIM-120. Stop hijacking this thread. I'm not going to even respond to your future posts in this thread, especially your argument, "The Indian Air Force says so." The US Air Force and more money than you can shake your fist at disagrees, so let's just agree to disagree, okay?

[Guest DeathAngelBR]

And once again neither of you provided any proof but your own opinion and the typical "money makes the difference" garbage. :lol: Until you can prove anything, according to Indian Air Force, the R-77 beats the AMRAAM hands down. :roll:

 

:roll: This wasn't a thread about the R-77 vs. AIM-120. Stop hijacking this thread. I'm not going to even respond to your future posts in this thread, especially your argument, "The Indian Air Force says so." The US Air Force and more money than you can shake your fist at disagrees, so let's just agree to disagree, okay?

 

I bet if this was a thread about how great the R-77 is, and you came in with the "merrikan stuff is betterer!!111 because we have more money!!!111!", it wouldn't be hijacking the thread.

Oh, how did I know that :roll: Unless you work for Vympel, you have no saying on which missile is better.

[GGTharos]

Anyway ...

 

Back on topic - the ballistics apply to all missiles, so it would make all missiles behave as similarely as they do now, except their flight paths would actually be correct. Right now something's wrong - I don't know what exactly. Wether it's inertia that's missing ... anyway, SK put it best and he knows best, I guess.

 

ED, could be see a better missile model in 1.2, maybe? :D

 

Also, there's the issue of notching ... it seems that it is modelled incorrectly. Right now, to get intot he notch one had but to beam the threat radar - but from what I've read, an aircraft could maneuver to prevent the target from entering the notch. This, along with the explanation of what the notch gate is and the physics behind it, suggests that you would notch the enemy aircraft if you flew perpendicular to its flight path, NOT perpendicular to its radar beam.

This would also make the Su's more effective since they could potentially maneuver to prevent their opponents from entering the notch, and thus maintaining lock. BVR jousting would become more realistic.

 

BTW ED< I noticed that HoJ now gives us a target box, as it should! Thanks!

[D-Scythe]

Anyway ...

 

Also, there's the issue of notching ... it seems that it is modelled incorrectly. Right now, to get intot he notch one had but to beam the threat radar - but from what I've read, an aircraft could maneuver to prevent the target from entering the notch. This, along with the explanation of what the notch gate is and the physics behind it, suggests that you would notch the enemy aircraft if you flew perpendicular to its flight path, NOT perpendicular to its radar beam.

This would also make the Su's more effective since they could potentially maneuver to prevent their opponents from entering the notch, and thus maintaining lock. BVR jousting would become more realistic.

 

Makes sense. I was always under the impression that notching works by providing zero closure velocity on the part of the target, so it makes sense that one would have to fly perpendicular to the flight path, not the radar beam. Anyway, can you elaborate on how one would prevent a notch?

 

BTW ED< I noticed that HoJ now gives us a target box, as it should! Thanks!

 

Yeah, just noticed it too. But I never found out whether missiles using the HOJ pure pursuit intercept profile actually hit anything yet (so far they haven't). They certainly did NOT in V1.00/V1.01, so can anyone confirm? I'm actually a bit surprised at this.

 

Remember the intercept profile of missiles prior to V1.02, against a non-jamming target? It wasn't proportional nav, but it wasn't pure pursuit either - more like something in between. Missile's would slightly lead targets, but its flight path in most cases would still be much less efficient than proportional nav. I was wondering - wouldn't this be a more realistic model of HOJ?

[GGTharos]

On preventing a notch:

This assumes that your enemy wishes to shoot you down, so hit efforts to notch will be limited by this.

 

If we assume that notching implies flying perpendicular to the direction of the threat's flight path, then ...

 

Assume two aircraft meet head-on, both equipped with SARH, but one has longer range missiles. The aircraft witht eh longer range missiles fires first, and the other attempts to notch in order to get closer without being destroyed - firing at this point is useless. The target apttempts to to put the threat on his 3 or 9 (since they are ehad on, this would make notching happen) ... the attacker sees this, and turns iwith the enemt plane, thus changing the direction you actually have to fly in in order to notch. Essntially, he's turning the perpendicular away from the target. The target wishes to get closer, so he doesn't completely break away - the attacker is thus able to maintain a lock.

 

The target is nowforced to actually turn tail against his opponent if he wishes to evade the shot, ro he will have to attempt to turn in the other direciton, or some similar maneuver. Going vertical is a simple way of doing things, but it doesn't last long and it may force you to end up where you don't want to be (high and slow, low and fast but well outof range for your own weapons)

 

As for HoJ - it seems that missiles will do a top attack agaisnt a jamming target affter flying pure pursuit against it. All the literature Iv'e encountered pretty muchs trongly suggests that HoJ i s a proportional nagivation guidance, but it is also less efficient, so I figure that ED has gotten that part mostly right.

 

And yes, missiles hit jamming targets now. It's a beautiful thing.

[Sharpshooter]

Anyway ...

 

Back on topic - the ballistics apply to all missiles, so it would make all missiles behave as similarely as they do now, except their flight paths would actually be correct. Right now something's wrong - I don't know what exactly. Wether it's inertia that's missing ... anyway, SK put it best and he knows best, I guess.

 

ED, could be see a better missile model in 1.2, maybe? :D

 

Also, there's the issue of notching ... it seems that it is modelled incorrectly. Right now, to get intot he notch one had but to beam the threat radar - but from what I've read, an aircraft could maneuver to prevent the target from entering the notch. This, along with the explanation of what the notch gate is and the physics behind it, suggests that you would notch the enemy aircraft if you flew perpendicular to its flight path, NOT perpendicular to its radar beam.

This would also make the Su's more effective since they could potentially maneuver to prevent their opponents from entering the notch, and thus maintaining lock. BVR jousting would become more realistic.

 

BTW ED< I noticed that HoJ now gives us a target box, as it should! Thanks!

 

From what I know you can notch the radar when the closure rate read by the Emitters radar is equal to the Emitter Speed. You can only notch when the Emitters Radar is looking down into ground clutter. What I do so they can notch my radar is launch a long range SARH from high above, R-27RE for example, and get below the targets altitude. That way you make sure your radar can´t be notched.

 

It also ocurred to me that since the radar beam is conical-shaped, the maneuvering target should have more trouble trying to notch the radar, especially if the encounter isn´t pure head on, ie there is some considerable angle off from the target. Anyway that the target could make the closure exactly equal to you aircraft´s speed the lock is droped.

 

As I understand notching the radar takes advantage of the method employed to reject ground clutter. Since the radar sees the ground as a target that moves at the same speed as you do, towards you, all the signals with closure rate that equal your speed are filtered. In look up enviroments the radar is not expecting any ground clutter, clouds aren´t detected, so it doesn´t filter those kind of signals anymore and is able to keep the lock on the target. This is the way I understand it, it´s not a very technical explanation I know.

[SwingKid]

Also, there's the issue of notching ... it seems that it is modelled incorrectly. Right now, to get intot he notch one had but to beam the threat radar - but from what I've read, an aircraft could maneuver to prevent the target from entering the notch. This, along with the explanation of what the notch gate is and the physics behind it, suggests that you would notch the enemy aircraft if you flew perpendicular to its flight path, NOT perpendicular to its radar beam.

 

Oh no, not this again... :cry: We had a huge debate over this a year ago on the UbiSoft forum, I had to draw all these pictures and stuff... it wasn't pretty.

 

Lock On has this correct. You notch the radar by flying perpendicular to the radar beam. You cannot take a target out of the notch by turning your own aircraft - while this does change the closure of the target, it also changes the closure of the ground behind the target by the exact same amount. To a Doppler radar, he's now a different-colored snowman in a different-colored blizzard, but still just as invisible.

 

-SK

[D-Scythe]

Thought this might be a good read. Written by the pilot who clinched the double MiG kill over Allied Force.

 

http://yarchive.net/mil/kosovo_mig_kill.html

 

Interesting to note that it took so long for the AIM-120s, fired at about 16 nm according to this article (16 nm is also reflected in a lot of other sources), took so long to splash the MiG-29s. I find this sorta strange - the Dutch F-16A MLU MiG kill also experienced a similar phenemenon, as the pilot launched at 18 km (11 miles), head on, but it took the AIM-120 some 30 seconds to reach and kill its target.

 

These F-15 pilots got within 5 miles before the MiGs went down.

[gherring]

So if an F-15 is engaged head-on with an Su-27, and the Sue fires first and F-poles, rather than placing the Sue at 3 oclock on the TEWS, the F-15 should turn so that the Sue flies left to right on his radar screen, and get lower. The Sue should notice the F-15 start to turn and alter his F-pole to put the F-15 on the other edge.

 

Might the Sue want to fly a course so that the notching course keeps it out of the F-15's radar?

[ApolloFarStriker]

For guys like me who just want the comparative picture, what is the comparison between Falcon 4.0s modelling of missile kinematics and sensors (FF3/SP4 versions) and LOMACs (1.1 version).

 

Besides actual performance and envelopes, are they governed by the same parameters? For example does the IR world in LOMAC feature parameteres such as gimbal limits, seeker tracking rates, irccm capabilies, sun IR properties, flare IR properties, ground / sky IR properties, aircraft IR properties based on engine state, engine cooldown times, etc?

 

Do the kinematics take into account the actual E state of the launching platform, burn/sustain rocket motors etc?

 

Same types of questions go for radar missiles...

 

If you have in-depth knowledge of both sims, how do they compare in this regard?