Basically Kh-38MT and Hammers should behave more like the Penguin missile, they are shot off at stand-off distance with GNSS, and they lock onto a large IR target like a ship or factory at close range, none of this fantasy 20+ km lock range they have on TANKS.
But anyway, I don’t wanna ramble too much about it, it’s off-topic. Basically the nerf to IRIS-T makes no sense whatsoever because the lock range is dictated by many factors which the game could also take into account but, no, we get a 4 km lock range on IRIS-T like it’s a 1960s missile.
Quite strange that jets and helis lock small vehicles from 20km away…against ground noise, even through vegetation.
But a sophisticated anti air system from 2025 with its thermal imager can’t lock super hot air vehicles farther than 4km. Its like Gajin just wants this KH-28/LMur turkeyshot. Like pressing spacebar the pinnacle of WT top tier gameplay.
Oh nooo, if only there was an IR A2A missile that can lock targets from far-far awaaay, oh nooo, where we should look for it? Uh, I wonder who reached the pinnacle of IR technology faster than anyone else… Uh… What a shame…
That’s why I said “kind of”, meaning closest to something akin to pseudo-realism. It’s widely known at this point that the IR lock-ranges are generally way too short ingame.
A general overhaul of the IR system has to be done at some point in the future. The current implementation is nearing collapse…
The lock range didnt change. its still 12 km’s which is realistic and is stated by diehl. The only change was to when the missile chose to eject the nose cone and turn on the seeker, that is now 4 km’s.
A test of the IRIS-T slm is described here:
The missile turned on its seeker only at the endgame, which is very close to the target.
Here it is also described how the IRIS-T jettisoned the nose immediatly since the target was very close:
All in all this change is more realistic than it locking at 10 km’s, but i think it is stupid since from a balancing and fun factor perspective russian CAS is ruining the game currently.
Imagine the scenario: Target is aquired by radar 20 km in the distance → missile is launched → The moment the missile is 10 km from the target the radar lost the track of the target (because of evasion, altitude or obstacles). What does the missile do? Does it fly on IOG until it’s 4 km from the last point of contact (or calculated point of contact) and only then jettisons its nose-cone? Or does it jettison the nose-cone instantly switching to IOG+SRC to hopefully find and lock-on the target the radar has lost as the seeker can look that far without problem?
In the first case, the behavior would be unrealistic and the implementation a massive nerf. The second case would be much more logical and not really a problem, except that notching will work now too as the radar will go for chaff instead of the plane, so the missile will IOG to the chaff.
AFAIK the change only affects the jettison of the nose-cone. As the SLS doesn’t have a nose-cone there’s nothing to change. By the way the range of the SLS is so short that it could lock-on the target while still being at the ground. Why not use the missile seeker as IRST without the radar in this case? xD
It doesn’t have datalink so it wouldn’t be usable at all if it was given the 4km range, it already has the shortest range of all missiles for 12.0 4km would make it worthless so i guess snail decided artificial nerf on the SLM to stop people from being shot at their airfield.
