When to fire missiles?

[SchDerGrosse]

So, I am at a loss right now.

In the old days you just fired your missiles from max range and that was it (or maybe you let the enemy a little bit closer to reduce the range penalty if you could afford it).

Now, the situation is completely different. You have no way of telling at what range will your missiles be effective as ordenance performance is dependent on burn duration, type and speed of the target etc.

Thus comes the question. How the heck do I decide when to fire away the missiles?


Just looking at the weapon's/target aircraft's stats doesnt tell me a thing in this regard (or does it?)

(interesting topic from fitzpatv with some missile performance analysis: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 2&t=393413)

thx,

[TempestII]

It depends!
But if you want your missile to not run out of energy, set it to fire at NEZ. That's usually 25-35nm for AIM-120Ds vs things like Flanker and Fulcrums.

[thewood1]

I have a basic logic I use in almost every scenario. WRA 75-100% if I'm just trying to put someone at arm's length. This is mainly for CAP or escorts. Of course 75 vs 100 is based on type of enemy. If the point to attrite the enemy, NEZ. I only worry about actual range when setting up missions and have a choice of fighters with diverse capabilities.

Of course this is a generalization. I have to make tweaks and adjustments based on what I think the enemy/player is going have and do.

[DaveFromCTX]

I have a basic logic I use in almost every scenario. WRA 75-100% if I'm just trying to put someone at arm's length. This is mainly for CAP or escorts. Of course 75 vs 100 is based on type of enemy. If the point to attrite the enemy, NEZ. I only worry about actual range when setting up missions and have a choice of fighters with diverse capabilities.

Of course this is a generalization. I have to make tweaks and adjustments based on what I think the enemy/player is going have and do.

Was just coming here to say the same thing.

[KungPao]

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 2&start=80
(look at the column of WRA 25% max)

a short answer is , to ensure you don't waste missile, fire at 25%-40% WRA is a safe option for most of the BVR missiles. (NEZ is an overkill)

However, you may have to put the WRA between 50%-75%, because many time it is not the "kill" dominate your decision, it is the "suppress" drive your action and decision. In a lot of circumstances, fire a missile to force the enemy abort their current task can be a decisive punch.

[BDukes]

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 2&start=80

a short answer is , to ensure you don't waste missile, fire at 25%-40% WRA is a safe option for most of the BVR missiles. (NEZ is an overkill)

However, you may have to put the WRA between 50%-75%, because many time it is not the "kill" dominate your decision, it is the "suppress" drive your action and decision. In a lot of circumstances, fire a missile to force the enemy abort their current task can be a decisive punch.

Yes this is generally my findings too. Obviously NEZ is safest but you'll still get good results at 25% range. I'll be setting my AI to that was well.

M

[SchDerGrosse]

Thank you for the insight, WRA 25-35% is working perfectly!

On the other hand, Tcao's excel sheet looks scary.

As far as I understand, burnout time is king now and modern Russian and Chinese missiles completely outclass anything that NATO can offer..

[Tcao]

burnout time is king now . modern Russian and Chinese missiles completely outclass anything that NATO can offer..

I agree with you. It can be a little controversial on how the missile motor burnout time is modeled. Basically it is calculated from a known max range, then decide how long the motor has to work to make sure the missile can reach that max range. Most of the Russian missile take a direct path, so the motor will have to work on a longer time. Most of the NATO missile take a loft profile, they need less time motor burnout time to reach the same max distance.

unfortunately, longer burnout time equals to longer NEZ range / better performance at 25%, 50% max WRA range.

And, here lies a hidden issue: either the loft missiles flight profiles are not optimized. or the loft missiles' interception logic have some bugs.

I am updating my excel sheet, hopefully can finish it in a day or two.

bvr update.jpg (249.02 KiB) Viewed 1025 times

You can see AIM-120D and AIM-260 show interesting result. They failed to intercept a closer target, but were able to hit target at longer distance. I don't have TacView so it is very hard to tell what happened. On one hand , the targeted Su-27P took a not so smart defense posture (worthy to look into this later : try to outrun the missiles at first, but after successfully bleed missile's speed below 1000kt, it turned back. At that time the missile still had the height advantage). On the other hand, I have noticed there are several cases, loft missile have greater terminal speed when aimed at longer distance target than at shorter distance target.

[SchDerGrosse]

You are doing god's work Tcao by providing us with this extremely useful information.

I am anything but a military expert so cannot comment on the authenticity of the new system, but what still strikes me as weird, that NATO has always put an emphasis on technological superiority and yet if the data you have gathered is correct, their latest weaponry is massively outclassed by Russian and Chinese missiles.

I am not complaining that bo hoo my AMRAAMs do longer rule the skies, I am saying that it is difficult to believe that that the weapons of the adversaries of NATO are just this much better.

How come that China could still not come up with a proper next gen stealth figther yet their missiles are lightyears ahead of the latest NATO tech (AIM120D and 260 vs PL 15 and 21).

The situation is even worse for Russia. Their defense budget is like 1/10th that of the US, however it seems that they are producing better air to air ordenance than the americans.

[tylerblakebrandon]

You are doing god's work Tcao by providing us with this extremely useful information.

I am anything but a military expert so cannot comment on the authenticity of the new system, but what still strikes me as weird, that NATO has always put an emphasis on technological superiority and yet if the data you have gathered is correct, their latest weaponry is massively outclassed by Russian and Chinese missiles.

I am not complaining that bo hoo my AMRAAMs do longer rule the skies, I am saying that it is difficult to believe that that the weapons of the adversaries of NATO are just this much better.

How come that China could still not come up with a proper next gen stealth figther yet their missiles are lightyears ahead of the latest NATO tech (AIM120D and 260 vs PL 15 and 21).

The situation is even worse for Russia. Their defense budget is like 1/10th that of the US, however it seems that they are producing better air to air ordenance than the americans.

I think we will see some changes in the future. I saw a post from one of the Devs (can't remember if it was here or some other social media page) in reference to some Russian missiles (I think the Adder and Alamo were mentioned specifically) specifically were some older models did not loft and flew straight in and currently some newer versions with longer range are modeled the same and given longer burn times but the Devs said based on the open source data there were no major propulsion changes and it seems the newer versions of the missiles loft so they would be updated in a future db so their performance in games can be expected to change. I think that with some future updates the exchanges will even back out from what many players are reporting now.

[Dimitris]

Related: https://www.quora.com/In-air-combat-BVR ... ul-Adam-13