Combat: Max Effectiveness Of Air To Air ECM Jammers | DCS WORLD 

A more complex or more accurate system might not necessarily be more taxing on systems. It depends on what kind of system it is and how it is implemented. It might just be more of a matter of time budget to develop and optimize the system and it also might just be a case where they revisit the tables and do some major tweaking as if the tables that are in there right now may just essentially be a sort of beta test of the system until they have time to revisit it.

Jamming is complex. It is all about confusing the receiver module in the observing plane, and that doesn't require power it can be very subtle and still drive the receiver nuts. How you model it: Use relative randomization. But the core optical rules need to be maintained. Don't need a RF model just a Monte Carlo model. Roll dice. Stronger systems gets more dice and closer to the projection center gets a bonus too. Recall that these ECM systems and the ECCM systems are probability based in fact. So they can be modeled by dice rolls. Abide basic optical/RF physics and reasonable probability and I think you can get fair ECM/ECCM warfare. And don't forget. Beam forming radar and ECM has been around for a few decades. Cell towers use beam forming too. It is not unreasonable to assume modern ECM and ECCM systems can use it as well.

Point vs area: Realistically speaking it should be az/el based. The key point is if the detecting antenna is looking at both at the same time. Place the jammer behind the other aircraft, and it should hide the forward plane. Look at it from another angle and the forward plane becomes visible again. Burn through: Realistically speaking, burnthrough depends on - jammer output - distance to jammer (weakens jamming signal) - distance to target (weakens radar signal) - radar eccm - target RCS (Depends on aspect) (Jamming and stealth go very well together.) When several targets are detected at the same range, it is unlikely to be well simulated. I'm somewhat dubious what I'm seeing on the F-15 radar display - it seems confident there's no planes hidden behind the jammer, still out of burnthrough range. A2A missiles not missing due to jamming: Fox 1 Chase shot... could be in the chance to miss region. If DCS only has noise jamming, why do missiles miss like you showed in the viggen jammer video? That looked more like another form of jamming, whose name I can't remember. I would like to see better jamming simulation. I think you can take it several steps up without paying a huge performance penalty. Imagine a standoff jammer like a compass call orbiting outside the combat area. If you approach a SAM site from its direction, you'd be much better protected from it, but not necessarily its neighbor. The best use of these is a skill like any other. It's even module independent! After the IFF overhaul they mentioned they would do, imagine jammers blocking mode 4 IFF when in operation. (Is that guy approaching from there a friendly?) What about datalinks? Now you have choices to make.

If a more advanced jamming model is developed, maybe there should be a setting on the server so the server can select if it wants to use the advanced or simplified jamming model. It should of course be available for the client for offline / sigle player too, but for online it should be a server and not a client option is what I'm saying.

That's interesting, that the mirage had such a long range burn-through. Also i am pretty sure i saw some jamming strobes on my F14 from 70-100 miles but id say the burn-through range of the F14 is further away due to the power of the AWG-9 radar, however I was also under the impression that the F14 was more susceptible to jamming due to its Analogue systems (perhaps it misses more in game) and got more robust in the Delta variant due to digital systems.

Good choice of planes on the intro photo. EF-111A sexiest jammer ever! (N.B. I know that particular aircraft in that photo almost intimately. It was a good bird, didn't break for my section very often.)

I'm curious if the lack of jamming in the f-14 is just the Jester AI doing his job too well.

There is another jamming effect modeled for AI planes, track gate peel off. Try locking up an su 30 with sorbitsya pods, it'll break the lock until you are close.

More complex jamming will not cost as much as our eye candy graphics. I think it will be better to improve ECM, to a certain extend since most of the technology is classified. Keeping to a so simple ECM system is just lazyness for a simulator.

Saw the Raven and got all excited!! EF-111 denied

Hi, thanks, very useful. And I fully agree with you for jamming, we don't need more complicated stuff for that

fun fact fan song didn't need to see you through the jamming; as long as they know you're close enough they launch S-75 missiles in pure beam-riding mode (altough you could jam the actual guidance signal ))))))))) )

What my testing showed: You can launch at jammers just fine; you'll need an AWACS/EWR to tell you the distance/altitude though, so you can determin when to launch your missile. It "should" (I don't have enough data on that) be even easier for the missile to track the target, because of the high power signal the jammer is putting out. And the target won't get any missile launch warning! What won't work is firing at 2 jammers (that are in the same group), because the missiles will go for the highest power, ie. the closest one; not necessarily the one you locked in HOJ. ECM works quite well against AI; they'll maybe not wait until burn-through (surely depends on the missile used though) but it massivily decreases the max fire range at which an AI will shoot at you. And they'll mostly use IR missiles with you jamming. Out of interest: is the jamming for the FA18, F14, F16 modelled correctly nowadays? Or is it still not working?

Does jamming affect AWACS as well? I imagine it could be very useful, because they could only see azimuth relative to themselves, but they couldn't give information relative to the querying fighter. Another question, IRL/Ingame can fighters with datalink triangulate jamming singnals?

So actually Jammers are far more effective for Air to air because it gives you a chance to close the distance, right now you know where,who,what those planes are. in PvP you have no clue how far that jet is and whether it is coming to target you or not, you can't tell if it is an A-10 C or an F-16, friendly or foe. it can be very very effective. You got to remember in air to air doctrine, an oval black paint under the cockpit is considered to be a "camouflage" because the margin for error is that low. With SAMs it is a whole different story. it varies plane to plane but for most planes it is widely ineffective. Ralfiedude has a good video on that.

I personally would like to see EW in DCS but I agree also, let's get other things worked on first.

*** Good Video !!! Would like to know how effective the F-117 stealth is in DCS. You may have tested this already, Your Videos are awesome !!!

Nice vid again, Cap One of my favourite chapter in aerial warfare. you mentioned the ecm on the victor. As far as i know the would have used the external ecm pod AN/ALQ-101(V)-10 or called Dash 10 which produced an imaginary target which is located some miles distant from the aircraft fitted with the Dash 10 pod. This pod was used on the Bucaneers during Desert Storm. 4th and 5th generation aricraft normally using complex ecm systems containig jammer, rwr, missile warning systems which are highly automatic. But they are not working against any radar. That´s why a/c like the EF-111 Raven, EF-18 Growler and the EA-6 Prowler extisted or exist. Those a/c have the power needed to jam a stand-off radar like those used by the S-300 (SA-10 Grumble). And there is always chaff During my service with the german air force as an eccm-officer i had a good chance to se what those jammer could do. Once we had 2 EF-111 an 1 EC-130H Compass Call on station. Suddenly our radar screens went blank, no blips anymore don´t know how they made it And we used a MPR Radar for survailance Thanks again for that vid

Vulcans are awesome! Got the chance to see RAF Vulcans in action. XL-390 in 1978, XL-443 in 1980, and XM 575 in 1981. Got a inside - outside tour of 575.

i read a story somehwere a while back how the Viggens jamming pod if you power it on the ground turns the grass brown.

The AIM-120C is home-on-jam, too, isn't it? That might contribute to them hitting all the time. Does the same happen with an AIM-7? Edit: Never mind, you addressed that, they do. But then I guess it makes sense as well, since they're guiding off your plane's radar reflection, if you can keep lock, they can keep guiding. I guess it reduces the range from which you can fire one, though, so it's not completely useless A/A... just mostly. The biggest benefit might be keeping human opponents on their toes, since even if they know you're over R-lethal since they can't burn through the jamming, they never know exactly how much over. Edit 2: I'm not convinced it would cost a whole lot of FPS to have a better jamming model. Sure, 100% realistic would be pretty intensive, and a lot of work to implement. But they could do better than it is now with it only running a function once each time the radar sweeps over a plane, which is usually a fair interval. That's probably much what they do now, but that function could do a lot more than just a "range < 25" check without getting any noticeable performance hit. They might improve it as part of the radar simulation improvements which are in the works right now anyways, though, as they are closely related.

Fyi...in Vietnam conflict the US were able to "look" at a truck's engine to determine it's type. From a plane.

Really interesting 🙂, now I have to try it myself with the viggen.

Thanks Cap, great work. I think the radar vs jamming can be done better and doesn't need to kill our CPU's. One other thing that should be added is the radar cross section of the aircraft. No reason the different aircraft should all pop up at the same range. This could be calculated and make into a look up table and very little CPU would be used. Anyway, thanks for your continued work on this, love the thought that goes into it and the discussions.

Hey Cap, great video, I like your scientific approach. Do you know if it is possible to shoot down AWACS with an anti radar missile like kh58?

I want a Raven in DCS so bad. I know it isn’t likely, but it would be awesome

Hello Rick Graham 👋

Hey CAP. Bit late on this. But did you test if using the jammer will light up a target that was otherwise undetected? IE if say a jet is notching and you loose it. Will is show back up if they turn on the ECM, giving away their general location?

AIM-120C has HOJ.. so does the AIM--7MH. Jamming should effect a non HOJ active missile when it goes active, even inside burn through range because the electronic processing power of the missile is limited, and the signal power ratio of the missile's radar vs the output power of the ECM jammer, is different

also, jamming receiving is binary only in F-15 and stuff - as the radar system is fully digitalized it is analogue in soviet crafts, so you can spot targets way before you actually burn through

Interesting how you think a core feature of modern air combat isnt worth the cpu cost (which doesnt need to be noticible to add different jam power, radar cross section sizes, and other stats). Ecm and eccm are extremely important elements in modern tactics but the basics arent all that hard to add. I'm shocked to see how bad dcs is. Guess they thought no one would notice.

It would be cool to model the EW field but I completely agree with you on simplifying the issue for now

It could be made more sophisticated-like without too much more processing requirements, up to some point, for example taking in account of the jammer antenna's radiation pattern as the shape of the AOE (area-of-effect) so it's not just a round ball 3D-area if that's the case right now, including that the AOE is properly rotatable on all axis in the 3D world just like it works with radars already. Secondly there can be many CPU-cheap modifiers on top of the base AOE size (intensity/power level) that may approach the workings in reality, without actually needing to simulate the physics of the EM signal interacting with the other modifiers in detail (water, rain, humidity, clouds, terrain type, temperature, altitude). The jammer's AOE size adjustment in real-time or more fittingly called AOE shape scaling should be easy and doable today. The AOE shape morphing would be much harder so not that. Morphing of the AOE wouldn't also bring that big practical benefits in the big picture in this Sim. Morphing is caused by reflection of the jammers EM signal by other objects/obstacles particularly metallic ones that would alter the shape in certain areas of the jammer's AOE, that's heavy math. So in practice, for example for each point of humidity the shape of the jammed area would be scaled up/down by let's say 0.015% from the base level, some 0.008% for each temperature point, and so forth for altitude, terrain type effect (over trees, over city, over water, over fields), in-clouds, and wether it's raining on the jammer's unit (we can assume that equals rain in the whole jammer's base effect area) Tertiary, the damage model (damage location/type/intensity) of the aircraft could affect the performance of the jammer's antenna (antenna only for now, let's not mix in jammers chip logic into this post, it's complicated already) as well, is the jammer getting fed proper power, does voltage vary due to damaged engine/generator/APU ... would the jammer even work at full-military power when only APU is on or only one engine, does it get power from both engines no matter on what hardpoint it's installed? That can change base level AOE scaling even further, and it's all really CPU cheap in theory. These are all combining modifiers, some may be positive others negative so you get out a soup, just like in reality. If you add a lot together and many units then we can talk about some more CPU requirements surely, maybe even somewhat that low-end bar would have to be raised a bit, but nothing like you'd need a supercomputer. For example, we don't need to simulate the changing jammer AOE shape due to some piece in the fuselage missing, it is not worth it, avoiding that kind of level of simulation is ofcourse not just wise but necessary and I'm sure many other such things with physics that I can't recall now.

Please add Mig-29S to test and 120B / R77

FC3 is OP

Can you do a a 10 c one because I know that it can jam things but I can’t find where or how to work it

The Mig -29 and F-14 get burned through at 27nm as well.

It is not smart. It is fake! Nato Rwr ?

Three questions: Q1: Does the Jamming Pods of the Su-25T work as the other FC3 aircraft? Q2: Does jamming inhibit the use of TWS in the Hornet andf Tomcat? Q3: this one I have been thinking about for a long time. In the Su-27/33 and the Su-25 - you normally carry one jamming pod on each wing. What is the difference if you only equip ONE pod, instead of the two?

Do the Su-34 Khibiny Pods work?

You the man Grim! Still watching all your videos again and again. Time-tested!

Get some winks cap

No MiG-21? Okay....

DCS needs deception jamming.

thanks cap thats great

If it was noise jamming alone, why do the missiles miss?

Dude, point source... and it may or may not have a reflector to give it a directional component relative to their air frame. If someone shines a flashlight in your face you are going to have a hard time getting radar data on them or their buddy standing next to them. But as you get closer you may fall out of the penumbra of that flashlight beam and then your radar will see the buddy and may also get a fix on the asshole holding the flashlight! Most of this behavior follows from basic optical physics. Radio makes it a little funky but not much due to the ranges you are flying at. nine times out of ten a directional jammer is going to swamp your radar system. BUT... if you target a jammer it is going to hit that hot spot easy! If you want a reality check... Try to take out a hornet nest at night when you have a flashlight lit. You are going to get wrecked hornets will rush the light source. Speaking from personal experience. Good thing I had really good Personal Protective Equipment for that raid!

A bit of a correction on your conclusion re air to air missiles: plenty of missiles can be launched in Home on Jam mode (off the top of my head, AIM-7, AIM-120 and AIM-54), where basically they follow the path to the jamming signal rather than to the target like they would normally. Those missiles when launched in that mode are essentially Fox 1s all the way to the target (including the AMRAAM and Phoenix). It might be worth trying to see if jamming affects HOJ A2A launches (using the F-15 I suppose) in the same way it seems to affect SAMs.