A few months ago, before I had to redirect all my spare time towards the AIM-54 study, I managed to fly a training sortie as an F-4E WSO. The purpose was to practice Close Air Support in a controlled environment. Here are some thoughts about the experience.
The AI in DCS is universally considered bad, often critiqued, and labelled as “all-knowing”. But is it really omniscient?
This video shows tests conducted using a variety of scenarios, trying to find a way to make the AI more realistic, whilst addressing many misconceptions. The ultimate goal is to identify and draw attention to areas that, hopefully, Eagle Dynamics can improve.
The atmosphere, in reality as in DCS, is not a monolithic, immutable, entity. Factors such as the altitude and weather affect, sometimes dramatically, aircraft and missiles alike. In this discussion, I will focus on the altitude, and try to show why it matters so much and how a missile can benefit, or suffer, from altitude changes.
The last chapter of the study about the “new” AIM-54 compares the Phoenix to its de facto successor: the AIM-120C-5 AMRAAM.
The scenario used is the same dynamic mission used for chapter VI, and includes tests from 35,000ft against targets at 15,000ft.
The penultimate video of this series, the “new” AIM-54 Phoenix is tested against manoeuvring targets with speeds changing from M.7 to M1.6, up to 9G pulled, and different altitudes. The results are surprising.
One of the issues with the chapters discussed so far is how static they are. Although they provide a good picture of the “new” AIM-54 Phoenix, this study would be relatively incomplete without testing more complex situations.
Here is the first scenario: “zero-cut” or 180 HCA / DTG.
