Modern Warfare Mod brings World in Conflict from the Cold War into the Modern Age. It also ups the ante on realism and authenticity in every role – Infantry, Armor, Support and Air, while trying our best to keep everything relatively balanced for fun and interesting gameplay.
MW Mod Integrated Air Defense System
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Description
Overview of IADS Weapons Control Computer version 3.1 for air defense in game.
The Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) networks every player's Heavy SAM units without player's knowing, behind the scenes.
Faced with saturation air and missile attacks, the IADS tracks 100 targets simultaneously and guides 9 missiles against different targets at any given moment, by taking control of Heavy SAM units belonging to different players around the map.
How fast does the computer do all these 'actions' or 'calculations'.
I mean, from the time it detects something until it launches a missile.
It takes less than 0.3 seconds to initiate a track. For cruise missile and ballistic missiles, it will react within couple seconds. For aircraft targets, it will wait as much as 10 seconds, depending on air player's flight behavior.
And what if there are 10 planes that are flying in such a manner that it takes 10sec to react. Will it slow down the reaction time? Can you overwhelm the computer so that one helicopter sneaks in for the kill? Since it can only 'shoot' 9 planes at the time.
Mmm no, it doesn't work like that.
Each track is a thread. And the reason why it takes "up to" 10 seconds is for NCT (non-cooperative target) behavior profiling.
If the air player is flying predictably and is flying high, then it takes only less than 3 seconds to certify him as hostile. If the air player is dropping in and out of contact and flying unpredictably, then it takes up to 10 seconds to certify.
If you have 10 planes going on at the same time, then system will simultaneously (parallel processing) track each target and whichever target gets certified as hostile first, gets engaged, on first-come, first-serve basis. So if 2 air planes are not cooperating and dropping in and out of radar contact, then you may find those planes engaged at last, while 8 other targets are shot down promptly.
Also the concept of 'shoot' 9 planes at the same time is a little bit ambiguous.
The limit of '9 targets at a time' actually refers to the amount of illumination channels available -- that is, how many different targets the radar can simultaneously shine on, so that PAC-2 missiles can pick up the reflected energy and home into them (semi-active radar homing).
So, when you are facing more than 9 aircraft for example (say 16 of them), here is how the process would work:
- Software tracks 16 aircraft and all 16 are certified as hostile -- weapons free.
- Software commands all available launchers to fire as many missiles as they can, but no more than 32 (2 missiles fired per target * 16 targets = 32 upper bound limit)
- Each missile gets acquired by radar and receives inertial navigation update.
- The actual work of flying the missile toward the target (mid-course guidance) is done by the missile itself -- each PAC-2 missile has its own auto-pilot guidance computer that flies itself to the most efficient trajectory toward intercept location as transmitted from over down-link.
- Since each missile flies there by itself using auto-pilot, the radar acquires the PAC-2 missiles that have arrived toward the target area (called "the basket"). As missiles are entering the target basket, the radar basically performs terminal air traffic control, landing inbound PAC-2 missiles against 9 separate targets at a time by illuminating those 9 targets simultaneously.
So because of this, a radar with 9 illumination/guidance channels can actually destroy 16 targets or even 24 targets -- it just means that it will take longer. It simply means that it could instantly destroy 9 targets in 2-3 second time span when it is directing inbound PAC-2 missiles onto their targets during their final flight phase.
Oh wow, so your are pretty much screwed no matter how many helicopters you spam, you have to use one with care and efficiency.
Thx for the great explanations :)
As mentioned in the air role manual the sams are pretty hard to dodge i myself once found myself in such situations when i barely enterd the no fly zone adn i got shot down instantly! No mater how many or few chopps u got they are always screwed if they enter a no fly zone!
If u want a heli that survives do what is pointed in the AR manual adn enjoy!
And i want to ask when will yhe russians get their BTR-90 and BM-21 cuz it is kinda strange a mobile mortar to fire misslies
Yea really the only way to overwhelm these systems is to just burn down their ammo by firing lot of cruise missiles frequently.
We're making some adjustments balancing-wise, to give air role more flexibility in overloading ill-managed IADS, so noob support players are not as overpowered as they are now.
But for the most part, as far as technical efficiency of IADS program itself, we're pretty satisfied. The concept btw was derived from US Navy's Aegis combat system (i.e. how illumination radars were time-shared and SM-2 missiles used auto-pilot, to maximum efficiency against saturation attacks)