How fighter jets lock on, and how the targets know (2014) | Hacker News Reader

How fighter jets lock on, and how the targets know (2014)

gizmodo.com

532 pointsushakov238 comments

If you happen to have a VR headset and are looking to play around with the toys described in the article, I recommend VTOL VR. It has pretty low system requirements, and takes advantage of VR to create a virtual hotas (It is much more effective than you would expect). The physics simulation is, to my understanding, very good. And everything described in this article is present in the game to be played around with.

VTOL VR taught me about "Radar Notching". The article briefly mentions how radar can actively detect the doppler shift of targets. If you think about it, the doppler shift of the ground would be neutral, right? Or roughly the speed of the aircraft. So lets say you've been locked on by a fighter at high altitude and they've fired a radar seeker at you. Your backdrop is the ground, it can pick you out because you're moving so fast. So what you do is bank your aircraft to fly at a 90 degree angle to the oncoming missile. Now your doppler shift is the same as the ground and you blend in, the radar filters out the ground because of it's expected speed, which is now the relative speed you are moving. You get "notched out", and the missile will lose track.

Radar is also very good at distance measurement so I guess this won't work for a real life rocket fired at a fighter jet. Because it's so easy to defeat this trick in the software.

I'm to understand that tricks like this are much less effective against more modern A2A missiles, so you might be right.

A missile will generally not care about distance. What matters is direction/angle. Distance is irrelevant. Just keep pointing at the target and eventually you will get there, assuming you are faster. So the direction to the strongest reflection, or greatest doppler shift, or combination of both, will suffice to get the missile to the target even without range data.

> Just keep pointing at the target and eventually you will get there

Surely they can't use this poor of an optimization strategy? If the target is moving perpendicular to you, you want to point slightly ahead of the target so you intercept them as quickly as possible.

‘Pointing at’ in this case means maintaining a constant bearing to target, with decreasing range. If anything it’s easier for a moving guidance system to achieve that than to point at the target.

Link for clarification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_bearing%2C_decreasing...

Except that, in the case of a missile, you cannot assume decreasing range. We assume that the missile knows to aim ahead of the target, but determining which way is ahead and which behind is tricky. If it is chasing a hotspot, a single point, getting that wrong means worsening your approach. A strait/boresight approach might not be ideal but it avoids the question over which offset is ahead and which behind the target.

Continuously pointing directly at the target tends to result in the missile being unable to generate the needed turn rate at the conclusion of the intercept. If the missile has a large warhead, that might not matter so much, but air-to-air missiles tend to be small.

Yes. So one strategy is to aim at a point midway between the target's current position and its projected position. This puts the missile on the target's tail, which is a good attack position when the target evades.

If you're a missile seeker, all you have as input is a two-dimensional forward view of where in your forward cone the target is - either deflection and azimuth, or x and y offset - it's like a dot on a scope. Let's assume cartesian x and y input for simplicity.

So as you track, you can measure where it is, and how fast it's apparently moving in those two degrees of freedom - so you know x, y, dx and dy (and I guess you know higher degree deltas too).

To hit it (assuming it's in front of you) all you need to do is make control inputs to bring dx and dy to zero - you don't care what x and y are. If dx and dy are zero, if you're faster than the thing you're tracking, you're going to hit it - that's constant bearing, decreasing range.

Making control inputs to bring x and y to zero as well as dx and dy is a harder problem! You need to control four degrees of freedom to do that.

And making control inputs just to try to bring x and y to zero without controlling dx and dy is a good way to miss the target completely - obviously if you get x and y to 0 but dx and dy are nonzero, the target is going to move away from zero, requiring more control input, which might increase dx or dy, causing you to need even stronger control input...

So the upshot is: you don't have to back out the target's absolute trajectory, figure out its true velocity and your own relative velocity, determine range to target and offset where you're pointing to compensate for time of flight - just get it to stay on the same bearing from your perspective, and you're done.

Most missiles don't see in two dimensions. They are not cameras. They "see" using complex arrays of mirrors prisms and reticules feeding light to a single detector. Only the latest missiles have seekers that work with 2d images.

Constant bearing is possible, but if you are tracking behind, above, or below the target then you don't get any advantage, taking a longer route than direct/pure chase. The missile needs a mechanism to estimate the target motion rather than only it's relative bearing. That isn't simple. Many manpads instruct the user to aim ahead so that the missile locks into a lead path, but accidentally aim up/down/behind and they will lock into a lagging approach.

If I understand your objection correctly, you're saying that there are two directions that maintain constant bearing between the missile and the target, one bearing that brings the missile closer to the target, and one bearing that sends the missile farther away. This is true, but in reality it doesn't ... make any sense. If the pilot points the missile in remotely the same part of the sky, the closing bearing is the only bearing in the front quadrant of the missile.

Historically, I don't think any missile designed to target aircraft has ever been fielded which use the strategy you suggest. (lots of air to ground missiles do) It works fine if the target is flying straight and level, and you fire from directly behind them. But if the target has even a shallow turn towards you, the rate at which the missile will need to increase its rate of turn will increase exponentially as it closes with the target. If the target is aware it's being shot at and from what angle, all it takes to avoid the missile is to keep it at your 3/9 o'clock positions (steadily turning towards it) and it will miss every time.

The first generation of radar guided air to air missiles in the 1940s use beam riding. The missile would attempt to keep itself between the target and the shooter.

The first generation of (infrared) AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles in the 1950s used a mechanical system to perform proportional navigation; it spun the sensor at a fairly high rate of speed, causing it to act as a gyroscope. The sensor was pointed towards the target on an internal gimbal. But since the sensor was a gyroscope, if corrections had to be made, this meant the target was not at a continuous bearing. So the same corrections were sent to both the gimbal and the missile's control surfaces.

These days, everything just has a microcontroller in it, so there's no need to design such electro-mechanical Rube Goldberg contraptions to get proportional navigation to work.

It can be easier in terms of getting to a far away target, of maximizing range, but pointing strait has an advantage. As the target moves forwards the missile will be dragged behind, which reduces the relative angle at intercept, reducing the targets ability to make a last second maneuver. An direct approach IR missile can literally fly up the tailpipe of a fast target.

Yes, even old ordnance like the Sidewinder, which entered service in the mid-1950s, would aim ahead of the target.

That was true for earlier radar guided missiles. The latest ones are smart enough to account for distance and calculate an energy optimized intercept course rather than just pointing straight at the target.

Missile systems. Such complex approaches are calculated and controlled by the launching platform. A radar-guided missile will normally not "see" the target on its own until long after launch, until near endgame. Whether the actually missile has the brains to make such calculations is different than whether the entire system has the ability.

The missile knows where it is by knowing where it isn’t.

Say derivative without saying derivative

By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.

For the confused (or to get more confused!):

https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ

after a minute, I was expecting a reference to the Turbo Encabulator.

It's been a long time since homing missiles aimed directly at the target. The AIM-9 Sidewinder entered service in 1956, and it aimed at where the target will be, not where it is.

Some early IR missiles do aim slightly ahead of the target's bearing, but they don't really 'know' where they or the target are located in time and space. It is one thing to tell a missile to aim 10% to the left of a target bearing (which isn't simple in 3d space) another for that missile to understand its relative position. The early sidewinder used a single IR sensor behind a spinning reticule made of slots. This wasn't a camera with multiple pixels. It was one big pixel. The "brain" would alter the missiles course according to the position of that spinning reticule and the blinking signal from the lone sensor. There was no concept of range. At best, the brain could keep the target at a specific angle. This was achieved through literally re-drawing the reticule to include a solid band at the appropriate angle. So long as the target was behind this dark band the sensor would not blink and the missile would fly strait. Should the target move, the blinking would start and the missile would turn to put it back in the blank/dead zone.

https://images.app.goo.gl/N3mTpDUeeJW6W7wu9

You don't need to have an understanding of 3d space, positioning, range to target, trajectories etc to create an intercept course.

The underlying principle of proportional navigation, which is what the first few generations of IR missiles use to navigate, is constant bearing decreasing range. If a missile maintains absolute bearing to a target, it will collide with that target. The first generation AIM-9, which was the first useful IR missile, didn't aim "slightly ahead" of its target, it pointed itself at the exact point where it would collide with its target, assuming the target was moving at constant speed in a straight line.

The spinning sensor that you mention was on a gimbal, it wasn't pointing along the boresight. The spinning caused it to act as a gyroscope, so it would maintain its orientation in absolute space. The gimbal would track the sensor so that it was pointing at the target, and the same inputs were fed into both the gimbal and the missile's control surfaces. Therefore, if the bearing was changing, that would cause the missile to maneuver in such a way that the bearing would stop changing. If the bearing wasn't changing, the missile would not maneuver. This is all you need to do to point the missile at the exact point where it will intercept a non-maneuvering target.

As a first order approximation, the assumption of a constant speed straight line target is a useful one, given the technological limitations of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_navigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_bearing,_decreasing_r...

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a0e376f321a658b5d99e25...

Notching definitely works, it is used routinely in air combat. It is more effective at greater range because it's hard to maintain the same distance to a radar that is closing on you.

The principal use is to break missile lock. It's less useful for disguising position, especially against opponents with AEW&C and data link. Breaking lock means reducing the doppler return to below the range gate threshold, and changing bearing to escape the Kalman filter that is predicting your position based on prior kinematics.

But which radar to you beam against? The radar in the missile or the radar in the launching aircraft? Beam against one and you are not beaming against the other. You are probably dead so long as one of the two has you.

During the initial fly out the missile will usually either be flying toward a set navigation point, or receiving data link guidance from the launching aircraft, or cueing off radar signals reflected by the target from the launching aircraft's radar (passive homing). You want to keep the missile's own radar switched off until fairly late in the engagement because it has limited battery power, narrow field of view, and will alert the target's radar warning receiver.

With modern data links it's now possible in principle to provide target tracking updates from a different sensor (like IRST) or even a completely different aircraft. If done correctly the target won't even realize a missile is on the way until it's too late to evade.

It's sadly different to Top Gun, when lock on would involve switching to a different PRF and/or revisit rate. Now, if they don't turn away after you've launched it could be because their missile is already on the way...

At closer range there is still the UV flare of the missile solid rocket burn, but detecting it depends on weather and aspect.

Or they could be cranking and that turn away is evidence that they have already launched against you.

If they crank it's because they have a shot off and they think you have a low Pk. Or they're bluffing and they have brass ovaries. It's nerve wracking just thinking about it.

See also: wire-guided torpedos.

Since the missile is coming from the launching aircraft, both of them will be on roughly the same bearing; certainly early on.

Flying perpendicular to that bearing will thus (hopefully) result in both sets of radar electronics filtering you out.

Should the two bearings diverge at some point, I'd recommend notching against the one armed with the explosive warhead with your name on it.

Hi! I fly in DCS competitively and I deal with this a lot so here's my understanding.

You need to "Notch" or beam against the missile itself if it's an Active Radar Missile or Fox-3. The jet's radar isn't good enough for terminal guidance. However if the firing jet is close enough it can maintain a pulse STT which cannot be notched and the missile will stay in Semi-Active mode and follow your beam to the target.

However in a Beyond Visual Range fight usually you can't stay nose on to the enemy since he will be firing his own missiles. Most missiles will be fired in Active mode (Fire and Forget) followed by evasive maneuvering once they enter their terminal phase and "Go Active." TWS launched active missiles will usually go active within some pre-calculated distance based on target size.

Newer missiles probably use better guidance but they are all pretty freaking secret. Computer vision would make for some seriously effective datalink guided missiles. But the kind of computers you can stick in the front of a 335lb solid rocket propelled tube that pulls 10-20Gs is very limited. Mostly just: "Go after jet shaped hot thing" or "Go after metal thing that moves fast."

We haven't really seen that level of air combat in real life though. Typically you would only see fights like that in a symmetric situation. (EG: India vs. Pakistan, China vs. Russia) Most jets shot down by AAMRAMS from the US are 3rd generation fighters sold to second world countries. Typically we require visual ID and warnings in rules of engagement making BVR impossible.

Any thoughts on how VTOL VR compares to Falcon 4. Barring obvious upgrades like graphics, would you say it's strictly better, or does Falcon 4 still have some advantages?

Falcon 4 looks to be competing with DCS. Personally I've played neither.

What VTOL VR does is use the VR environment to make an interactive cockpit. Rather than you memorizing a huge list of bindings, you just interact with the cockpit the way the pilots would. That memorization aspect is why I never really got into falcon 4 or DCS. And as a first mil sim flight game, if you have a headset, that's my recommendation.

Both DCS and Falcon BMS (actively maintained fork of Falcon 4) have fully clickable cockpits. You can also use keyboard shortcuts, of course.

Falcon BMS example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mU2d3PbD78

It is rumored the French OTH-Radar Nostradamus can clearly see all current stealth airplanes.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1631867

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jp-Molinie/publication/...

I thought most OTH can see stealth planes because they usually aren’t optimised for being scanned from the top, but rather more front, back and bottom face scanning.

I don’t know much about stealth though so I could be completely wrong.

There are many variables involved in radar target detection and usually "stealth" planes only have the possibility to optimize for a few of them. As a simple example, radar absorbing paints usually only work well in a few frequency bands so using a radar outside that band gives a much higher chance of detection. Using "blocky" designs reduces the chance of detection from one angle (typically the front, since that is where the target is) but at the cost of higher detectability from another angle. And finally you will almost always have problems with infrared visibility from some angles, for a jet airplane it is almost impossible to hide the exhaust plume when looking from the rear of the aircraft.

In any case, you are right that OTH skywave radars like the Nostradamus usually have a pretty good chance to detect stealthy planes. However due to the frequency bands involved such detections are typically more of the "there is something in this cubic kilometre" type and not of fire-control quality. You need much more accurate systems to actually guide a missile. Still, it is pretty cool. There are also "passive" systems which use the reflections of waves from normal civilian radio stations and a phenomenal amount of signal processing to determine the position of thousands of targets simultaneously, although I'm not aware of any in active service yet. Like fusion power, this type of "multistatic" radar seems to be perpetually 30 years away from practical use.

Source: Used to be a weapons engineer for the Dutch Navy, at one point specializing in advanced radar systems.

Wouldn't surprise me - it's the eternal cat and mouse game between defense and offence and stealth as a concept isn't new anymore.

It's not about been totally hidden (sans a cloaking device that is never going to happen) it's about been less detectable after all.

If the distance the stealth platform can see you from is greater than the distance you can reliably detect them from you are already dead - the missile simply hasn't arrived yet.

So then this logic brings us to space platforms, anti-space platforms, and observservations of space platforms.

Everyone is probably already arming space to the teeth. I guess it's better than mutually assured destruction?

Space based weapons are extremely limited in practice. The problem is that at any given time 90% or more of your orbital assets are over the pacific ocean, or the arctic, or antarctic, or anywhere other than where you want them to be and you can't change that very easily.

A LEO sat at 300 km altitude does a full orbit every ~90 minutes.

Put a few hundred missiles in orbit, give them enough spare fuel to travel a decent distance on their own, and you have a pretty substantial worldwide strike capability.

This handwaves a lot of stuff. The least of which is that with the way satellites orbit, even though they orbit in 90, they’re not over the same ground track again for like 12 days. It’s not the case that a weapon used satellite would have a firing solution every 90 minutes.

What's the point of that when you can have an even more substantial worldwide strike capability at far lower cost with ground-based missiles.

Meanwhile opponent straps nuclear hand grenadines to a few thousand drones and flies them to your bases. At a fraction of the cost.

And they are not doing that now, because...

Smallest nuclear bomb (not dirty bomb) made was 23kg, literally suitcase size. However if you have one and want to use it, you're probably better off sending it in on a shipping container or truck (or commercial or private plane)

Lots of detectors for those. Not sure how extensive, but it’s a known attack vector.

Apparently it’s hard to fully shield weapons grade material

Do you know what the difference is between an ICBM and a warhead predeployed in orbit?

The ICBM can hit anywhere (instead of just where the orbit track happens to pass), in less time (or at most the same time, since deorbiting takes around half an orbit) with a better mass fraction (since it doesn't have to reach orbit and then deorbit afterwards) while being more accurate (you know exactly where the launch platform is, while satellites are harder to locate) and less vulnerable (you can harden an ICBM silo far more effectively than a satellite).

Really, it's hard to think of something that satellite anti-ground weaponry does better.

Detection?

There is a lot of icbm detection. Unplanned rocket launches could lead to global nuclear annihilation. What happens if something seems to deorbit above the US? How much early warning and procedure is there?

Especially if you want to deliver conventional munitions to a non-nuclear power, a system like this seems better than an ICBM.

Except that detectability is an advantage, in the doesn't-set-off-global-thermonuclear-war sense. If your nuclear (or command) assets can be removed at any time without enough warning to launch, that means you have to launch now before that happens.

If you want to hit something with a conventional warhead in a non-peer state without warning, why not use a stealthy cruise missile instead?

Stealthy cruise missles need a much longer time than anything from space.

I am not advocating weapons in space btw. Just pointing out what the advantages are.

Tungston rods. Would you even detect the deorbit burn?

A/K/A "rods from God" / orbital kinetic kill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Possible, though problematic.

I'd love to know if they've ever been tested in reality. If succesful (especially as a first strike), you could theoretically launch from a high apogee using cold gas to adjust your heading, and have plausible deniability.

AFAICT no.

I guess it is a question of what type of warhead is there and how many of them are there.

And stealth space platforms.

There might already be stealth sats in orbit.

A curious case was the Zuma satelite [1].

Classified payload. Ostensibly failed to detach from the payload adapter, as claimed by anonymous sources... Lot's of speculation that this was a media charade to sow confusion about a stealth sat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuma_(satellite)

There are no stealth satellites. It's impossible to hide in orbit due to power and cooling requirements.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect....

This is a funny claim to make given that the US literally has stealth satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_(satellite)

Just because it's physically challenging to avoid having some blackbody emissions or whatever doesn't mean you can't evade modern sensors in practice.

What's your point? Those satellites were detected. They weren't actually stealthy in any meaningful way. Very minor signature reductions at best.

"That launch deposited a payload into geosynchronous orbit but, given the stealth/deception hypothesis, there remains the possibility of other, undetected payloads"

There remains a "possibility" that dinosaurs aren't extinct and they're hiding somewhere. Just because civilian astronomers haven't found such payloads doesn't mean those payloads actually exist. And hypothetically even if those payloads do exist it doesn't mean other nations haven't tracked them.

Wikipedia isn't a reliable source for this stuff. Look at the basic physics involved.

While amateurs can do an amazing job of detecting satellites, I think it is pretty likely that there are smaller satellites which are operating in extreme low power mode, waiting until a conflict where they are required. Whether there are enough to replace GPS and comms lost due to anti-satellite attacks and resulting debris is a bigger question.

It isn't physically possible to get useful GPS service from a small satellite. This is just basic physics. Calculate the power required to transmit the necessary signals. You need some fairly sizable solar panels. No way to hide those.

I get crummy GPS fixes inside my house with 30dB+ of attenuation of the signal by structure and parts of the sky absolutely masked, while using absolutely crummy antennas.

To me, this seems to imply you could make a useful system today with orders of magnitude less transmit power.

Maybe I do not understand something. But you get these readings, through all these conditions, with the help of the present, powerful and energy hungry satellites. A mini, less powerful satellite would not perform the same under the same conditions.

The military doesn't need GPS to work from inside a house.

It's actually about capability inflation. You can counter any tech but new tech makes old tech obsolete.

An army consisting exclusively of F-35 vs old generation jets could decimate all enemy jets without losing a single F-35.

It's the same with modern tank vs old tanks. Those old tanks can't penetrate the armor of modern tanks.

You sure about that ? Because at least in dogfights the 40 year old F16 seems to win.. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/disas...

The F22 would probably be the one engaging F16s. Regardless if you are dogfighting in an F22 or F35 something else has gone wrong. The stealth planes sneak in and shoot enemy planes from far away.

I am afraid they tried that also.The F22 lost against German pilots on the Eurofighter Typhoon:

https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/f-22-fighter-...

The article hits on my point about dogfighting. I don’t think most US modern planes except the F16 were designed for it. IIRC they weren’t even going to include guns on the F22.

> while the planes own the skies at modern long-range air combat

Any scenario in which American F22s would participate in combat action against European Eurofighters is far fetched, dogfighting or not.

In fact I would say if such an encounter were ever to happen, due to rule of engagements, a dogfight would be more likely than a BVR engagement (and likely to end without a single shot fired).

The premise was "consisting exclusively of F-35". you might have wanted F22s, but they are not available in the scenario.

This is irrelevant. The exercise was dogfighting, a phase which the F-16 would never be able to reach against an F-35 in combat without a multitude of things going wrong.

The F-35 can see and shoot down the F-16 with radar-guided missiles in BVR well before the latter is even aware the F-35 is in the area.

Dogfighting is minimally relevant to modern air combat for nuclear-armed nations. Things would have to be going extraordinarily badly in a war for the brass to start deciding to send their exceedingly expensive fifth-gen stealth fighters into dogfight coin tosses.

Hell, even an A-10 is a surprisingly effective dogfighter against modern fighters. The fighters have speed but the Warthog has an extremely tight turning radius and far better low-speed maneuverability, both of which allow it to stay inside the opponent’s “bubble” (the area inside which a turning jet can’t ever manage to point its nose). If the A-10 can keep it to a one-circle fight it will win handily. A fighter will often have to rely on a “boom and zoom” tactic (where it disengages, gains distance, and turns back around for a guns pass) but that can be quite low probability of kill and still be relatively risky if the A-10 has friendlies in the area feeling it location information.

But just like the situation already being discussed, this is for all practical purposes completely irrelevant. A flight of F-16s would engage and destroy a flight of A-10s from miles away with AMRAAMs and it would never have a chance to transition to an up-close dogfight.

> The F-35 can see and shoot down the F-16 with radar-guided missiles in BVR well before the latter is even aware the F-35 is in the area.

what's stopping the f-16 from turning around and going cold as soon as it hears a lock or senses enemy radar?

The rules of the wargame, which are invariably rigged for the most expensive toy.

I believe missiles have a certain range at which, when fired, the kill is ensured. The F35 would not need to fire the missile at the absolute possible range the missile can fly to, but at the range the kill is guaranteed.

Sort of. You can get to a range where kinematically defeating the missile is unlikely / impossible, but it still might fail due to any number of problems that can happen during the intercept.

It's not just a range, but the overall kinematic situation. It's referred to as the no escape zone, or more informally "the basket" from what I've read.

If the enemy doesn’t know you’re there, you don’t have to fire from maximum range.

Either way, if the enemy turns and flees, from your perspective you’ve won the engagement. Whatever their purpose in the area was (SEAD, strike, air superiority, etc.) has been subverted.

The linked article is out of date and cites "War is Boring" which is notoriously anti f35. Here's something a bit more recent. The english translation is at the botom: https://nettsteder.regjeringen.no/kampfly/fagprat/f-35-i-nae....

>> An army consisting exclusively of F-35 vs old generation jets could decimate all enemy jets without losing a single F-35.

Maybe ... in the air ... if the numbers are the same ... if all of those F-35s are able to fly ... if the other side doesn't have a significant SAM capability ... if if if. In a realworld battle between armies the air-to-air capacity of fighters is a small part of the battle. Most will try to defeat the other's aircraft using ground assets, missiles/manpad. Ideally you take out aircraft in their hangars. A single well-placed artillery shell can take out a dozen F-35s in a hangar. A single frogfoot can destroy any F-35 that is low on fuel/ammo/speed after engaging a couple flankers. Realworld combat is messy. A pack of crows can take down an eagle.

Cat and mouse games lead to very surprising innovations.

During the Sri Lankan civil war about 10 years ago, the Tiger rebels had acquired Zlin Z 43s, modified them to carry several bombs [1], and were bombing targets left and right, including the country’s capital.

The populace was increasingly pondering why the country’s well-trained air force, with modern fighter jets with years of scrambling experience [2] could never seem to shoot these slower planes down. In fact, there were no confirmed kills during the conflict.

It was later revealed that the rebels knew the capabilities of the enemy Chengdu J7 and MiG 29 interceptors, and had modified their own aircraft engines with anti-IR capabilities [3]. Complex IR jamming equipment was suspected, but the country’s PM later said that the rebels had simply redirected the exhaust fumes from the back of the aircraft to the front, throwing “unlockable” heat signatures [4].

By the end of the war, the rebels had actually “won” the war in the skies by destroying over 30 aircraft and losing 2, despite ultimately losing.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zl%C3%ADn_Z_43

[2] The government’s prized jet fighters were stationed in the capital, about 400 km from the main conflict zone. In 2000, the rebels launched a devastating offensive and the government held on by a thread due to their ability to scramble ground attack craft to battles in 7 minutes. It’s said that had they lost that battle, all hopes of winning the war would have been lost.

[3] http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081102/Columns/sitreport.html

[4] https://www.dailynews.lk/2020/01/18/local/208783/slaf-most-e...

Wouldn't air friction on a flying stealth airplane cause it to be detected due to the heat generated?

It must obviously be more complicated than that but that should be doable nowadays?

They ionize the hull in some way to reduce friction I guess that reduces the thermal signature.

What do you think "ionize" means in this context?

Or, for that matter, hull? These aircraft have many layers of material between the traditional tensioned skin of the aircraft and the outside air.

Yes, there's a lot of work in infrared search-and-track (IRST) for detecting stealth aircraft. But the atmosphere is a great absorber of IR so it's not a panacea.

> Wouldn't air friction on a flying stealth airplane cause it to be detected due to the heat generated?

Stealth coated airplanes are supposedly flying very slow on missions to avoid infrared detection.

It will probably still not do anything against astronomy grade infrared sensors.

The frequency of emitted IR isn't what radars look for. (Microwave range generally)

For others, OTH is Over The Horizon. It uses stratospheric scattering, much like extra long range radio.

anecdotal: friend serving "mandatory" (last) year in Slovak army during NATO "humanitarian" bombing of Serbia operating Czech passive radar Věra in east Slovakia could locate B-2's no problem.It was banned by US to export to China.

Interesting. It seems the US "took over" the radar.

https://www.army.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=6159

Interesting, but what does "took over" mean?

I think it means they bought a set.

Define locate.

We've had radar that can "detect" stealth since the 40s.

Radar is a huge field and HN's simplistic view is humorous.

And almost all stealth measures can be defeated by using multiple sensors.

Stealth is not perfect and not about never being detected, it's about shooting first. You are going after a military aircraft that is trying to kill you. By the time you lock a B2 it has released its bombs. By the time you lock an F35 you're dead.

These aircraft don't just fly around and let you take your sweet time killing them.

If you manage to lock one you have to deal with this as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_jamming_and_deception

Some of these are quite sophisticated, example:

>Digital radio frequency memory, or DRFM jamming, or Repeater jamming is a repeater technique that manipulates received radar energy and retransmits it to change the return the radar sees. This technique can change the range the radar detects by changing the delay in transmission of pulses, the velocity the radar detects by changing the Doppler shift of the transmitted signal, or the angle to the plane by using AM techniques to transmit into the sidelobes of the radar. Electronics, radio equipment, and antenna can cause DRFM jamming causing false targets, the signal must be timed after the received radar signal. By analysing received signal strength from side and backlobes and thus getting radar antennae radiation pattern, false targets can be created to directions other than one where the jammer is coming from. If each radar pulse is uniquely coded it is not possible to create targets in directions other than the direction of the jammer

Jamming AESA radars is basically impossible.

"Find the F35 and you're dead" is just wrong and simplistic. Head to head anti-air fights aren't what's gonna happen. The F-35 in every mission it's supposed to do is going to go heads up against multiple different detection platforms.

"Jamming AESA radars is basically impossible."

This is so incredibly wrong.

Almost all AESA radars have home-on-jam/passive capability and fairly wide bands. Jamming them is as good as impossible.

The world's air forces disagree.

The moment where you believe at any point that there is a singular "HN's view" about any topic is where you go wrong.

I bet that there are people on this platform who have never had a conscious thought about radars, also there are ones who design radars for a living. And the whole gamut in between.

Almost certainly. But they can't keep track accurately and the location of the aircraft is not accurate. The inaccuracy can be several km.

Stealth is still 80% of shaping. Specular reflection can be reflected away from the radar receiver. In the resonant scattering region, where the signal amplitude matches the object sizes, you remove radar return by removing all parts that are a similar size to the wavelength, like the tail. Coatings and Absorbers reduce radar even return more but only after the shaping works.

If you can get radar into an angle that the shape was designed for, or transceiver and receiver are in separate locations stealth advantage decreases dramatically.

Chinese are probably the first to deploy long-range air-to-air missiles that have dual sensors. Both radar and IR. (Stunner missile has that already, but it's ground-to-air missile). Traditionally IR is used only in short-range missiles. You direct the missile to approximate position and then it uses IR and radar together to remove stealth.

>> and then it uses IR and radar together to remove stealth.

So what happens when the dual seekers give different results? If there were three seekers then you could ignore one, but with only two you cannot check one against another. What if the radar says turn left but the IR says turn right? Having two seekers may make the target's life easier: defeat either seeker and you defeat both.

It's like any other sensor fusion problem. You take a weighted average of the detected target bearing based on whatever data you have. Even if the target manages to completely "defeat" one sensor by somehow becoming invisible it doesn't mean that sensor will report a totally spurious bearing; you just won't get any meaningful data at all from it and thus ignore it.

Left + Right /2 = Strait = Miss.

Small errors count. A few degrees off and your missile doesn't get to the target. Any averaging will probably result in a miss. In such cases a single sensor would be better, or two different sensors on two different missiles.

This comes up in all manner of flight systems. Take altitude. If one sensor says you are at 1000feet and another says 10,000, the one thing everyone should agree is that you aren't at 5500. One of the sensors is wrong and needs to be ignored, but how do you pick between the two?

That's not how modern sensor fusion algorithms work. It's never a simple average calculation. The inputs from various sensors are weighted based on confidence levels. In extreme cases sensors reporting bad or inconsistent data are ignored.

> One of the sensors is wrong and needs to be ignored, but how do you pick between the two?

What did the sensors say one minute ago? There's no reason this has to be Markovian.

Because, in a jamming/deception scenario, the jammer acting on a sensor won't just introduce a false reading. It will gradually transition from a true to false state in a manner that looks natural. The jammer will attempt to capture the sensor's attention and then shift its attention away from its target ("seduction"). In such cases it is very difficult/impossible to tell which is true based on past readings from the sensor. Google jamming and "capturing the gate" or "doppler pull", techniques specifically to defeat countermeasures dependent on past readings. With two sensors against a jamming target, the sensor with the clearest signal/most confidence is probably the one being most jammed. (IR flares do similar things too.)

The parent said weighted average. The weight can be picked cleverly: it does not have to be the 0.5 of your example, and it doesn’t have to be constant.

For example, the Kalman Filter tells you the weight to apply to each new sample and the last estimate to make a new estimate. These weights are optimal if the measurement errors have a Gaussian distribution with zero mean. In many practical systems they are usably good even when that assumption does not perfectly hold.

In your example the new measurement that was less consistent with the last fused estimate would be downweighted by a KF.

>> they are usably good even when that assumption does not perfectly hold.

And when deployed against a jamming target that it well aware of gaussian distributions and how to game them? When deployed against a jammer that is very good at pretending to not be a jammer? An aware jammer will feed you good results, just enough to convince your gaussian distribution (capture) and them move it off of onto a false path (seduction) resulting in you following a false signal (miss) or cause you to fall back into search mode (delay=miss). The game is different when the thing you are trying to measure is actively trying to deceive you.

You are right. Countermeasures would deliberately violate the assumptions a KF or other estimator makes, to degrade its ability to track. Now you have an arms race between countermeasures and the ability to model and defeat them.

The Kalman filter is but one example of estimating unknown variable (the target location, heading, speed) using a joint probability distribution of multiple sensor inputs with different characteristics.

The launch platforms can feed the necessary positional data to the missile, which can switch to IR search mode as it approaches the area of the target. Most newer US platforms use a mix of inertial and IR imaging guidance. Even the longer range radar-guided missiles typically don't turn on their radar until they are relatively close to the target; effective long-range radar has power requirements that don't fit in a missile very well.

The dual-mode terminal guidance on the Chinese missile may be a response to the fact that the US has very good countermeasures for IR terminal guidance. IR guidance is cheap but it may not be reliable against some advanced targets.

Or it could be something they picked up from Soviet defense forces, where the doctrine was to fire long range missiles in pairs - first an IR seeker then radar one p

The diameter of the missile also imposes significant limitations on the RADAR. IR sensors couldn't be in the nose cone, it's hard to see them being very sensitive or capable against active decoys.

In contrast, the AIM-120D has bidirectional data link, so it can feed it's RADAR picture back to the launch platform.

My understanding is multi mode seekers use a simple trick where they have a Gregorian telescope where the mirrors do double duty for both RF and IR. This allows simultaneous radar, IR, and laser seeking in one unit.

With CPU and sensors getting so cheap, you'd think AI missile targeting would be taking off. IR+Radar seems like such a basic early-2000s strategy given how shockingly cheap everything has gotten.

The fact that Radar + IR is a spoken of as somewhat novel either tells me the defense industry parasites are way behind or the public intel is just several decades behind.

But given the speeds I can see the problem being more difficult that I think.

You don't need to go to HF to detect stealth aircraft. Even VHF will work. But it's not going to be accurate enough for targeting.

Another approach is to passively listen for reflections of cell tower or FM radio signals. Stealth aircraft do not reflect much radio energy straight back at the source, but they do reflect it in other directions.

So called 'passive' radars. FM radio, cell towers, and also dvb-t. Wonderful tech. Is there an actual (not toy or PoC) operational system deployed anywhere?

There is no way to know. An actual operational system deployed anywhere would be impossible to detect. It does not transmit anything, and can use existing antennas for receiving the signals. Can be as simple as software update.

I know I know but some military might have bragged about it somehow...

VHF is now accurate enough for two-stage targeting. Basically you guide the missile close enough for its own radar/camera/ir sensor to lock on.

VHF is inherently too inaccurate for a lock either. It just scales with how big the radar is.

Yeah, but how precise it is? Even the old WW2-style radars can see all stealth planes, but can't really guide a missile towards them. There was also Czechoslovak Tamara radar in the '80s that was supposed to detect them as well. And Russians are supposed to have a mesh of mobile radars that can detect small anomalies in their plane and combining them together should show some imprecise location of a target. The question is how useful any of these are?

Would it be possible to pick up modern OTH radar signals out of curiosity using amateur radio equipment, such from the Nostradamus one you mention?

I believe it was possible to pickup the Russian Duga system.

Absolutely.

These are still a source of interference on the amateur bands. You can find more info on that at https://www.iaru-r1.org/spectrum/monitoring-system/iarums-r1...

Stealth doesn't mean invisible it's just a much reduced footprint. That canary going Mach 2 should raise suspicions.

This is largely off topic, but one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever learned about fighter jet HUDs is the reason they still look like early computing interfaces and avoid using color and graphics to signify important information is that human ability to detect color goes down when in high stress situations.

time to start playing league of legends in black and white

The info in this article mainly applies to mech-scan radars; many fighters from all over the world now use AESAs[1] (This includes 5th gen, and upgraded 4th gen). These don't have the distinction of "track" and "search" modes; the radar maintains high-quality tracks of multiple targets in the radar coverage, and the crew can select which ones to target.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_electronically_scanned_...

AESA radars very much do have track and search mode, it’s just not mechanically controlled so they can track more targets however once you lock on a target(s) the beams are still focused on them which is why you still have a limit and that limit is dependent on the size of the target you track as well as it’s range and not just the radar itself.

An AESA radar that can track up to 5 targets for example might still be limited to a single target with a low RCS because more of the array has to be focused on it.

All valid points. In practice for non-stealth fighter-size targets, (Depending on the software/UI) you can park the radar in a general-purpose mode, and get decent-quality tracks for many contacts. Turning them into higher-quality "weapons-quality" tracks (eg for shooting) taxes the radar more. The more you ask of the radar (More wpns-quality tracks, SAR mapping etc), the poorer its performance.

My father was a navigator and EWO officer in the C130 Hercules during the Vietnam war.

He didn’t talk much about the war but one of things he told me was that while he was that their aircraft had several stubby antennae around the aircraft that monitored the radar from ground to air weapons.

He said they had various jamming equipment and would send back radar signals out-of-phase so that ground radar would receive strong signals where they should be weak to throw off the targeting.

He said at one point over Cambodia his equipment was overloaded by being locked on by multiple Chinese made weapons.

Later analysis showed at least 3 different “Firecan” radar locked on.

Luckily they were not fired upon.

Edited to add that Wikipedia shows that Fire Can as Russian made. But my father did state he thought they were Chinese made

It was copied by China so your father could well be right.

The way the target can “hear” the radar lock seems very equitable. As if the nature of arial combat is the product of balanced gameplay mechanics.

Would be interesting if computer games accurately did lock on and detection

Right now it just seems like aiming reticule edge detection

Simulators, DCS in the forefront, have somewhat reasonable radar modeling, both in terms of radar warning systems and target acquisition.

There are simulators that do that, but it does take away from the "Maverick/Top Gun" escapist fantasy most games with fighter jets strive for when you can't even see your target, so it's a much smaller market

I played Descent in the 90's and there was missile lock. It would trigger when a homing missile had a line of sight to your ship, and the frequency of the beeps indicated proximity. It's not the aiming reticle, cause bots could get you around corners with homing missiles.

The homing is probably done exactly like graphics, with ray tracing.

Microprose F-15 Strike Eagle in the early 80's did a decent lock on and detection!

falcon 4.0 is unmatched. they actually had too much and were forced to redact and simplify some mechanics before release

Was about to say it. Get Falcon 4.0 then do the Massive! Free! update named Falcon BMS. They really coded the radar, emissions, warming detectors, etc.. Not just a if locked then give a pin/warning lock to the target type of logic. Super impressive stuff and we are not even talking about the dynamic campaign and how all ground radar and ground to air missile platforms work together for instance. There are so many things. And I play DCS a lot. But Falcon BMS is unbeaten for that.

I guess the "gameplay" is somewhat self-balancing in the sense that as soon as one strategy becomes dominant, there's that much more incentive to come up with a strategy that counters it. For that reason alone, in nature, and our mimicry of it, "it's a tradeoff" or rock-scissors-paper-like scenarios are much more likely than "one strategy to beat them all".

That's why it's so interesting that only humans came up with the absolutely game-breaking OP strategy of being smarter than everything else.

Not sure that it's game-breaking, depends on how you define the game. For example, I think that humans can't exterminate all insects [1], or bacteria[2] alive. However the other way around I'm not so sure.

1. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/

Or you can use the thermal mid range missile for Sukhoi that the Russians love and you never have any detection warning ever. From lock to impact :)

I love those in DCS.

https://youtu.be/YCrrmL8GlSY

You can still have launch warning systems though, no? Same as against MANPADS and the like.

No no warning at all. The only thing that can give you a warning with the old missile at least is the engine leave a smoke trail so you have to look around and you may dodge it.

The thing is compare to radar, for IR since your aircraft already emit them from the heat the IR tracking system doesn’t need to emit anything but only to receive. So there is no way to detect that someone is « locking » you. You are already emitting your own lock from your own heat the enemy just need to have the tool to see you.

Missile approach warning systems are definitely a thing.

Adversaries tend not to engage in conflicts with unbalanced mechanics — the only winning move then is not to play…

Discussed at the time:

How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439560 - Oct 2014 (85 comments)

Also, we changed the url from https://gizmodo.com/how-fighter-jets-lock-on-and-how-the-tar... to the quora.com page it's copied from.

Given quora is registrationwalled and Gizmodo is not, I'd support reinstating the submitted URL.

Ok, since we're getting complaints that some people can't read the Quora URL, I've switched back to the Gizmodo one. There's an archive link at the top of this thread for those who want some ad relief.

Thanks!

This part looks rather dated:

> A digital signal processor looks for recognizable radio "chirps" that correspond to known radars, and displays their azimuth on the scope. A chirp is a distinctive waveform that a radio uses.

These days it should be pretty easy to use pseudorandom waveforms, unique each time. LPI radars existed for a while.

Yes it's a tech appreciation from the SLQ-32 era. But at the same time receiver memory and sensitivity has massively increased, and many properties can be analysed, including the response to deception signals (delayed repetition of various strategies, sidelobe injection). LPI doesn't work for tracking as well as for searching. In the past it would take months for new waveforms to be analysed and platform libraries updated, now it happens in hours.

How radar tracking worked in the good ol' days [0]

[0]http://www.donhollway.com/foxtwo/crusader.mp4

> The strength of the radar is plotted as distance from the center — the closer to the center, the stronger the detected radar signal, and therefore possibly the closer the transmitting aircraft.

I believe this is wrong, the computer actually determines what are most pertinent threats and puts it on the inner circle and puts the rest on the outer circle.

. The inner band (critical) is generally missiles in flight . The middle band (lethal) is for radars actively tracking you . The outer band is classified as non-lethal since these are radars searching for you, not actively tracking you.

> RWR also has an audio component. Each time a new radar signal is detected, it is converted into an audio wave and played for the pilot. Because different radars "sound" different, pilots learn to recognize different airborne or surface threats by their distinctive tones.

Pretty sure this is wrong too, they all emit the same tones for tracking and another tone for searching tone...

watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLk_Je0NKg

would have loved to have audio examples for the article. as it reads the audio feedback to pilots is not a database of warning tones but a direct translation of the received radar spectrum to something audible. if someone has a good link it would be appreciated.

I have recorded a weather radar and uploaded it to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLz0ZYw4Hdw

This demo of BSI's SGE does a pretty good job demonstrating the parameters that contribute to the sound of an emitter heard through a radar warning receiver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-e3m5zGQjA

I have always wondered, wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a missile that follows a radar wave to it's source? A fighter plane could use this very missile to shut down a fighter plane chasing it or a ground radar scanning it.

Already exists. Meet the AGM-88:

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm-88.htm

The British ALARM is more interesting as it has a loiter mode where it can fly up, deploy a parachute, and wait for a radar site to turn on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALARM

It's basically a flying naval mine with an active tracking mode.

Yep!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel

This is essentially how HARM (Anti-Radiation) missiles work [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM]

It already exists! Also works against ground radar. It's actually one of the best ways to clean up enemy air defenses before an invasion

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile

Yes, term you're looking for is anti-radiarion missiles, they've been around for a little while https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile?wprov=s...

Some loitering ammunition also do that. It waits in the area until SAM battery turns on their radar, then it knows its position and destroys it.

After going down the rabbit hole of combat flight simulators (Falcon BMS), I learned about Suppression of Enemy Air Defense missions. Fly to a spot, fire off a few radar seeking missiles at an area, the missiles are programmed to hit any radar they detect. The missiles go in a straight line for several minutes watching for radar, and will quickly fly towards any detected radar and blow it up. So, to support nearby missions you just put out a few of these missiles over and area and then nobody dares turn on their ground radar.

I recall Serbia having some success baiting anti-radiation missiles with tactical microwave ovens

It's a successful urban legend.

Like carrots being good for your eyes.

This statement is quite on spot, as carrots were used to cover radar tech.

https://www.livescience.com/38861-carrots-eyesight-myth-orig...

Seems like this could be mitigated by having a network of radar emitters that periodically turn on and off while sharing targeting information through the network to non-emitting missile launchers. Maybe the emitters could also be mobile and drive away to deter inertial-based targeting. Seems almost like a shoot-and-scoot artillery system except with radar instead of rounds. The concept would also work by networking the radars of a flight of fighters together so none of them would have to continuously transmit while also allowing fighters to illuminate targets from multiple angles.

This is precisely how modern IADS (Integrated Air Defense Systems) work. You have long-range search radar deep in your territory which can alert to contacts entering your airspace and feed that information to tracking radar located nearer to the front lines. Tracking radar only needs to fire for as long as necessary to get a lock, fire on an aircraft, and allow the radar-guided missile to establish its own lock.

Missile launch sites are located separately from radar sites so they can’t be targeted (since they have no radar emissions themselves) and so that pilots don’t know ahead of time where to look for missile plumes for visual indicators of a launch.

All of these sites are networked so can feed information across a large region and back to a hardened command center far away. Sharing information this way allows minimizing the amount of time between a vulnerable front-line system revealing its location and launching a missile at its target. Tracking radar and missile sites can even wait to become active until a hostile aircraft is over or even past them to defeat wild-weasel style tactics.

Both tracking radar and missile sites are also often mobile so once they’ve disclosed their location by using radar and/or firing a missile, they can quickly move to a new location to avoid retaliatory strikes from anti-radiation missiles and regain the element of surprise.

This is pretty much what they do nowadays. Look at patriot or S-400: the launcher, fire control radar, acquisition radar, are all mounted on trucks that can drive around. The radars do indeed share information with other assets like that. However anti radiation missiles ("ARM") are still a threat as the system won't function if all the radars are out

This is the principle behind anti-radiation missiles like the AGM-88 HARM. It’s impractical for A2A combat because in this situation, the enemy missile is already fired at you and all else being equal will hit before yours does.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM

If you're interested in this kind of thing I highly recommend 'art of the kill' The book is more in depth but you can find the youtube version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFMX5z-ed4

A good old read with some mildly outdated, but still interesting info. As a side note, if you dig aviation, check out my shop https://bvr.design. =D

Tech in Military has always been very interesting and I always wanted to learn how defense companies built advance fighter jets, advance weapons and etc

Anyhow loved this article

What does "closure rate" mean?

How fast they are approaching each other

Indeed. The rate at which the gap between them is closing => closure rate.

Even more fun, since closure rate was often written as Vc (Vee sub See), pilots often spoke in terms of "opening" Vc (getting further away) and "closing" Vc.

This is an old article and i'm sure electronic warfare has improved since then (the IDF invests a lot into this)...

But it's really cool to read about!

I have ABP yet I saw ads on this page? Are they doing something dodgy?

Adblock PLus will let in some ads. Check https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads

Most adblockers rely on crowdsourced detection, there are ways you can report ads so the rest of the community can all block it. It's possible you ran into a new ad.

Also ABP allows some ads it deems not intrusive. Ublock origin is stricter and better in my experience.

Tx for explaining! I switched.

Really interesting content, but its almost even more amazing how many ads they were able to squeeze in there at least on mobile.

I run a newsletter. We swore to find the least ad spammed website when we cover current news and link out. It’s getting more difficult by the day.

there are adblocker apps for both iOS and Android. Highly recommended

Looks like the ads have locked onto you. Perhaps try some evasive manoeuvres.

On Android you can use a private DNS service, for example nextdns.io which will block all advertisement on the page for you. I wouldn't be surprised if iOS would have the same option.

I run PiHole (DNS-based ad-blocker) on my home network, as the DNS is given out trough DHCP all my devices gets less ads, including iOS.

Annoyed me as well. I changed to reading mode (icon on right side of Firefox mobile address line). Think that got rid of them.

The thing that most irritates me about those sites is the video box about halfway down the page that becomes sticky for a bit after you pass it on mobile. I have to scroll down until it goes away, then slowly scroll back up until just before it appears again to continue reading. It’s absolutely maddening.

iOS to be specific. On android we have proper adblocking with uBlock origin. So much about apple and privacy.

I had this concern before I switched to iOS. Turns out you can install content blockers for Safari. Plus iOS supports DoH natively so ads are pretty much non existent on my iOS devices.

It's very helpful. Firefox on Android with ublock origin is still the best as blocker on mobile but it's nice to have eg wipr on Safari.

Did you not get ads on the article? I’m on iOS and every other paragraph had one. Checked on android with uBlock and there aren’t any. I installed “Firefox focus”, supposedly blocks ads, I guess on the network level. Which iOS adblocker do you use?

How does DoH help you avoid ads?

And furthermore, the content was from a guy (Tim Morgan) who answered a question on Quora (linked at the bottom of the article). So Gizmodo just copies it and puts lots of ads around it. I don't understand the modern internet.

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-fighter-jet-lock-onto-and-k...

If anything, I think it's worth asking Dang to change the link on the page to be this one – it's rather bad that this person's work appears to being just ripped off.

I sent email asking him to change it.

Ok, we've changed the URL to that from https://gizmodo.com/how-fighter-jets-lock-on-and-how-the-tar.... Thanks all!

Edit: changed back, explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488965

I came to say the same thing - at one point only 10% of the screen was article text.

What a god awful website.

Yeah, I always just go straight to an archive site when I see a Gizmodo link.

https://archive.is/MGCOA

And then the MiG-35S came along with an K-74M (or R-27ET) and the F-35 pilot wondered why they were drifting down in a parachute to the ocean. 13SM-1 FLIR FTW.

2014

This is a very interesting article, but I was kind of turned off by the ease with which it described killing people. "To get a solid kill, just put the plane in the dot and squeeze the trigger, super simple!"

I've seen detergent bottles that were more apprehensive about their process of use.

I believe in the vernacular "kill" refers to destruction of the enemy aircraft not ending the life of the crew (they are correlated, of course).

I agree, but still...

Would it be better or worse if they stuck to an euphemistic verb like "down", as if it was a given that the occupant walked away? I don't know the answer.

This is a discussion of a military matter, which is all about life and death struggle in many levels.

War is about killing. It's an ugly fact but fact nevertheless. It seems like the world kill offends you, but it is an accurate description of the severity of what's going on.

This is the business that fighter pilots consider themselves to be in, and that shows through in the way they talk about it - I had a history teacher in high school who had previously flown fighters in the Marine Corps, and while he rarely entertained much discussion on that subject, his approach on those occasions was similarly matter-of-fact.

I didn't check to see if the article referenced any sources, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a primary one was a conversation with an F-16 pilot.

Yeah, I'd expect pilots to talk like that, it just had an impression on me because I didn't expect a journalist explaining something to have the same vernacular.

Fighter pilots are also, by all accounts including my own, very much among the most confident human beings anyone is ever likely to meet - that teacher I'm thinking of certainly was. It can easily make a strong impression; most of the guys in that class had a huge crush on the idea of growing up to be like him, while many of the girls (and I!) just had a huge crush on him.

There is no reason to assume this sort of thing only occurs among high schoolers, or in any case that a Gizmodo writer would be more likely to embark upon a serious consideration of the moral weight of aerial combat than to focus on its literal and figurative whiz-bang, wow-cool-robot aspects, of which there is no shortage.

The article is a copy of a Quora answer. Not even sure if there was a journalist involved.

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-fighter-jet-lock-onto-and-k...

Edit: Quora link.

Ah, written by a pilot and fighter nerd, this also checks out.

Fighter pilots are kind of the ultimate cool kids from the perspective of a milstuff nerd, and there is an unusual degree of hero worship among that cohort already.

Well, living in a highly militarized US city that sees vendors come in for various presentations regularly, not only is "lethality" a word that businesses use to sell, but also one everyone gets excited to hear. It's definitely weird at first as a civilian. But I see how it quickly becomes CAC/LTV.

At the end of the day the military is primarily there to achieve various ends through killing or the threat of killing. What good would it do to obscure that? Not all killing is bad

Anyone flying a fighter jet in aerial combat with other fighter jets knows what they signed up for and are facing opponents who signed up for the same thing.

War is terrible, but this is one of the very few situations in modern combat where there is a clear line between civilians and the combatants. Everyone engaged is a willing participant.

In this situation I'll apply Doug Stanhope's logic:

> As long as the people who kinda wanna go kill other people are going to go kill other people who kinda wanna go kill other people, you're killing all the right people and opening up all the best parking spaces.

Well, that's sound logic and a great quote, thanks!

> opening up all the best parking spaces.

Funny quote, but I don't think front-line infantry have the best parking spaces. That would be the flag officers.

Not sure what country you are from but in most air forces, front-line infantry aren't flying fighter jets.

Close air support blurs the line a little, especially inasmuch as (in US forces at least) those pilots are both uniquely beloved among the infantry they support and with whom they share many hazards, and also much differently regarded by "real" combat pilots as halfway to being ground pounders themselves.

> Everyone engaged is a willing participant.

Conscription is a thing in many countries. Not sure how many conscripts are flying, though.

Approximately zero, even in places like North Korea. Aircraft are too valuable.

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