AIM-120B/C shooting whilst softlocked
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Hello all,
Sometimes I tend to forget to hardlock an enemy when using Aim120’s, and end up shooting with a soft lock. Has anyone noticed actual differences in performance?thanks!
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Hi there,
AIM-120 doesn’t requires a STT lock, it’s enough to have a “soft lock”.
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you can actually use TWS and tag 4 different targets, engaging them at the same time
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No real difference in missile performance. Whether you use soft or hard lock: the missile will receive datalink updates until it goes autonomous, which happens when you break lock (Mad dog), or when reaching Husky/Pitbull. That also means that none of both will ensure a hit on the right target when shooting your missile into a furball, by the way.
What does differ is RADAR lock strength. In soft lock, you keep an eye on the target, but you’re still scanning the area. Because you don’t dedicate all of your RADAR on tracking him, he might not get a RWR “spike”, but it’s very likely that you’ll lose lock the moment he breaks away. In hard lock, on the other hand, you force your RADAR to spend all its energy on a single target. His RWR will definitely light up, without doubt warning him of your presence, but he’ll have to do a lot more to get rid of your lock.
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As many times said before, upon pickle the radar will focus 100% of its energy on the target to get the best data that will feed an Amraam and fire him away after 1 sec (thus the pickle delay). So a RWR will light up even if shooting at him with soft-lock, and some latest ones even if they detect a boresight blind launch… The hard lock is not at the 100% of radar power. Current implementation is rather old and inaccurate to these aspects.
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???
So how can the radar subsystem maintain a TWS entity on all the other current “tracks” when a missile is released.
100% , its not a laser, and even then 100% never reaches the target.
Soft lock is not STT. Where the Dish stops scanning, maintaining the target in the best return track for the target and the computational assets are employed to maintain the target in a optimal focus in a predictive manner.
I’m shore others better qualified will comment.
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As many times said before, upon pickle the radar will focus 100% of its energy on the target to get the best data that will feed an Amraam and fire him away after 1 sec (thus the pickle delay). So a RWR will light up even if shooting at him with soft-lock, and some latest ones even if they detect a boresight blind launch… The hard lock is not at the 100% of radar power. Current implementation is rather old and inaccurate to these aspects.
And this behavior is observed with which radar, which AMRAAM block…? which RWR?
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And this behavior is observed with which radar, which AMRAAM block…? which RWR?
APG-68(v)9 only, not previous versions.
Any Amraam.
RWR all can detect the “sunlight flashing” on the pickle, depending on what RWR features/code each country bought they might have an launch alert or not, and after some seconds similarly they might get an incoming active missile warning alert or not. For example, I do not believe that latest Iragi’s Vipers have these features on their suites…
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???
So how can the radar subsystem maintain a TWS entity on all the other current “tracks” when a missile is released.
100% , its not a laser, and even then 100% never reaches the target.
Soft lock is not STT. Where the Dish stops scanning, maintaining the target in the best return track for the target and the computational assets are employed to maintain the target in a optimal focus in a predictive manner.
I’m shore others better qualified will comment.
Inertial track. Like the COAST track ;).
And BTW, he said 100% of energy focused on the target, not that all the energy REACH the target. -
Hello all,
Sometimes I tend to forget to hardlock an enemy when using Aim120’s, and end up shooting with a soft lock. Has anyone noticed actual differences in performance?thanks!
-for humor’s sake.
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u might get a break lock or pseudo info/targets with TWS since it doesnt focus all the radar energy on the target. Better use hard lock in a multi bogey arena
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u might get a break lock or pseudo info/targets with TWS since it doesnt focus all the radar energy on the target. Better use hard lock in a multi bogey arena
Yep, mostly it comes down to solidity of the lock (and of the info you pass on to the missile) vs situation awareness.
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This post is deleted! -
Shouldn’t this be moved to General Discussion thread? Just sayin…
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This is true even without a first or initial pitbull
you can actually use TWS and tag 4 different targets, engaging them at the same time
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Inertial track. Like the COAST track ;).
And BTW, he said 100% of energy focused on the target, not that all the energy REACH the target.It is a Radar (Microwave transmission) Dish not a laser. It has an effective azimuth of a X number of degrees it never “focus” any where near 100% of its energy on a single point.
The amount of “radar” energy that reaches the “target” will depend upon the transmission power, the frequency used (atmospheric conditions/scatter/absorption), transmitter design (dish), range to target, size of target (CSA) and others.
The only thing that can be “focused” as apposed to “targeted” is the receiver. And even then the strength of the return signal depends upon the antenna design and needs to be processed.
So if a target is fired upon you are saying that the dish ceases its “scan” sequence and STTs on the target of interest for a short period of time ?? and then continues its scan. We are talking about “soft lock”.
Remember we are talking electro magnetic radiation not a particle gun.
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It is a Radar (Microwave transmission) Dish not a laser. It has an effective azimuth of a X number of degrees it never “focus” any where near 100% of its energy on a single point.
The amount of “radar” energy that reaches the “target” will depend upon the transmission power, the frequency used (atmospheric conditions/scatter/absorption), transmitter design (dish), range to target, size of target (CSA) and others.
The only thing that can be “focused” as apposed to “targeted” is the receiver. And even then the strength of the return signal depends upon the antenna design and needs to be processed.
So if a target is fired upon you are saying that the dish ceases its “scan” sequence and STTs on the target of interest for a short period of time ?? and then continues its scan. We are talking about “soft lock”.
Remember we are talking electro magnetic radiation not a particle gun.
You can’t “FOCUS” a receiver, especially not in the context of this post. A receiver “Receives” RF, there is nothing to focus. The main difference between TWS and RWS operation as applied here is that in TWS the SOFTWARE of the radar system uses an algorithm to guestimate where the track will be based on the speed, heading, altitude, etc… between sweeps. That way when it sees the target on the next sweep, in the same position as what it “Guessed” it would be (Or reasonably close), the software can say with some certainty it is the same the track, even though it didn’t maintain a constant RF stream to the target. STT actively steers the radar array to follow the specific track it is tracking, so there is no reason to guess where it will be. As stated earlier in the post, when you pickle an AIM-120, the radar SHOULD steer the dish to the track and go into STT for a second to verify the track is still there before it passes the information to the missile and goes through the launch sequence, but it’s done by the radar software, so it’s transparent to the operator. Whether or not that’s how it’s actually modeled, beats me.
