Are Stealth Aircraft Vulnerable To Stinger MANPADS Missiles? (and other science) | DCS 

One thing that's easy to forget about AAA and especially MANPADS is how landscape altitude will change their threat to aircraft. If you're thinking you're safe flying at 20,000 feet AGL, you could be in for a very bad day if you happen to be flying near mountains. I highly recommend using a few sneaky MANPADS on a mission sometime, without the team expecting them.

I remember my Stinger training in Germany in the late 80s, they put us in a huge dome. The ceiling, which turned into the "sky", came alive and we basically were in a video game.. Quite fun actually..

Ive been working and instructing on the F-35A for nearly a decade now. Your explanation of high bypass and boundry layer air on the augmentor of the Lightning was spot on, well done.

So something to keep in mind about the A-10, whilst it has managed to survive multiple missile hits on occasion it isnt expected to actually be hit. Even back in WW2 armor on planes was minimal. A big part of the A-10’s survivability comes mostly from its seperated 2 engines. It is considerably harder to take out 100% of the planes thrust with a single hit. And the stupid amount of flares it carries.

We had a 98% kill on jets and 100% kill on choppers with the redeye. Personally I question the DoD's claims of 98% and 100%. The issue is they had a range of four miles and you had to hold on target for two seconds. If you're in any sort of built up area or in the woods they're nearly useless since you can't keep a two second lock. FIM-43 Redeyes (1967-1995)

The A-10’s vertical stabilizers and engines are supposedly placed where they are aside from aerodynamics to allow the stabilizers to block direct line of sight to the exhaust. This was supposedly to limit the hot exhaust view to almost directly six o’clock. Hueys in Vietnam were equipped with ‘’Strela kits’’ after the Strela was supplied to the North. Did the same as the Gazelle exhaust you showed Cap, directing the exhaust upward. They were referred to as ‘’toilet bowl’’ exhaust.

For the missiles to jam up control surfaces on the Mig-21, the Mig would need to HAVE control surfaces…

I still remember it as the Strela - flying late-night evasion missions on the NAS Fallon range in the late 1987s, dodging Strelas and other Soviet era gear - trapped in the back of the SH-60B Seahawk and puking because we had almost no external visual reference or artificial horizon as we stared at the ESM screen

modern stingers also have negative UV guidance, which means they also track the UV shadow left by a passing aaircraft, they combine that with the IR emitted by the target for added flare resistance

In addition to chaff and flares Apache has inbuilt IR 'Black Hole' suppressors on it's engine exhausts, it also has the IRCCM (Infra-red counter countermeasures) system behind the rotor hub, basically a ceramic brick heated by the engines that vents burst of heat energy into the sky behind the aircraft to confuse IR seekers.

11:50 You can see 2 explosions so Stinger did the job and the aircraft damage model is to blame. F-35 is not even fast as for a fighter so proximity fuze should have no problems. Regarding flares remember that real Stinger has dual spectrum (IR + UV) seeker so it should be very resistant to flares, in DCS that feature seems to be missing from DCS World Stinger.

MANPADS have relatively primitive seekers eg Stingers Mechanical Rosette Scan is primitive compared to the AIM-9X focal plane array and the IRIS/T linear scan. MANPADS can often be disrupted by DIRCM "Directional Infrared Red Counter Measures" such as Northrop Grumman's Nemesis. These track the missile with radar and infrared cameras and inject laser wavelength into the seeker of the MANPADS modulated to disrupt the mechanical scan of the MANPADS seeker. Russia has been using Vitebsk L370, the Russian New Generation Directional IR Countermeasure (DIRCM) System to jam Stinger. Of course this was all known about 7 years ago but plans to replaced the seekers of Stinger with a similar seeker to Sidewinder in 2015 was rejected on economy grounds so now the Russians are jamming stinger. IRIS/T can't be jammed due to the linear array mirrors defecting the jamming light and its ability to home on jam. DIRCM is pretty effective when combined with flares. Laser Beam Riding missiles such as Starstreak and RBS-70 are immune. These use assisted tracking to direct a laser that the missile rids. Laser is offset slightly to avoid alerting the target.

The Su 25 with it's anti IR thing would have been interesting

the f35 damage model needs significant work. the is ZERO chance the f35 can take multiple hits and take less damage than the A10 with a single hit. unfortunately work to be done yet.

As for the f-22, to quote the English-language wiki: "The F-22 was also designed to have decreased radio frequency emissions, infrared signature and acoustic signature as well as reduced visibility to the naked eye. The aircraft's flat thrust-vectoring nozzles reduce infrared emissions of the exhaust plume to mitigate the threat of infrared homing ("heat seeking") surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles."

In Clancy's _Red Storm Rising,_ that's how the F-117 was shot down. The pilot was egtessing down a road, and hit from brhind with a MANPAD.

I appreciate all the background info, SuperCAP. Lots of stuff I did not know.

Great flying as usual Simba and great content . Love the GR crew

You guys are my favorite science channel!

The high bypass fan on the A-10 does more than keep the exhausts cooler... it's more to do with efficiency of the engine, they get most of their thrust from the bypass fan with that configuration and use less fuel than a turbojet does enabling it to loiter for ages over the target area.

The F35 engine is literally a retuned raptor engine. Also the raptor has also taken steps to disperse engine heat. The Xplanes documentaries on both planes lightly touches on the subject, but you know can't tell all the classified stuff. It's a good watch if you like docu series. I know your limited heavily in game for stealth options, etc. Great video keep up the good work!!

Starstreak: If I can see you I will kill you. Chaff, flares? Pfft.

I am disappointed by Simba - when you set him up in the A-10 and allowed him to do ANYTHING he wants I really expected him to attack the manpad guys with the GAU-8.... 🤣😂🤣😂🙃

Thanks Buddy! This is what I was wondering!!!! Really appreciated!!!

Awesome channel, love learning from your vids. Bravo!

I have read about the Soviet Union's time in Afghanistan and it was pretty much a slaughter until the CIA provided the Stinger MANPADS to the Mujahideen. 3 of the first 4 fired took down the dreaded and much feared Mi-24D gunships. That system is credited to reversing the tide and forcing the Soviets out. Not bad for a tube shooting a hand grenade.

Tried training version of russian MANPAD some 20 years ago and the aquisition of lock on small piston aircraft was very easy. The instructor told me the missile sometimes allow lock even to part of cloud.

Cap, would you be able to do the same test against laser guided manpads such as the UKs Starstreak High Velocity Missile?

16:53: Cap: "I'll allow you to do anything you want..." A-10: BBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT The best defense is a good offense.

The whole bypass thing regarding Jet engines is fairly simple, higher bypass with a smaller core gives you more thrust and better fuel economy, but it requires much more room. This is why you have the GE90 in the civillian world that showcases that taken to the extreme, getting something like that in a jetfighter or stealth fighter is a bit... Ambitious. If you are restricted on size, and fuel consumption is a 2nd consideration to getting the thrust required, going with a low to no bypass engine is the name of the game. The reason for this is if you are hunting for economy, it is better to push a lot of air slower towards the back in a wide stream than a tiny but very fast stream of air and gases.

The MI-Hind D and MI-34's have heat suppression systems to avoid manpads especially Stingers. Plus they are very heavily armoured.

Pseudo scientific? Well there is a new category... Fun Scientific and that is just as fun. Remember what Adam Savage said, the difference between a couple of guys screwing around and scientists is that the scientist records their findings :D

as a former Stinger crewmember I have to interject with a couple of points. Now, I can only use classified data so keep in mind Stingers are better than even I will describe. in the 1990's the Stinger we used could (and did) differentiate between engine heat, the sun and flares. With Flares deployed the Stinger RMP had a 95+% hit ratio. Also, when it comes to damage manpads actually do more damage the faster the plane goes. The manpads use the wind resistance of the plane against itself. (which I don't think this game can account for) A little piece of metal shredded from the explosives is going to rip wide open with the plan at speed. The wind then has access to the inside of the plane and will then continue to shred the thin skin of high performance jets. Anyway, my 2 cents worth. Very fun video regardless, just not very realistic for the above reasons (and others).

22:19 you mentioned MANPADS are optically sighted. The afterburner signature on a Tomcat is massive, you can see them for miles. I was staff at an air show circa 2000 and they had one fly around with afterburners lit.

Havent seen you do these solider missions in ages! Cap

GM from Fairview, TX. Love this channel!

Before watching this video, I would like to say that this looks Grim for the aircraft.

Simba in the F14 buzzing the tower (Pyramids) ! go Simba

Thanks as always Cap. I have no idea for sure, but I have a gut feeling ED did this properly, where most of the time a bunch of flares will defeat a Stinger/Igla, but on the other hand the much more expensive, powerful, and sopfisticated air-to-air IR missiles are significantly more difficult to defend against. As for a random video idea/request, would you be able to come up with an emulation of the Star Wars trench run? Not in a literal sense. I'd love to see what is essentially the boys taking turns in a jet of their choice to fly through a canyon/valley with a hard flight celing of around 1.5km (maybe?) and everyone else uses a gun or missile of their choice, but it MUST be aimed (guns) or manually guided/dumb-fired by the defenders. I was thinking either some of the vehicles created by CH using various cannons/guns, or even an Apache hovering in place acting as a physical obstacle in the air while also firing the autocannon, and whatever options are suitable as rockets/missiles (maybe increase the boom-boom and have M270 rockets manaully launched trying to hit the incoming jets hah). I'm not great as describing this idea and you're the mission setup expert, but i guess I just feel like seeing a whole lot of ordnance and boom-boom generators being fired at a fast jet trying to dodge it all. Probably more of a open invite type video with a lot of players. If it proved to be too difficult for the jet you could have them go in pairs and one making it through wins. Each gunner would be spaced a few hundred meters (at least) apart down the valley, and it could be a round-based tournament to make it competitive, win and move to the next round. I think you guys did something like this a few years ago, but it was an increasing level of AI-controlled anti-air core assets? I'm also not sure how the GR mods/assets and CH assets would work with an open invite event and a lot of players. If you can take that mess of text above and make a cool video out of it, you win a special prize! ♥😁

No matter how old it is I'll always love the f 14

Lol, the mighty Cat survived !! 💪🏻

‘You Blinded Me With Science” 🎵 😂

Cap, shame you don't have the Buccanear on DCS, for this 'scientific experiment.' At RAF Abingdon was a 'Battle Damage Repair' flight. Here they trained people to fix battle damage on aircraft. They often used aircraft panels to practice on, and would take them to the shooting range to inflict the damage. This was often achieved with a shotgun, at least until they used some panels from a Buccanear. We were there one day using the SA80 and they asked if we could 'pepper' the panel for them. This was because the venerable shotgun had only scratched the paint from them.

Neat. Wonder what the 4 engine transport/bombers would do against those manpads.

Question Cap. How did you make that thumbnail? It looks like you, or someone, was trying to run over those MANPAD dudes with stealth jet fighter.

The F-35A was always intended to assume the CAS mission, which is why the USAF builds them with an internal auto-cannon. The department of the Navy has retrofited the F-35C & B with a multi-function Gun Pod to allow them to handle CAS missions. Thus, _all_ F-35's are just as exposed to MANPADS, especially IR, as any other combat aircraft.

I thought I read that the US Apaches were getting some new system installed that was meant to help against MANPADS. Something else other than just flares but I can't remember what.

The fly in this ointment is that manpads are distributed thinner. You don’t have whole unit all carrying a stingers. One or two. Fire, reload another man pad farther along the path. Not a convention of manpads. Nobody survives that experiment

8:50 also the "Black Hole" heat dissipation system on the Apache

+GrimReapersAtomic *Radar-invisible aircraft still generate heat.* Tested: Raytheon (USA) FIM-92 Echo; Engineering Bureau for Instrments (RUS) 9K33 Modernizatovenn'yj.

Eow, Great video 🦊 Pity it didn't end with the A-10 strafing them as a Defense against MANPADS , best defense is a good offense .

@13:15 ish hmm, about the flares... I wonder if older planes are stuck with older types of flares, or if flares is something that is just continually evolving regardless of plane type. For example, one standard size flare fits all, so that's what they will use, unless they need to use up a warehouse full of older models ... ) Or if one size doesn't fit all, maybe some planes needs to use special flares due to design issues. (like maybe a stealth fighter would need something special for dispensing flares,, that could mean only those types of planes gets the latest evolution of flares. ) As I understand it, flares are one of those things that needs to be updated all the time, to deal with new kinds of seekers, and comes in all kinds of variants.

One good way to defeat a Manpad is to shoot the guy holding it. Sometimes just shooting in the vicinity will make them lose lock as they hit the deck.

I'd love to see the Buccaneer have a go at that!

DAS - Distributed Aperture System

GR Suggestion: How would modern air defenses perform against.... cardboard drones? A year ago, this would sound ludicrous, but if recent reports are to be believed.... multiple aircraft were damaged on the ground by a barrage of cardboard drones.

I LOVE SCIENCE!!!!

CH has made the RBS70 MANAPDS as well, not sure if he managed to sort the laser riding aspect of it or it's IR-guided... Could be interesting to compare to the Stinger/Igla

I do wonder how the F-22 would fare if it just went full afterburner and climbed like crazy. The Stinger's maximum speed is Mach 2.54, but if you put it in a slow-gain stern chase you might be able to exhaust its rocket motor.

I thought the F-35 was also supposed to have an internally integrated towable decoy. Is that not the case, or is it just not modeled yet?

Try a late model Tornado or F-111D/F on full afterburner (I.e. supersonic) with their terrain following radar (TFR) engaged at minimum altitude permitted by the TFR.

I miss your love for the AJS Viggen Cap 😢

You got similar result that I've seen personally in DCS with regards to low, fast & approaching targets. Strafing manpads units in any fast jet (400+ kts) seems to have about a 50% failure rate to fuze the manpad missile properly, instead looking like a late explosion. Not sure about the realism of this. Other than using flares, my best success rate against core game Igla manpands is death-or-glory style full speed strafe attack.

Almost made it in the a 10 Simba 😊

Could have done with a cold war special test. The Igla vs a Tornado at Nads height 🏐🏐🤔😅

In fact you could designate from your vehicle after launching an extremely small short range 2nd party confirmation drone like 5x🎉

the soldier looks like dude from kentucky ballistics

Well the first thing I would do is fly above 20000 feet second dont fly in formation spead then out.

I went to Walmart and got myself an Игла ManPADS today. Gotta say, I was very disappointed that you can't get tone on four high effiecency engines at 35,000ish feet. Sadge :(

21:04 "Ha! We got you with our missile!" "You're wrong, comrade! Stronk Soviet plane made of Stalinium destroy missile!"

It would 've been cool to see the SU-25T since it has DIIRCM

20:34 I'm glad DCS modeled it so that it registers the Russian jets as intercepting the missiles like in real life

Loved the ending, taking out a swath of Cairo with the guns! Lol. And of course..... Schwerer Gustav!! (Should I stop asking for this...? Seems like it may be fun) Edit* How about the XM913 and/or NGCV...?😊 Thanks guys

I know you guys have done vids on which gen of aircraft could intercept a WW2 bomber raid the best, but have you considered a vid on which gen could escort a bomber raid the best?

Mig-21 - So hot its kool.

The stinger manpad got only 1 shot because of the might 21's blistering speed.

If you’re in rang of a FIM-92 and the motors are both working your dead before you can react, no chaff no jamming will work.

Well, my experience with MANPADS is that I am always dead when I don't see the launch (that means always).

Could beam-riding Thales Starstreak HVM systems defend against an onslaught of stealth aircraft? Starstreak hyper-velocity missiles are available as a MANPADS, a lightweight three-shot launcher system, and a self-propelled system on the Alvis Stormer AFV.

Seems like pre flaring would aid the MANPADS teams by giving them a visual cue to spot you earlier than they would otherwise. DCS I think is still slewed in the MANPADS favor.

I wonder how jet fighter bombers would have done replicating WWII long range bomber missions in place of B17s. First have them flying at altitude in formation. Second have them flying as designed. Could they carry a 6,000 lbs payload for a 2,000 mile round trip mission?

Distributed Aperture System

Believe it or not the air out the back of a jet engine isn't all that hot. It is true it is definitely hotter than the surrounding air though. Remember those experiments with jet powered railcars back in the day? It kind of illustrates the concept that what comes out the back isn't as hot as you might think.

Could the manpads get a lock if an aircraft was just gliding overhead? Do they have to have the engines running? I know its not practical, but i was curious how the game was coded.

The best modern aircraft for defeating IR are probably the B-2, F-117, and B-21.

Could you use the F-15E guided cluster bombs to take out a drone swarm??

The AH-64 also has an IR strobe like the Gazelle. Is it not modeled in game?

Surprised you didn’t kill them at the end. cool video though.

SIMBA FTW!

I honestly loved the concept here, but not the execution. I felt like Simba played everything in a very game-y fashion, and I wasn't a big fan. I know it's still a game at the end of the day, and it's not truly accurate, but the behavior isn't consistent with what you guys are saying you're trying to do.

Has Cap been watching Commando on a loop?

How about air balloon and reliant robin? :)

Its Egypt.... Thats why they only shot the Mig once ....

Heres a viewer request, in DCS and real life, can dropping tanks fool a fox 3 kind of like flares for a fox 2?

Does this software have the F-8 crusader? It was the last dogfighter

Odd they did not test the su 25t with ir jammer

I've found the A10a, in DCS, is made of paper. Can cough near it and it gets damaged.

18:34 was that a Pitts S-15?

B2, B1, B1R, SR-71?

Please look up Bob Pardo and see if you could replicate that hero’s actions during the Vietnam war.