USA's tactical ballistic missile is seemingly impossible to shoot down Thread - WIC: Modern Warfare Mod for World in Conflict

Is the TBM of USA really invulnerable to attack? I tested it and almost all of the Russian Heavy Anti Air(S300) are unable to shoot it down, unlike the russian tochka TBM, the USA pac3 shoots down russian tbm with impunity at almost 100 percent. ATACMS is impossible to shootdown as I have observed.

Perhaps because the ATACMS isn't a ballistic missile in the usual sense, it does a bit of maneuvering on it's way to the target and the S-300 might have problems with such a warhead.

From: Defense-update.com

Someone wrote: The US Army fired over 100 ATACMS missiles in Iraq, since Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Most missiles were expended against air defense targets and C4ISR nodes. Even against a sophisticated enemy, equipped with early warning capabilities, ATACMS can maintain an element of surprise, due to its capability to launch attacks off axis. ( shaping the ballistic trajectory to 'hide' the objective and target it is aimed at).

Edited by: brianhaley509

Why is s300 has problems shooting it down while smaller and much more agile helicopters are shot down with no problems. The flight of the atacms is predictable just like the tochka. I find it very OP unit.

Hard to tell,

Was your S-300 degraded when the other side used the Atacms? Was any of your radars knocked out from the S-300 system? Did the S-300 system run out of ammo to fire at the ATACMS?

Did you only have one S-300 site or more for overlapping coverage?

There's a lot of variables at play here, I'd be curious to hear from the modders as well as I'm curious to learn more on the game mechanics.

The s300 was well within range of engaging the ATACMS, it has full ammo. I've tested it playing USA support against AI, 8 of them are using RUSSIAN Support role. That means ammo is not a problem. I've targeted those areas with multiple atacms but none was shot down by RUSSIAN s300. Perhaps the mods can enlighten us with my queries.

The S-300 can engage ATACMS missiles, but probability of kill is quite low against them. Overlapping coverage of two S-300 sites will provide good defense against ATACMS. That, and AI support is terrible at maintaining good radar coverage.

From game mechanics standpoint, the issue is that flight profile of ATACMS makes it harder for the SAM to track and correctly predict where it is going to impact. When S-300 is tracking ATACMS, the incoming missile makes positive-G maneuver in the opposite direction or pitches over, which invalidates the track solution. Tochka on the other hand falls down completely ballistic, so it's very easy for Patriot to calculate where it's going to impact -- it's going to fall straight down on the ground one way or another.

Why is s300 has problems shooting it down while smaller and much more agile helicopters are shot down with no problems.

But helicopters and aircraft aren't cruising at Mach 3-4 either :-) So there is plenty of time for S-300 to correct and engage. Against incoming missile in game, you got seconds, not minutes.

The flight of the atacms is predictable just like the tochka. I find it very OP unit.

Tochka on the other hand, gets massively spammed due to its durability and low cost. Throw in the Extended Range variant and you have a nuke. Any decent player throwing Tochka spam effectively forces US support to get rid of all artillery support, because Patriot gets overwhelmed very quickly.

Edited by: blahdy

Thanks again for englightening me Sir blahdy. All questions were answered. THANK YOU!

Thanks for that info blahdy, good to know these details when playing.

By the way, what happened to the Excalibur round that was in 3.5? Is there any way to employ it in 4.0? I enjoyed the effects it had when I used version 3.5.

Excalibur has been removed in 4.0, as artillery systems were being redone. It may come back as FLINT-based round later on.

Ah I see, thanks for that info.