I guess I should point out that I obviously can't test every single module since I don't own everything. There *may* still be a module here or there which has some effect against certain SAMs but in general and on average, they are utterly useless... Except for AA jamming where you *may* see some tactical advantage, but even that is not as effective as it used to be several years ago, which is why you don't see as many aircraft jamming these days on MP servers. EDIT: You will note that the MIG-21 has a drastic reduction in engagement range under one particular jammer configuration against the SA-11. I didn't mention it because that result was weird and very inconsistent. Sometimes it would work and other times it would have absolutely no effect. I didn't know what to make of it to be honest. Also, as far as the testing goes, I know I included some shots of me weaving in and out while getting shot at by SAMs. This is NOT how I conducted the test. Those were simply extra clips I had of me testing to see if I saw any guidance irregularities between some SAMs with jammers on or off. So, when I was conducting these experiments to gather the numbers, I was flying straight at them and waiting for the engagement either through the RWR indication, or through the F10 map with a ruler. None of that weaving up and down stuff.

Very well made video! I wish i had the time and dedication to games like this and let alone the games but the military tech knowledge. amazing work!!

sooo Part 2 Jammer vs A2A?

A better version of the grim reapers video thank you

This reinforces what I've suspected for some time: self-protection jammers are of no real use against SAM systems but can situationally be more useful in A-A situations. Thanks for taking the time to do all this testing.

Wow, Ralfi! You really did some work on this, nice job! 👏🏻🍻

You deserve to be paid for this kind of research. This is magic. Valuable and I love it. I get the sad feeling we don't know 1/10th there is to know about Electronic Warfare. Between the Growler having so much to do it needs a second crewmember to the wildly varied attempts at simulating ECM across multiple simulations....yeah. I feel like we're scrambling in the dark, and there's an entire world out there waiting for us. Does anyone know anyone in the service? Is there any first hand experience we can compare this to? This seems HORRIBLE. Like..."I wouldn't even bother with the pod" horrible. And you mentioned HOJ and Burn Through. I would be LIVID to discover they modeled Home-On-Jam and Burn Through ranges, when the effect of the pod at MAXIMUM is such hot garbage. Here's hoping it effected guidance. Maybe it's more effective Air-2-Air? Maybe they just focused on that aspect?

I'd be interested to see how the SPJ pod compares on the jeff

Tests like these are much appreciated, thanks!

Thank you very much, I always used the ECMs in hope that they protect me when I'm closing the gap to SAMs. Luckily I get some more ordnance on my aircraft.

It is important to note the differences between DECM and OECM. DECM normaly only turns on and start jamming when it notices it is being attacked by the enemy. OECM is designed to stay on to jam enemy radar before the missile get launched. With OECM you can jam the enemy radar soo it wont be able to lock on to you with the fire control radar. The enemy radar can burn through your OECM if you get to close

2:45 1 miles in 2-3 seconds is a minimum of 1,200 mph, which I'm fairly certain is a bit higher than the A-10's top speed

Thank you for the work you did to research this! The only question that remains, is, if the missiles are more likely to miss with the jammers on. But after seeing this, I agree that, unless ED reworks the jammers, you are better off without them.

ED has a lot of work to do with EW for the future

A very insightful video, thank you.

I've heard that the Viggen has actually a strong jammer suite and you can fly buddy with the launcher aircraft to protect it with your jam, it reduces accuracy drastically. Would be fun to test it?

Interesting results. Would be curious to see how it affects AA missile tracking. In DCS SATAL tournaments, we are currently not allowed to use jammer because it does something to the missile logic.

Excellent video. Thankyou ralfi

I'm curious about some of the Raven One missions. They featured EW escorting craft and missiles would easily lose lock. But I suspect that was a mission scripted affect, not actual EW assistance

I hope they include more advanced offensive and defensive jamming options for the jamming pods.

Its been what 10 years since the last round of tests you guys did and their effect is still minimal and nebulous at best.... Lol

Thanks for the facts and the rl sam videos

Very helpful, thank you!

Good old research. This was well tested and well presented!

I always loaded the DECM on Harrier, I assumed it did little to nothing in the sim, I don't know what threat radars it was designed for IRL except it has a CWI jammer and a pulse jammer- I know most pods are threat specific from a design perspective then adapted or by nature can handle additional threats, like SPS-141 was designed specifically to counter HAWK but has usability beyond that. Impossible to simulate this kind of thing fully with the info publicly available as even when radar frequencies and emitter/emission characteristics are known 99% of the time the processing cycle for the returns the radar does get is a "black box", and often times the processing cycle is the jamming target, like in range-gate pull off, where it is trying to convince via returns that the target distance is different than reality so that the radar's auto tracking functions lose lock, an attack on the processing cycle.

Nice work! How repeatable were the ranges? Would be nice if ED could just tell us how they work, I don’t see any reason why not. And if jammers were changed to be actually useful, although what I want is something for playability, which goes against the realism since everything is classified.

Holy crap Ralfi how long did this take you to do?!? Just getting a semblance of precise methodology on this type of test would be an absolute nightmare, and that's not considering all of the actual testing itself!

I fly with a F-14 squadron and we sometimes use TALD's to help support SEAD missions. The TALD has onboard ECM jamming. From what we have observed, at least against SA-2's so far, is that it appears the jamming does work. Now obviously I cant be 100% certain but when SA-2's fires a butt load of missiles at a group of 8 TALD's and a large majority of them miss then I would like to think that it does in fact work. We also know that the jammer in the F-14 it self works. Im not sure if it will let us get closer to SAM's with out getting shot at but I definitely think it reduces the PK of missiles shot at us *as long as its not a home on jam missile*. With that being said some of planes in DCS will ignore the F-14's jammer and will not be jammed by it at all, one example is the F-18. If anyone would like to see the Tacview where we tested the TALD's I can post a link so you can download it.

I'm thinking it's tied to the same problem as the Harpoon. They haven't figured out how to partially affect radar. So just as the Harpoon doing surface skimming made it OP, their initial efforts at jammers were probably OP too. 1 mile could just be coincidence. They just didn't choose to fire. I've never once seen the F18 jammers work at all.

are the missiles launched by sams active radar missiles if so they could reach the burn through range themselves when they start coming at you making the ecm useless?

Thanks Ralfi. Is this still pertinent in todays version of DCS?

Now we got the f/a-18 jammer !

Did the Viggen get any results?

5:40 I noticed you tested the Harrier with Jammer OFF and Jammer RCV. There should not be a difference (and according to your table there is none), because RCV (=Recieve) is a passive mode only, where the ECM suite just recieves signals and analyses them. To actually jam inomming signals the systems needs to be in transmit (XMIT) mode, where it actively sends out jamming signals. That's not just for the Harrier, but actually for qutie a number of aircraft that work like this like the Tomcat or the Hornet (the latter is still missing it's jamming functionality in DCS though).

You have to do 20000, 30000, 40000 feet. The higher you are, the higher is the engagement range of the SAM. The lower you are, the lower the engagement range of the SAM due to aerodynamic limitations. If its maximum engagement range is already lower than its burn through range (at low attitudes like 1000 and 10000 feet), than the jammer (at least in DCS) will have no effect, as you've concluded. Remember, burn through range stays the same, but the engagement range changes with altitude. It can create a big difference when for example you are flying high and a SAM can engage you at a lot higher ranges. The jammer will basically equal out the ranges at which you are engaged at different altitudes. Obviously, you will see differences in range, when the max engagement range gets higher than the burn through range. I would recommend grabbing an F-15 or Su-27 and testing it out at different altitudes.

Is there any change to this? I'm currently testing a method of emulating a ECM, using a random chance under a continuous check trigger. Result is that the longer the missile is in the air, the more likely it will lose lock via turning off sam ai briefly.

Off topic, however I'm really interested in what setup in terms of HOTAS and trackIR or VR.

Why is there two time the Intlv Program 1 on the MiG 21?

I would not even expect the engagement range to decrease with jamming. Jamming makes you more visible to enemy radars, it just masks your range (and aspect?). So if anything, they should be firing too early! This should also make the missile take a suboptimal path and have less chance to hit, since without full information, it probably must engage in something like pure pursuit.

My understanding, and I can't remember where I heard this, it might have been a GR vid' with CAP and someone from ED he was interviewing, but jamming was largely not modeled, or highly simplistic. Part of the problem, is the highly secretive nature of the tech'. When mover was interviewing one of the F-14 pilots last year, Oral, he described the jammer being highly effective in combat, as missiles were coming up, but weren't locking. Oral said that, or cya'd himself, the tech' guys never described how it worked or what was in the ECM equipment, but he was sold on its effectiveness.

..So, I threw off f**king effeciveless jammer. Thanks ralfi!!

Thanks for good info. However, MiG29 ECM reduces lock on range in dog fight much less. I dunno others though. Cheers.

Very interresting and nicely done test. Have you made at least 3 attempts at each test condition then calculated a mean value of ranges ? Something really important that i seem to have missed if you said it in the vid.

Wouldn’t a 3 second mile be around 1080mph? pretty fast A10

Really interested to see the A/A jammer capabilities. You can hit me up if you need a test subject.

An ecm pod has alot more effect on the missile itself and not much on the targeting, it causes radar missiles to kiss more likely and will make it tak longer to lock

can you retest this now that the f16's jammer broke a sa10 lock in the wags video?

wait, the mig21 gained 8nm with sa-11?

SA-10 and up has HOME-ON jam. It will home in on the jamming signal and wont need a radar lock.

Soo even more reason to use the mirage

learning more from this vid about DCS before buying it P.S I know DCS is a free game, but I want to buy the modules and HOTAS since I'm into F-15 so much

What’s the drifference between SAM 1and 2?

I’ve been reading ralfis findings since the days of Freefalcon lol he may as well be a dev by now been wondering about this, as I’ve kind of felt - it seems as there is really little to modeling done for SAM stand-off... I’ve seen it have some effect A2A but on mud.... May as well carry some heaters for show (or even then, save the weight and leave it at home) But my knowledge on the ALQ131/84 is sparse - much less on the rest of the platforms, but I would of thought there would be SOME ability for the jammer to increase some stand-off, at least for some earlier platforms I mean... what have I been doing switching my jam mode from AAA to SAM1/2? Lol... I think I know the answer...simulation immersion!

They should change this when they implement their groundradar changes

It seems to me you have tested at burn-through ranges. Would have to test at far higher altitudes to see a difference in engagement ranges. The Viggen jammer seems to do "something" but for land attacks it's useless compared to the protection NOE provides, better take two dispensers as preemptive against IR missiles

my JF17 jammer seems to work very well though, I can fly directly at a patriot and it wont fire at me until i hit burnthrough range or turn the jammer off

Your testing mostly lines up with what I've been experiencing and lines up with my own results with one notable exception: When testing a harrier against an Osa specifically set to "average" skill level, and flying at roughly 6000 ft doing about mach .87 I get launched on from approximately 7.7 miles with no jamming, and around 1.7 miles with the jammer set to repeat, when set to receive this increases to just over 3.4 ish miles, and this was by far the most significant reduction that I saw. I've seen some potentially buggy behaviour around SA-3s as well, as one time I was messing with the jammer (toggling on and off while hard locked) and it was unable to lock me until I got within 5 miles down from around 10 but this is an isolated outlier and I cannot repeat it, though again on average skill.

I'd be interested to see this test with the F-14. I have noticed major differences with that, or so it seems.

Best to bring a friendly EA18G with you.

Hold on, is that the new gun sound effect for the A-10? 4:45

I'm curious on AAA jamming effectiveness. Difficult to test, though.

I've just stopped carrying the jammer during random play sessions on random MP servers. Having the few extra seconds before lock is nice, but having a second set of AIM-9Ms is much nicer, especially with how unreliable the random CAP players can be. If I'm playing with a group of friends, or can coordinate with rando's within the server to get some dedicated BARCAP in my AO, I'll carry the jammer, especially if I know I'll be running pop-up attack against AA sites, as those extra few seconds can mean a couple of more mavricks off the rail before I turn cold. If I'm in a random server like Hoggit or something, I'm bringing the extra A2A, because even though there are 15 F/A-18s, 8 F-16s, 2 Jeffs, one or two other A10s, and 2 F14s, none of them are providing actual CAP, they're just ferrying Phoenix and AAMRAMs and firing at whatever they see on radar.

I still find it wild that your accent has completely disappeared starting 1 year ago. You can still hear it in this video a year before that.

Should test this via player in the missile system using Combined Arms. See if it effects lock times or lock distances against a human. I have a feeling DCS did something with the AI lock mechanism; Have you ever had an entire flight locked by a single AI aircraft? I haven't played recently (last 4 or 5 months) but previously we would be a flight of 4 moving in to engage a single target, and all 4 of us would get locked by the SAME single target.

In my experience in the frog the jammer can straight-up cause a miss so... Ill be keeping my jams on :)

What if i just use more jammers

Can we get this spreadsheet?

When I want to activate the jammer in the A-10c II..it just throws chaff and flare...that worked for once

I would say the main reason since they have no useful effect A2G you shouldn't equipment jammer pod is that it provides more drag and resistance and weight while occupying a pilon preventing you from evading missiles and slowing you down from punching into their range attacking a Target and pulling out. Probably better off equipping a S.E.AD. weapon also don't know if it was accounted for but hanging more crap off your aircraft probably makes you a bigger radar return from further away.

Theory: probably burn trough. We are talking strong radars on under 20 NM engagements. They probably wont even give a shit. That stuff is designed to look at stuff double that distance. I mean. I’ve been told a Hawk radar could literal shoot birds dead (if not dead then pretty confused depending on size) out of the sky just by looking at them. I dont think your jammer at 18 miles is gonna do much about such a direct illumination. By the battery search and targeting radars. And thats not even accounting for possible ECCMs the SAM site might have.

Any change to these results? Not sure if any changes have been made in 3 years.

IRL, the SA-10 would be almost completely unaffected by jamming because of the way TVM works alone, and ED probably translated that into DCS. You picked about the worst example you could have to demonstrate jammer effectiveness. It would have been a better idea to get a buddy on a jet with you on the Hog and test the different jammer modes against him.

That vocal fry

What about f18 jammer

how about air to air vs fox 3 and fox 1? other than annoying the enemy pilot jamming he's radar how effective is against players or if should even be bothered at all.

And if a missile is pitbull? Might a jammer break its lock?

Hmm, I'm a bit suprised by those results, as I have personally experienced quite some difference with and without jamming. My favorite example is the Viggen vs the Moskva or Pjotr Veliki cruiser. Without jammer I'm not able to get in range to launch my RB-04E anti ship missile at them, but with the jammer I can get close enough to launch my missiles. I've not measured the difference in distance, but it's enough to make the difference between a successfull attack and getting shot down. I've noticed similar differences flying the Viggen with and without jammer against the land based SA-10.

JF-17 Jammer??

Well, look on the positive side. You can be a huge light bulb in the sky for your buddies and bandits emitting music all over the place for now. It looks like that 3rd party modules, such as viggen and JF17 have a far more effective spoon with jam.

Still top 3....

You want a better simulation about ECM? Take a look here: github.com/walder/Skynet-IADS

but i like paperweights

What I found is jammers are pretty much useless in most cases. But it may affect guidance and that is it.

Needs more cowbell.

At least they work for the F-16 now.

Its like this in DCS because its a representation of what happens in real life or is just that DCS doesnt do a good job at simulating it?

We Jammin'....

in the jf-17 the jammer helps against the kirov. without it you get shot at from 80+ nmi, with it on it won't shoot until you get to around 60 or so. That's mostly guestimating but it helps to keep you free of missiles until you have the ship on radar.

now redo this whole video with the f18 ;)

As much as I agree on lack of effectiveness of the EW in DCS, I have to ask what was your flight profile for those tests? Because in the video clips, most of those would actually make a real ECM pod ineffective too. We don't deal with a Raven, Prowler, Growler, B-52, or B-1 suites here, that can direct emitters toward threats, those pods *should* emit in a specific direction - a more or less 30 degrees cone, pointing ~15degrees down, both fore and aft of the flight path. So if you're not flying at, or away from the SAM, and keep it well under your nose, the pod shouldn't give you any advantage anyway. So to perform those tests, one has to fly at altitude, more or less at the SAM site. To test the missile guidance jamming, one would fly an offset course, until fired upon, then turn toward the SAM.

One thing I've observed about the Mirage. Because the plane performs so excellent at very high altitude (50k+), that bit of range advantage from the jammer can allow you to go some real places that you couldn't otherwise. I used to fly between naval vessels to attack BlueFor AWACS on an older Growling Sidewinder server mission, which was completely impossible without the jammer on. Also, if you messed up your route and they did fire on you, you were SO much closer that any shot was a guaranteed inescapable kill. It wasn't a small difference. Without the jammer they'd shoot at you from feet dry, but with the jammer on you almost had to fly directly above them. That actually made the Mirage a better anti-AWACS platform on that map than the F-14, because of how much close you could get. Of course, now there's Patriot and Aegis coverage, which changes the equation around all sorts of ways.

Jammies

Grzegorz are you trying lobbing techiques to force ED to improve ECM in DCS? I guess they are to bussy introducing more Alpha stage products and/or the systems are to much classified. Anyway S! for your effort. Dobra robota pilocie Brzęczyszczykiewicz! 😎

The MiG-21 pod is supposed send Hawk completely fucking bananas while doing fuck all against everything else. Obviously it's nowhere close to that, cause ECM is fucked in DCS.

I have a feeling that jammers are far more capable in real life than in DCS if they were as useless in real life as they are in DCS militaries wouldn't have so many.

But what about the real pods in real life?

Maybe, one day, ED will use all the raytracing smarts of the new gen cards to model Radar/Radio/Jamming accurately. In my dreams! :)

Ive been pissing off my friend by doing SEAD with the hornet without a jammer. I guess i wasnt so wrong not using it.

Please raise the data graphs at the bottom of your video higher so the KZfaq play button, time bar, settings, & other controls do not overlay/block your information. Thanks!

but they look cool