Curious if the "hex" will ever be retired.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: barbarrossa

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: barbarrossa



Well, I was a Patriot tech too[:)] there are no Hawk units assigned to us to back us up. No Hawk units at all at FT Bliss (home of ADA), it's not even an MOS anymore. Rapier? Never heard of it, must not be US.

Most ASM's are sea skimmers, why have your best radar so limited against your greatest threat? I don't buy it, because I've done it.[:)]

Rapier is a British millimeter wave radar enabled tactical SAM designed for close-in air defense. Patriot is more of a strategic SAM. If anything "backed you up" it was probably a gatlin gun/AAA system like Vulcan or something for "knife-fighting".

Naval SAMs are not really designed to shoot down sea-skimming cruise missles either. Their whole strategy is get the missle launchers BEFORE they have a chance to launch. Failing that, get the missles BEFORE they get down to altitude using SAMs and AMRAAMs and Phoenix's. Failing that, the point defense stuff takes over, basically Phallanx, jamming, and spoofing...

Vulcan is way obsolete in US Army, there are a few sitting around the museums at Bliss. Maybe you want to say Stinger but that's line-of-sight.

Patriot is medium range, deployed in battalions of 4 batteries on the battlefield. There is nothing save maybe Avenger (stinger) or Bradley Linebacker as backup. But we never worked with them, nor were there any units assigned at Bliss. Just Patriot.

Saying naval SAMS aren't designed or intended to engage incoming ASM's sea-skimming or otherwise is just wrong man.[:)]

If Patriot has anything ever "backing it up" it would have to be a short range thing to get the stuff inside of 5-10 miles that Patriot missed. Not sure if the Army even has state-of-the art AAA. The best ex-Soviet technology is the 1970's vintage ZSU 23-4 using the GUNDISH radar.

And Naval SAM's are STILL piss poor at geting sea-skimming cruise missles like Exocet AFTER they reach skimming altitude. They have to engage either before they get to skim altitude or have only a tiny window during the "pitch up" manuever some use to get them. That's why Phallanx is such a huge weapon to the Navy. Almost nothing can get through a Phallanx battery that has locked on. And what little can, hopefully gets jammed, spoofed or just misses.

[Mr.Frag]

Most ASM's are sea skimmers, why have your best radar so limited against your greatest threat?

It's not a matter of choice, it is a matter of physics. Ground based radar can only see so far because radio waves travel in straight lines.

If you take you coffee cup and put a pencil on top, you will see that on either side of the pen is a curved area.

This curve effect (Horizon) is why radar is so limited against ground/low flying targets.

This is *also* why the usa went for cruise type missiles that fly very low. They are much harder to detect and shoot down because they get a lot closer before you can see them because your radar can't see through the earth (that curve).

You have 2 choices ... make the radar higher to see farther or make it airborne to see even farther still. With a ship, there is a finite distance you can crank up that radar before the ship simply rolls over from being top heavy [;)]

As far as the Patriot system and it's effectiveness, lets just not go there. It reminds me of the IFV Bradly ... if you just keep giving us more money, we'll get it to work right some day [8|]

The SPY system was built to deal with the largest threat facing the USN. Backfire bombers launching those monster shipwrecks at 250+ miles out. These are supersonic missiles that fly VERY HIGH AND VERY FAST. SPY works great against them for that was it's design goal.

[Theng]

Coming back to the original issue... While the distance between each degree latitude is constant, regardless of longitute; the distance between each degree longtitude is different for each latitude. Depending on your resolution, mount of distance pairs of x1,y1 to x2,y2 goes every quickly towards infinity.

Modelling is the art of designing a system that as complicated as necessary while being as simple as possible to represent the real events within the approximation (error) range you are willing/able to accept.

[Mr.Frag]

ORIGINAL: Xian

Coming back to the original issue... While the distance between each degree latitude is constant, regardless of longitute; the distance between each degree longtitude is different for each latitude. Depending on your resolution, mount of distance pairs of x1,y1 to x2,y2 goes every quickly towards infinity.

Modelling is the art of designing a system that as complicated as necessary while being as simple as possible to represent the real events within the approximation (error) range you are willing/able to accept.

Exactly.

The only place this needs to be used is when moving large distances (ships/aircraft).

Once you get down to the grunt level fighting, it is not required as they are going to be within a close enough range that the error rate can be calculated in feet, not miles.

So you need a vector based model for movement but a simple model for resolution.

[barbarrossa]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Most ASM's are sea skimmers, why have your best radar so limited against your greatest threat?

It's not a matter of choice, it is a matter of physics. Ground based radar can only see so far because radio waves travel in straight lines.

If you take you coffee cup and put a pencil on top, you will see that on either side of the pen is a curved area.

This curve effect (Horizon) is why radar is so limited against ground/low flying targets.

This is *also* why the usa went for cruise type missiles that fly very low. They are much harder to detect and shoot down because they get a lot closer before you can see them because your radar can't see through the earth (that curve).

You have 2 choices ... make the radar higher to see farther or make it airborne to see even farther still. With a ship, there is a finite distance you can crank up that radar before the ship simply rolls over from being top heavy [;)]

As far as the Patriot system and it's effectiveness, lets just not go there. It reminds me of the IFV Bradly ... if you just keep giving us more money, we'll get it to work right some day [8|]

The SPY system was built to deal with the largest threat facing the USN. Backfire bombers launching those monster shipwrecks at 250+ miles out. These are supersonic missiles that fly VERY HIGH AND VERY FAST. SPY works great against them for that was it's design goal.

Yeah, and the way the Patriot commands run business isn't much better. The school wasn't even in the league of navy electronic schooling either. Patriot was never designed to take out "Scuds" and the like, it was primarily designed to engage a/c.

Our biggest fear in the Gulf War was Silkworms and Exocets. Both sea skimmers.

I spent the better part of 10 years in two services working on radar and firecontrol equipment (guns and missiles), so I'm familiar with the concepts. And I've also tracked naval suface vessels with the 55 past 40 miles, seen the coast of Iran on the Mk48 search radar scope more than 40 miles out, and have tracked ships at the limits of the Mk 13 radar right around 80,000 yds.

We'll leave it at that and agree to disagree, okay[:)]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Most ASM's are sea skimmers, why have your best radar so limited against your greatest threat?

It's not a matter of choice, it is a matter of physics. Ground based radar can only see so far because radio waves travel in straight lines.

If you take you coffee cup and put a pencil on top, you will see that on either side of the pen is a curved area.

This curve effect (Horizon) is why radar is so limited against ground/low flying targets.

This is *also* why the usa went for cruise type missiles that fly very low. They are much harder to detect and shoot down because they get a lot closer before you can see them because your radar can't see through the earth (that curve).

You have 2 choices ... make the radar higher to see farther or make it airborne to see even farther still. With a ship, there is a finite distance you can crank up that radar before the ship simply rolls over from being top heavy [;)]

As far as the Patriot system and it's effectiveness, lets just not go there. It reminds me of the IFV Bradly ... if you just keep giving us more money, we'll get it to work right some day [8|]

The SPY system was built to deal with the largest threat facing the USN. Backfire bombers launching those monster shipwrecks at 250+ miles out. These are supersonic missiles that fly VERY HIGH AND VERY FAST. SPY works great against them for that was it's design goal.

Actually AS-6 was even more feared. Came along late in the game, almost at the end of the Cold War (early '80's). Also launched from Backfires at 250+ miles. But it was a surface skimmer with a HUGE warhead. Naval SAM's were almost USELESS against it, once it got down to sea level. Fortunately, it was extremely inaccurate. Estimates were that only one in 15 would actually hit an acquired target...

[Mr.Frag]

We'll leave it at that and agree to disagree, okay

No need, I agree with you [:D]

The radar on a ship is mounted high enough to see that far these days ... it was not in WW II.

I also agree with the vast differences between the navy and the army systems. In the navy, you don't get a second chance. The army can just move somewhere else ... the navy has to wait to be picked up out of the water when they don't succeed [:D]

[mongo]

So, we can safely say the answer the original question is:

not bloody likely [8D]

It's been a very enjoyable thread (even when Zoomie and Meng started code-geeking [:)]) Frag and Barb remind me why I was happy enough humping a ruck and carrying an M-16 (thought I still think we should have just produced our own AKs....[8|])

[akbrown]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

One of the things that always ticked me off ... naval sighting is completely subject to the curvature of the earth. Radar is subject to the curvature of the earth. Even to this day, one takes a SPY-1 system ... it has a maximum range of about 40 miles and that is the best there is made by man.

Then people complain that two old WW2 ships pass by each other unseen [:D]

You mean you haven't heard of Jindalee? [8D]

[DJAndrews]

Just out of interest does anyone know how the static mapping used in generating scenarios in flight sims like IL-2 is done? The static mapping appears to differ in content from the computer generated ground "pictures" that are used during the flight sim.

Usin the static mapping in IL-2 you start off with a gross "state" or "county" size "road"map and then zoom closer to get a larger map, in increments. At some point in the zoom (say 5km) the map switches from lines and topo shading to an air-photo style map. You can continue to zoom down to airfield size, complete with planes and vehicles.

Such mapping isn't warranted in a strategic level game such as WITP, but its a cool effect and I was wondering if anyone knew the basis for it.

[ColFrost]

ORIGINAL: Kid

A war game without hexes! NEVER!

Someone may have mentioned this. Back in the beginning of the 90s, James F Dunnigan put out a 'hexless' game just like WiTP, called Victory at Sea. It didn't use hexes.

And it crashed every other friggin' day. I never got past December 15th.

[DrewMatrix]

James F Dunnigan put out a 'hexless' game just like WiTP

In defence of Jim Dunnigan:

Jim gave some people a start, some overall design and some OOB suggestions. The people who did design Victory at Sea then repeatedly didn't follow his ongoing suggestions.

The failure of the game wasn't Jim's error.