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The Type 54As can detect the LCS from its emissions, but the LCS cannot detect any of the Type 54As.

Is this PEBKAC or is there something wrong?

File should be attached

0014598

Hi Marthinwurer,

This is due to differences in capability between the two ESM sets; the PLAN Band Stand [Mineral, Passive Element] has an over-the-horizon targeting capability that the US AN/SLD-4(V) [ES-3601] does not. This means that the emissions from the LCS can be picked up by the PLAN ships much further away than usual. The LCS' ESM set still gives some slight over-the-horizon capability, which means that the AN/SLD-4(V) [ES-3601] starts picking up emissions at ~20 NM.

This information is available in game in the respective DB Viewer entries for the ships and their respective sensors.

Looking at the database the AN/SLD-4 (V) [ES-3601] it states Max range 500nm ELINT w/ OTH Targeting Late 2000's Technology, Air Search, Surface Search, OTH (Surface Wave). Specific Emitter ID.
Where Chinas Band Stand [Mineral, Passive Element] has Max Range 100nm ELINT w/OTH Targeting Late 1970's Technology, Air Search, Surface Search, OTH (Backscatter).

Does this not mean the US ELINT should also be able to detect much better or is that a difference between Surface Wave and Backscatter.

Thanks Sam

The PLAN detections of the LCS are from the active portion of the Band Stand system (OTH radar), not the passive portion. The LCS lacks an OTH radar, so it won't benefit from the OTH targeting flag on the AN/SLD-4.

Turn off the active half of the Band Stand and the PLAN won't passively detect the LCS much beyond the radar horizon.

Thanks for your reply I checked the detection and its from the passive sensor on multiple ships according to the Contact Status - Detections section.

To see if anything detected them I also tried adding 8 random modern NATO ships including AGI ships and turned all sensors on and none of them detected any of the Chinese ships at all.

I don't know if that's correct or not I was not the creator of this thread I was just interested in how the electronic side of things work.

I stripped it down to 1 PLAN ship (the closest one about 25 nm away from the LCS), and if I turned off the active Band Stand before unpausing, a bit more than half the time, the passive Band Stand wouldn't detect the LCS until I moved it to the radar horizon 22.7 nm away, at which point all the ESM sensors were picking up emissions. The other times, the passive Band Stand, once it acquired the LCS, wouldn't let go.

Of course, that was while running under the scenario editor. When I reran using game mode, the passive Band Stand always picked up the LCS.

I even tried bringing in my modified ocean trader (AGI) which is equipped with ELINT sensors of ever kind pretty much all OTH options NATO has to offer and not one Chinese ship was detected. That doesn't seem right to me there are 16 ships out there with radar firing away surely 1 of 3 of the horizon sensors should pick something up. The database says these have over the horizon capability up to 500nm. It says in the database Bandstand is from the 70's and has 100nm OTH targeting for passive and late 60's 35nm for the active. Where as the AN/SLD-4(V) [ES-3601] Late 2000's 500nm OTH targeting so surely it should be able to see at least one ships emissions.

@FilthDomain

The situation
-----------------
Type 054AII side
Passive:
- 5337 1x Band Stand-Min passive Elint-OTH-targeting 100nm range -60 senativity scantime 5 secs, OTH backscatter able to detect on basically

ALL bands A-J.
- Various camera and IR systems, but usable range against ships at approximately same altitude of 0 is gonna be <15nm.

Emitting:
- 5333 1x Band Stand-Min active Surf-to-surf, range 35nm, scantime 5 sec, OTH, on freq C (500-1000 Mhz)
- 3028 1xChina Type 347G Radar-FCR-WeaponDirector range 20nm, scantime 5sec, on search-freq I (8-10 GHz)
- 2892 2x China Type 347G (TR-47) Radar-FCR-WeaponDirector range 6nm,scantime 1sec, on search-freq L (40-60GHz);
- 2113 1x China Type 363 2d air search - range 70nm, scantime 2, on search-freq E (2-3Ghz)
- 2755 1x Top Plate [MR-710 Fregat M2EM]'3d search air&surf, range 160nm, on search-freq E and F (3-4GHz);

RCS profile:250-575 sq.m.

Contact report over ~30seconds 3 different instances of the ship (helps to name your ships) make detections along a latitude'ish path starting
from closest ship (~27nm) with hits on both passive and active bandstand gear, to one north(97nm) and south(78nm) of that both picking up ESM
bandstand hits on the LCS's radar in the G or H bands.

LCS 2 side:
Passive:
- Various camera and IR systems, but usable range against ships at approximately same altitude of 0 is gonna be <15nm.
- 2249 AN/SLD-4(V) [ES-3601] elint-oth=targeting, -65 sensitivity,500nm, scantime 20sec, oth air+surface (surface wave), on search-freq E-J,

Emitting:
- 5226 AN/SPS-77(V)1 [Sea Giraffe AMB 3D], 3d surf-air&surf-surf, range 80nm, scantime 1sec, on search-freq G (4-6Ghz)and H(6-8Ghz).
- 4450 AN/VPS-2 Search/Track [Mk16 CWIS], 3d suft-to-air, range 2.7nm, scantime 5, on search-freq I.


RCS profile:5-10 sq.m.

Contact reports over first 60 seconds: none.
- The bandstand-active on the 54 operates is emitting C band in range, the SLD-4 will not pick up C band.
- The 347G active on the 54 operate in the I band, the SLD-4 should pick up the I band(raw capability wise).
- The 347G (TR-47) operate on the L band, the SLD-4 will not pickup the L band.
- The Type 363 operates on the E band, the SLD-4 should pickup the E band (raw capability wise).
- The Top Plate operates on the E and F bands, the SLD-4 should pick up the E and F bands (raw capability wise).

On surface glance yes kind of weird as the LCS has generational "better" flagged ESM gear and has gear that in theory can detect at least
some of the opponents emitting gear at similar or same sensitivity. _But_ then again "raw capability wise" does not mean something is
necessarily wrong if it's not picking it up. There lots of factors at play here on all these sensors, power of emissions, signal\radar horizon
issues and calcs, rcs, and how different gear is flagged up, and FREQ capabilities adjusting the outcome of it all.

I would posit as others it's coming down to the situation seriously favoring the OTH-B (backscatter) active and passive Bandstand (In my runs active on the bandstand didn't matter, passive picked it up regardless at the range in the sample, ie the passive didn't need queuing from the active first - they're both flagged in the db as backscatter) for surface emissions\detection which then helps queue one or the other, vs the OTH-SW(surface wave) feature set on the LCS who can't even see that active-bandstand when activated because it can't "read" band C. But it should in theory be picking up the Top Plate at least and probably the 363.

The reason the passive OTH-SW is may not be picking up the emitting Top Plate or the Type 363 is they are 27nm away, same with SPS-77 and ship
itself when it comes to surface search. Yet it will pick up (if you add one) an aircraft radar emitting at 36,000ft on the same band some
~250nm (~250 is about the radar target visibility cap from a ship height that is probably like 0 or maybe some default like 10m) is that of
radar horizon caps being applied for the SLD-4.

The radar vis to something at 0 or 10 meters from something at like 10 meters height when it comes to the ships is something on the order of
~15nm (and the closest 54 is 27nm). So if the active or passive Backscatter is flagged in code to ignore the radar horizon because "OTH
purposes", and the Surface-Wave OTH SLD does not get the same treatment\feature (hmm?) than it would explain what is seen in that the 54's
bandstand is picking up emission from something 27nm at ~30ish feet, but the LCS is not cause a it's OTH can't read the bandstand signal in
first place, and can't pick up the top plate or type363 due to horizon, and it's own SPS-77 is horizon locked on searches for something at
30'ish feet. Just a theory.

BTW If you want a close approximation of what you'll see in-game with radar horizons here is useful link, it will not match the game EXACTLY
because it's like a general baseline, But for general approximation of theoretical max detect-ability range of an object when subject to said
horizons this works decently so long as you keep in mind CMO applies it's own +|-'s to it own similar calculations based on dozens of factors.
https://www.translatorscafe.com/unit-co ... r-horizon/

The TLDR:
----------
The question remains murky to me why the OTH-SW flagged (capability flag 9002) SLD-4 is not picking up specifically the long range Top Plate blasting away on the 54 in the E and F bands, even if those are horizon lock'd for the 54 detecting side, her emissions toward the SLD - if the SLD Surface Wave-OTH is modeled similar to Backscatter-OTH I would think should detect said emissions. It _may_ just be that SW doesn't get such horizon breaking features for surface based emissions. Also sort of confirming this in my view, is if you stick a SLD-4 on a chopper (stripped of everything else) and set altitude to 50ft over the LCS (clear contact if already picked up), you'll not pick up the topflight or the 363 on the near by 054, but if you rise the chopper up to over 250 but not over ~300 feet you will pick up the Top Plate and the Type 363 on the very next scan cycle assuming it's the sample attached and the range is ~27nm. So either it's by chosen design for surface-wave-oth flags, or something is off, cause why flag it OTH if it's actually very horizon bound? Does Surface Wave get a different advantage some how? I'm super interested to know the differences in the model changes for the 2 flags, in the general sense anyway save the math.

From what I've been able to pick up, OTH radars, both backscatter and groundwave, operate at frequencies of 30 MHz or less, with groundwave systems at or under 20 MHz. At frequencies above 20 MHz over water/3 MHz over land, radio waves don't refract along the surface, while at frequencies above 30 MHz, radio waves don't bounce off the ionosphere (except for limited e-skip episodes involving VHF up to 300 MHz).

Neither the LCS nor the Type 054A have radars that operate anywhere near those frequencies (the lower end of the NATO A band). The closest is the active part of the Band Stand system on the Type 054A, which operates in the C band (and thus probably shouldn't be tagged as an OTH system). The LCS's AN/SPS-77 operates in the G/H bands. Therefore, neither ESM system should pick up the other side's radar transmissions beyond the radar horizon.

Cheers for your inputs I'm gonna look more into the various OTH and other ELINT sensors see if I can find out what does what.