Lock on warnings, are they Reality?

[Lampshade111]

You definitely see something going down after it explodes.
And from that distance you wouldn't see any missile debris, it had to be alot larger than the missile itself.

You don't see anything falling. Even if it did hit the A-10 that was supposed to be the target the A-10 would have likely made it back to base. That thing can take a ton of damage.

Typically a flak gun is more effective against a modern aircraft than the SA-7. Very simple infrared jammers or flares can fool those.

[Liquid_Cow]

the pilot will be warned since there are certain systems that track any radar signature,

Yes, there are radar warning systems in all tactical jets, however there are no IR warning systems deployed. The first warning you will receive is a puff of smoke from the launch, should you be looking over your shoulder at just the right time. The second warning you will receive would be the missle impacting your aircraft.

Pilots are taught to:
A) Keep above 10,000ft, max alt for most MANPADS
B)Always look behind you
C)Never fly straight
D)Pop flares

a plane can actualy outrun a misile for a short time

Sorry, but that's a negative Ghost Rider. The slowest MANPADS out there is the SA7 which has a top speed of MACH 1.7, which it reaches in the first 10 seconds of flight. All current attack aircraft are slower than this when in attack configuration, and attacks are never carried out at supersonic flight (bombs go all crazy when they are dropped at supersonic speeds).

If the missle is fired at the edges of its attack envolope, it is possible that the SAM will loose enough of its speed that a plane could sprint away from it, but again, it requires that the pilot know the missle is coming.

What most planes can do to loose a SAM is out turn it, however to accomplish this you must be moving at the ideal speed and you must know the missle is coming.

[Blackhawk 5]

SykloAG']Does anyone know of American aircraft downed by an SA-7 or variant thereof?

The dude does have a point though - infrared/heat-seeking launchers are not detectable to produce a warning for the target. Neither does a tank pointing its turret at another tank make it go "beep beep".

I havent a chance to read the pages ecept page 1, and a few incidents when helicopters most blackhawks the other was a chinook was downed by a SA7/related.

[Flanker15]

From my time with Flight simulators and books the lock on for radar guided missiles will not tell you when or if the missile has been launched only the strength of the lock from the other plane (they will fire their missile at full lock strength so that's a good indication of a launch). I looked at all the planes and unit models and the only ones that don't use IR missiles were the AA tanks and platforms on the carrier (which we can just say use IR missiles anyway).
I believe that when combined with a AWACS system in the area planes can be fed info on the actually missile locations regardless of type using the AWACS advance systems.
Being a full scale war there is most likely an AWACS in the area of operations for both sides so missile launch warnings are ok but lock on warnings for the IR missiles are unrealistic.
In conclusion, take out the locking warning and leave the launch warning for simple solution.

[Yoganator]

The helo's in game would be toast w/o a tone.
The jets not as much but they would suffer too.
I like the tone as unrealistic as it is.

Less **** pilots in the air, attack choppers, yah, get shot down bunches and bunches, rookie pilots give up on helo's, the number 1 killer will be the blackhawks, as unrealistic as it is, blackhawks need it.

[Liquid_Cow]

I havent a chance to read the pages ecept page 1, and a few incidents when helicopters most blackhawks the other was a chinook was downed by a SA7/related.

Please show us evidence, to the best of our combined research ability, there has not been a single documented shoot down of a US aircraft with a MANPADS during the current conflict. There is one questionable shoot down of a CH-46, but you cannot tell if its a Grail or an increadibly lucky (or unlucky as the case may be) RPG shot. To date, all the aircraft brought down by enemy fire have been either gun fire or RPG's.

[Cheeseman]

Please show us evidence, to the best of our combined research ability, there has not been a single documented shoot down of a US aircraft with a MANPADS during the current conflict. There is one questionable shoot down of a CH-46, but you cannot tell if its a Grail or an increadibly lucky (or unlucky as the case may be) RPG shot. To date, all the aircraft brought down by enemy fire have been either gun fire or RPG's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Co ... es_in_Iraq

In this list the number coalition aircrafts shot-down by shoulder fired missiles are endless, and last I remember MANPADS are shoulder launched surface to air missiles. Now we can't be certain how many of the hits were from SA7's, but I think there is clear evidence that in Iraq a lot of aircrafts have been hit with missiles and while it is common at low altitudes to be hit with small arms fire, I don't think it’s very easy to accomplish this at high altitudes with a simple small arms fire like an RPG. But yeah not a lot of incidents either. So I think it'll be a good idea to take away the shoulder fired missiles lock-on warnings for helicopters while decreasing the number of ammo piles you can get SA-7 ammos from, since they are pretty rare as well.

hers another link:
http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/02/ ... i_alqa.php

[CAS_117]

Ok, so unless you give pilots the ability to attack from high altitude, launch warnings, and flares that are actually functional, then the lock on warning should be left. And I am pretty sure that those changes wont be made soon.

[Liquid_Cow]

First off, are you going to trust a Wiki article for your source? I love Wikipeadia and refer to it all the time, but got to be careful what you trust there. Have you seen the article about GW Bush's state funeral? Its quite nice, includes photos and everything! Appearently he died in 2001, not sure who's in the White House now.

That said, the Wiki entry lists lots of "shoulder fired missles," but the RPG is a shoulder fired missle too. There are three specific reports of SAM's being used. The CH-46 is the only one with a video reference. In the video we never see the launcher, we don't hear the pre launch "scream" the SA-7 makes, and we don't see the missle manuver, it flies straight (and I don't think its an accident that they used music to cover up the video's sound). Also, CH-46's carry active countermeasures which are highly effective against SA-7's. All of this leads me to believe it was a hell of an PRG shot, not a SAM.

The Brit chopper hit by an SA-14 is the only "official" SAM kill but again there is no video and its not a US bird.

The CH-47 shooting on November 2, 2003 is listed as a SA-7 shoot down, well follow the reference link and this is what is says:

witnesses reported seeing missile trails when the twin-engine CH-47 Chinook went down but that the official cause had not been determined....
if Sunday's helicopter crash turned out to be a shoot-down, it would be a new development.

Al Queda says they've shot down tons of our birds with MANPADS ("MAN Portable Antiaircraft Defence System" which includes all shoulder launched missles), and we see lots of videos of them shooting and missing (these guys video everything). I am certian that if they had shot down something with an SA-7 or 14 they would have released the video.

Of all the stuff you can find on the internet there is just one video of a Chechnian rebel shooting down a Russian transport which is absolutely an SA-7/14 shoot down. Watch this guy take his time and pass up several birds before shooting one. If I had to guess, I'd say that this man learned how to use an SA-7/14 in the USSR army.

It will happen, sooner or later they will get one, but my point to this whole thing is that MANPADS are not a magic bullet, they are difficult to use and require a skilled operator, that a lack of a warning tone does not mean instant death to PRM pilots.

BTW, iSmoke, love the sig!

[Blackhawk 5]

I have a TIME magazine i kept in the closet in which i remembered the main front page is about a BlackHawk Downed, ill post it up soon.

[Biggaayal]

SykloAG']Does anyone know of American aircraft downed by an SA-7 or variant thereof?

The dude does have a point though - infrared/heat-seeking launchers are not detectable to produce a warning for the target. Neither does a tank pointing its turret at another tank make it go "beep beep".

I know the Serbs downed a brit jet in Yugoslavia with just one SA 15 or 16 don't remember the exact number. The pilot did jump out and live.

[Liquid_Cow]

This:

is not a MANPADS. Serbs possesed highly sophisitcated Russian SAM systems including this SA-6 which shot down an F-117 and an F-16 during the war.

[CAS_117]

This:

is not a MANPADS. Serbs possesed highly sophisitcated Russian SAM systems including this SA-6 which shot down an F-117 and an F-16 during the war.

So I get an AGM-88 right?

[Cerberus]

HARM's FTW!

[Cheeseman]

That said, the Wiki entry lists lots of "shoulder fired missles," but the RPG is a shoulder fired missle too.

An RPG is a shoulder launched anti-tank rocket.
It was NOT an RPG shot, because an RPG does not leave a cloud of smoke for such a long period of time, especially in a straight line. An RPG-7's smoke puff is 3 to 4 feet in diameter and remains for up to eight seconds in low winds (NOT like whats seen in the video). Also the missile in the video does slightly curve from its original path towards the helicopter, before making a direct hit at the rear engine.

[Lampshade111]

It was acually a SA-3 that shot down that F-117 during that conflict but the missile was not radar guided. From what I gather the F-117 was flying a bit too low and was spotted visually with the help of low light television or night vision devices. They then launched several manually guided SAMs and one of them went off close enough.

[Xmaster]

Ah, angel wings. It's really an awesome flare deployment.

Exactly what I was about to post.


Looks so beautiful, yet so deadly.

[Thunder]

Exactly what I was about to post.


Looks so beautiful, yet so deadly.

how are aircraft flares deadly?

[Liquid_Cow]

I stand corrected,

Digging into the few citations that the shoot down list contains I found this quote in an ABC story:

Officials believe this is only the second or third helicopter downed by surface-to-air missile since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

OK, so now we have some evidence and I thank you for the reference (even though it took something like an hour of digging to find it), still that's 2 or 3 craft in 4 years! Not exactly a shining example of the success of IR shoulder launched missiles.

And I still remain skeptical of the CH-46 shot. As I've said before these people love to video everything, why didn't we see the shooter with the missle before the shot.

You are correct that the RPG is a rocket and not a missile, however it has been my general observation that most people, especially in the media, do not know the difference between a rocket and a missile, or a cannon and a howitzer, or a tank and an APC.

Lampshade111 you're right about it being an SA-3, my bad. Rumors were that the Serbs had retrofitted some of their SAMs with IR/TV terminal guidance in an effort to avoid having some HARM's shoved down their throats. As I recall, they had an agent at the airfield in Italy where the F-117's were launching from who would phone in when a flight took off and they launched an extremely aggressive and innovative campaign to shoot down just one. They would occationally catch a "peek" at the Stealth on radar as it manuvered, just enough to know roughly where it was. They also knew where likely targets were. Shotgun effect launch in the general direction and BOOM. Many in the media heralded the shooting down of the Stealth by such an "old" missle as proof that such technology was too costly and ineffective, but to them I would point out that there were only 2 actually downings of US aircraft during that war.

Still not a MANPADS