ECM and AWACS
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@Mav-jp
SalutAgainst an opponent with its ECM in operation, it is not possible to know its altitude until its jamming has been pierced by our FCR.
But our friend the AWACS has no difficulty in giving us this information, all the time.
Isn’t this an inconsistency which harms the fidelity of the simulation of an engagement (and which prevents us from using beautiful tactics based on the good use of the protection cones)?
Is it too difficult to mitigate the effectiveness of the AWACS?
Unless its capabilities (multi-band radar?) allow it to be undisturbed?
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@Rouge1512 said in ECM and AWACS:
@Mav-jp
SalutAgainst an opponent with its ECM in operation, it is not possible to know its altitude until its jamming has been pierced by our FCR.
But our friend the AWACS has no difficulty in giving us this information, all the time.
Isn’t this an inconsistency which harms the fidelity of the simulation of an engagement (and which prevents us from using beautiful tactics based on the good use of the protection cones)?
The reality is far more complex than this which means it is harder (?) to model in the game.
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Most of self protection jammer works only against a specific FIRE CONTROL radar and sometimes it is limited to a certain sub-mode.
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The ALQ pods have front/rear antenna limitations. As Falcon models the ECM that it works against every type of fire control radar is simply very strong simplification in abstraction. Because most of ECM pods have rear and forward antenna with different band coverage. Most of fire control radar uses cm wavelength. The lowest is the SON-4/9 with 3 GHz /10 cm, the highest the SA-8’s fire control radar with 15 GHz / 2cm
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The targ. acq. radars mostly has longer wavelength than 3GHz / 10 cm.P-12, P-14, P-18 for ex. operate between 100-300 MHz. The targ. acq. radar of the SA-8 operates on 7 GHz / 4 cm, the SA-6’s at 6 GHz / 5 cm.
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The ECM system transmits the power in a lobe. If the AWACS is out of the lobe the ECM does not cover anything.
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The E-3 Sentry has a dm wavelength radar as I can recall. So it simply does not care about the self protection jammer. SOJ could cause problems and blind the plane in certain cases.
Translating to this into the game, even if a plane uses it self-protecting jammer an AWACS easily track it because it uses a different wavelength than the fire control radars and the plane simply fly outside the jamming lobe…
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@molnibalage
Thank you for this detailed answer. -
@molnibalage great answer!
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A flight sim can model a lots of thing but in RL the EW is so complex that modeling just only the stone age legacy systems are impossible. Now in the Falcon is countless SAM systems…
This is a lucky case where the reality likely more or less converges what the game models. Except the SOJ.
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@Rouge1512 several reasons actually,
Function follows freq,- Fighters and other fire control are generally I/j band with a few h tossed in
the awacs is e/f band the same as other search of that type
2, power the awacs is bigger and much much more powerful and has a much longer burn through range, and rage in general.
Awacs is larger radar on a bigger platform and can have room for better ECCM. Fully designed to work in that enviroment.It is a very complex radar.
Lastly self protection jamming is exactly that primarily used aginist fire control, they leave jamming the gci/aci, target aq to the dedicated ew platforms that have better jammers.
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Thanks a lot for your explanation. Very instructive.
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@Rouge1512 I will add EW is NEVER stand alone, it is a force multiplier anything I can soft kill (render ineffective) allows a weapon for hard kill elsewhere, or is seldom 100% effective, but can degrade confuse, delay and in general cause hate and discontent… anytime we force a choice it can be the wrong choice in short reducing their effectivness.