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Newbie Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Hey everybody.

This has been the one question concerning modern air combat that I've never been able to get a direct answer about. And that is: how do modern fighter pilots lock on to an enemy aircraft?

I've played flight sims in which it was as easy as just being in the general vicinity (ranging from 20-5 miles depending on missiles selected) and then you're automatically locked on. I can't imagine that is how it's done in real life though, because if that's all you needed to do to lock on, there would be no point in high speed aircraft and high maneuverability, the air force would just focus purely on ranged missiles.

So can anyone help me out here? Thanks in advance.

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Senior member Joined: Jul 01, 2007 Posts: 368

In the Viper, put the radar cursors over the dude and TMS forward and release. Essentially that's it without going classified. The computers do all the work. But just because someone locks you up doesn't mean there is nothing you can do.

The radar missile defense thing has been tried before. It was Vietnam. The F-4s and thuds got their butts handed to them by the rinky dink Mig-21s because the jets couldn't dogfight. Haven't you watched the History Channel recently? They have at least one show a week on that stuff.

Elite 1K Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1092

Raptor117 wrote:

Hey everybody.

This has been the one question concerning modern air combat that I've never been able to get a direct answer about. And that is: how do modern fighter pilots lock on to an enemy aircraft?

I've played flight sims in which it was as easy as just being in the general vicinity (ranging from 20-5 miles depending on missiles selected) and then you're automatically locked on. I can't imagine that is how it's done in real life though, because if that's all you needed to do to lock on, there would be no point in high speed aircraft and high maneuverability, the air force would just focus purely on ranged missiles.

So can anyone help me out here? Thanks in advance.

So you think that radars and radar-guided missiles would be at all effective if it was an extremely complicated process to lock on to an aircraft and fire a missile? I mean... do you think the pilot or weapons system officer in a fighter is going to be flipping a bunch of switches and constantly adjusting dials and levers and stuff just to obtain and maintain a lock on an enemy aircraft? Of course not. I don't know what flight sims you've been playing or if you've been playing them on the easy mode, but locking a target up on radar is not always the easiest thing. You might have to change radar modes, slew the radar antenna up and down, reduce the number of "bars" the radar scans, reduce the radar's azimuth properties, etc. Once the radar sees something and displays it to you on the radar scope, you can put cursors over it and select it to lock on. On more modern fire control radar systems, you might not even have to do that. You might be able to cycle through targets without even placing cursors over them. Then there are dogfighting radar modes where a target is automatically locked if picked up by the radar. This is for extremely close ranges where you can actually see with your eyes what it is you want your radar to lock on to.

Operating an attack radar is not all that simple, especially if you're talking about something used for ground-attack rather than air intercept. If fighter radars were too complicated to operate in the heat of combat, they wouldn't be used. It sounds like you feel they're too simplistic. They may be in the sims you're playing, but they're not overly complex from the pilot's perspective in a real fighter jet.

Newbie Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Well yeah I didn't think it would be super hard to get a radar lock, but in the games I played it was just, fly within missile range, then it automatically locks on, doesn't matter if you're above, below, left, right or right in front of the target. It was easy and required no effort, challenge or anything what so ever. I figured it probably had to be a little harder in real life, because if that was how it's done in real world combat, people would be getting blown out of the sky left and right, and maneuverability and speed wouldn't really mean anything at all.

Btw, I've also been wondering, if you were to shoot a Aim-120 missile (doesn't matter what variant), how far away would you generally be from the enemy? Because I've also been thinking, you know how when something is really, really far away, and you can see it as basically just a dot or small outline, you could hold out your hand and put your finger over it with ease despite it probably going 600 knots? Is that how easy it is to lock on with a medium-long range missile? Just point your jet at the seemingly slow moving, long distance target and lock on?

The Slammer's (AIM-120) real max range, I believe this has that big, red, diagonal "classified" next to it. In general, the "Medium" part of it means a range about 20-30 miles out. Now, it can be 40 or 50, but..."Loose lips sink ships". "Maximum" range (= "how far must you be from the enemy") is a big variable in real-world, and in most hardcore flight sims. If your opponent is coming straight at you, you can probably shoot it (in the flight sim) from 30 miles away and still get a kill on him. If you're on a hot pursuit, that range may drop to 10 miles or so. That's where speed counts too....You go faster = your missile needs to burn less to get to M3.5 or wherever it cruises = you got more range. Maneuverability counts because you're not only firing yourself, you'll get fired upon sometimes. You need to be agile to make sure your opponent has less chances, and be able to quickly extend and try to reverse when you're in trouble.

When it comes to BVR locking, you may never see the guy...But the dots on the radar are big enough to see him and put the bars right on him, then designate him and get the Slammer underway. Otherwise, the Slammer is versatile enough to be fired in a dogfight (look ma, no AIM-9s !) utilizing the DGFT radar mode. That's all from a simmer's point of view. Tactics, real capabilities of aircraft and weapons in real world, training of the opponent and conditions make this job wildly varying out there in real life...

By the way, which sims do you play ?

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