SA2 launches
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hi. the other day an SA-2 fired on me and i ducked behind a hill. and then another hill, and then another. the missile kept following me. it was probably also below it’s minimum launch altitude at pretty much every part of the flight. the odd part was that the SA-2 disappeared off my RWR, as normal but the launch warning tone (and button) were continuously lit, and sure enough i looked over my shoulder and they kept following me. they didn’t seem vulnerable to chaff either, considering i dropped quite a bit and nope, still two missiles clinging to me. when they were close on my 6 i turned and they failed to hit me (probably due to their subpar agility, i was at corner)
still it was pretty bizarre. stuff like this has happened to me before. anyone else?
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If you flew in essentially a straight line, it’s not strange that it kept following you.
Just flying straight away from it is suicidal, unless you can accelerate to Mach 3 sharpish. One of the best ways I know to deal with them is how F-105s did in Vietnam; Find the missile launched at you, put it on your 10/2 o’clock, mil power and dip your nose. When you can’t stand seeing the missile approach any longer, pull a 4-5G (if I have A-G weapons/tanks loaded that I don’t want to jettison, otherwise more Gs) sharp turn into the missile.
I tend to turn on my ECM pod, but I don’t even bother dropping chaff. The SA-2 is old, and considerably lesser planes have been able to outfox it for decades in this way, without chaff or ECM.
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keep in mind i was at 1000~ feet when it fired at me, in hilly terrain near the chinese border. what’s strange is not that it kept following me, but that it did so with no LoS to it’s parent radar, and after i’d crossed that LoS barrier like 3 times. dodging it wasn’t the hard part. just that it’s behavior was contrary to what it’s supposed to be able to do (unless i’m very wrong)
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Not the tipical SA-2(BMS) behaviour….
Maybe you run puting it on your six… drop altitude and hide…BUT your RWR got stucked, and keep telling you is was following you while it was just flying a flat ballistic trajectory…
Just because you went with the Sam at your six, you kept seeing it coming behind you… and once you turn, it just flew by.
… I´m just giving a weir but posible reason… I´ve seen many “near-misses” SAMs flying by well after they were defeated and unguided, just because of this…
But who knows.
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i’ve nearly been hit by dead SAMs, but it wasn’t that. the SAM was literally maybe as little as 50m from me, following my movements. i could literally look out my window and see the telephone pole HANGING OUT THERE as if by magic. it was legitimately spooky.
after it got really close (there were 2) i turned and defeated. i succeeded in the mission (sead strike against a SA-2 battery by chinese border) but it was weird as hell.
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Turn your RWR on and off in this situation.
C9
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Well, 1000 feet is definitely not enough to hide from an SA-2. However, if you’re positive that you’ve broken the line of sight, things do certainly become a bit more complicated. I think that theoretically speaking, if you don’t take many evasive manoeuvres the Fan Song should be able to resume guiding the missile(s) fired at you when it can see you again.
What sort of terrain specifically did you use to break the line of sight? For how long where you concealed from the radar?
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high hills. the terrain gets very mountainous near the chinese border, which is where i was. i was flying NOE because i had already spent my HARMs on SA-3s on the way, so i climb up and over a hill that puts me in a small valley. to my west, an SA-2 lights me up, then another. i turn right, still seeing the SA-2 targeting radar (the 2) on my RWR. i make it over the hill. fan song disappears off RWR, launch warning still present, i look over my shoulder, see missile still on lead pursuit, keep going. i’m at roughly 600~ knots at this point and dropping chaff. missiles are still coming though slowing down at this point. they get very close and i do a break turn right and defeat both kinetically. proceed onto target with rockeye II and wreck that site’s (this one never fired at me, even when i came over the hill in front of it) fan song radar, and a few launchers, then proceed NOE out of range of the nearby 2s and climb to egress.
i don’t have an exact measurement of how long the missiles were in pursuit of me after the first hill, but it was a while. probably in excess of 30 seconds. i was dropping chaff and burning fairly aggressively the whole time.
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ACMI by chance?
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i uh, forgot to record it.
;_;
i’m going to restart a fresh tiger spirit campaign and go after the same site and see if i can replicate it though. it might be a bug, an intended feature of the RWR, or something wonky with how LoS is calculated. i’ve encountered RWR weirdness with SA-2s before. at one point i was hit by one with zero launch warning flying NOE. i think there might be something weird with how SAMs work sometimes. i’ll give it some more testing and report with findings if you guys are interested.
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RWR does act funny for me every now and again I have to reset it……No Big Deal
What type of SAM were you hit by with no warning? ALSO if you are testing for bugs please include ACMI footage it makes finding and debugging possible problems much easier.
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If you didn’t manouver after breaking line of sight, the missiles would still be doing a pretty accurate lead based on the guidance they received prior to the line of sight breaking. Also, if you blocked the Fan Song’s line of sight, you definitely shouldn’t be using chaff. SA-2s are semi-active, so they can’t guide by themselves.
How would you say that you know for sure that no other SA-2s were launched at you from the same azimuth around/after breaking line of sight with #1? Remember that the RWR only gives you azimuth, not distance (the distance on the RWR represents how powerful a lock a radar has on you).
Also, IIRC, the RWR doesn’t update every single second. IIRC they only update about every 10 second, but I’m not sure how they act in regards to that with launch warnings and lock ons.
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i’m totally serious when i say these things were like 50m away tops and maneuvering slightly with me. there was a launch tone and they were following me.
i’m sure because i was using the missile incoming camera (only after i realized something was really weird. normally i don’t cheat) the two missiles followed me over the hill and were the only two missiles in flight. they were locked on me because otherwise the incoming missile camera does not work.
i was hit by a standard SA-2/fan song setup near haeju with no launch warning. i have the recording around here somewhere, i’ll go fish for it. basically, i was flying due north to hit something, SA-2 comes off the launcher, flies to me with no warning, kills me. to me at the time i just randomly exploded. looked at ACMI later and sure enough, it was a fan song battery. was very weird.
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Honestly, if you could see them for any longer period of time (the missiles, not the smoke trails) and you kept them around your 6 o’clock, just that indicates to me that something had bugged completely. They travel at at least 1-2 Mach higher speed than you within maximum range (outside maximum they self destroy), so they should’ve hit you within seconds of you seeing them on your tail.
As for the “sneaky” one that killed you I see only three options. 1, It was launched manually at you. You were an easy target, and Fan Songs can actually do optical tracking. 2, Someone else was targeted, and you got in between. When many different SAMs are fired against jamming targets, they are set to arm after only a few seconds in flight, so if you got in between one and its target, the proximity fuze would’ve reacted to you being there.
Or my favourite, #3, my Occam’s razor theory: Your RWR malfunctioned at the wrong time in the wrong place. Tough shit :drink: -
As for the “sneaky” one that killed you I see only three options. 1, It was launched manually at you. You were an easy target, and Fan Songs can actually do optical tracking.
didn’t know that. might explain it then. it was mostly my fault; if it’s capable of launching at me i should’ve been looking for smoke. i won’t make the mistake again, just that i’d never been shot before by a non-SA-10 SAM with no warning. live and learn
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Yep, always keep your eyes outside as much as possible. Regardless of which of the 3 options applied, seeing them will always solve the issue. If you see it fired at first, you’ll see it move to line up on a target. If you now see it stop moving, it means you’re the intended target.
Still, a big shame on you for putting a tracking SAM on your six. And using countermeasures on something as ancient as an SA-2. And even more for using it against a semi active SAM after breaking line of sight of the Fan Song
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Honestly, if you could see them for any longer period of time (the missiles, not the smoke trails) and you kept them around your 6 o’clock, just that indicates to me that something had bugged completely. They travel at at least 1-2 Mach higher speed than you within maximum range (outside maximum they self destroy), so they should’ve hit you within seconds of you seeing them on your tail.
As for the “sneaky” one that killed you I see only three options. 1, It was launched manually at you. You were an easy target, and Fan Songs can actually do optical tracking. 2, Someone else was targeted, and you got in between. When many different SAMs are fired against jamming targets, they are set to arm after only a few seconds in flight, so if you got in between one and its target, the proximity fuze would’ve reacted to you being there.
Or my favourite, #3, my Occam’s razor theory: Your RWR malfunctioned at the wrong time in the wrong place. Tough shit :drink:Ah option 1 can not happen without radar the SA-2 will not engage you, option 3 unless you have random faults on this can not happen. Option 2 seems the most viable
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Well, I don’t know how BMS handles it, but IRL there are provisions for optical tracking on at least some Fan Song variants.
Random faults can be disabled? I’ve never enabled any, and I relatively often see differing opinions as to whether or not SAMs are targeting me or even radiating at all between the RWR and the HAD.
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Not BMS its in the code of Falcon, the SA-2 is tied to the Fan Song and the SA-2 missiles requires sometype of guidance IRL, the optical system you are talking about is a fallback when the radar couldnt maintain lock. In which case it was not very accurate in hitting targets. Random faults by default are not on but an improper ramp could result in system failure.
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SA-2s can be fired without a radar lock, so using the optics is a viable way of guiding a missile. Not very accurate, but still.
Still think there are some faults by default. I haven’t enabled any, and I have never done a ramp start, I always start at runway.
The odds of actually being within the very limited area that you’d have to be within to accidentally catch an SA-2 intended for someone else is so small I’d consider both other options to be more likely.
