SA-2 Guideline

[Snake Man]

The SA-2 Guideline Surface to Air Missile (SAM) system is coming along nicely.



The model looks horrible but its ingame, it works. I rather have poor ingame model now than look compat photography sweet images forever and then the mod dies before any releases can be made

So right now we have the SA-2 Launcher and SA-2 Fan Song Radar. The launcher is what you see in the image and the radar is just a box on wheels and some sticks to represent an antennas basically, I have very little reference pics to it as they all look different, so I just modeled it simple. Whole idea of the radar is to be static object which we can take out and through scripts the launchers would not be able to fire after that.







Now the problems;
The launchers in real life can be reloaded as I've seen many pictures with Ural trucks with flatbeds carrying the missiles. So how long would such reload operation take?

If we configure the the launcher with lets say 5 missiles and reload time to 5minutes or so, the first problem is (if I didn't make any mistakes) at mission start it takes 5 minutes for the launcher to be ready to fire as it "reloads" at that time. However if we bring the reload time to something quicker, then they shoot like crazy when the fighting starts and the whole rearming of the launcher idea goes out of the window.

If we just give the launcher a one single missile and let mission editors reload the launchers manually by script or players ingame by rearm trucks... that would work but would make any SAM sites then to be pretty much 5 missiles and very very long and cumbersome rearming period after that. Of course... as I assume, it would be like this in real life too.

Of course... there is the aiRateOfFire / aiRateOfFireDistance configs, but hmm do those work in our situation?

So post some ideas guys, how do we configure the launchers?

Then the performance, we have few configs which we can use, right now I've set the maximum speed for the missile to 3000km/h as I've read on some web site. Its maneuvrability is 40 which I have no clue what kind of value it is, but seems to me it has difficult time to shoot down close flying A-10 now. The rotation speed of the turrets I've put to 0.3 so they are sluggish to orientate/target, so there is some delay on before they have firing solution, heh I have no clue if they even rotate in real life, maybe they are just oriented outwards from the star shaped SAM site layouts and firing computer feeds them the guidance after they are launched and initiated or something. But dunno how that would work in ArmA engine though, at least the launchers wont fire at all if they cant rotate properly.

Also there is the stupid viewdistance and technical capability of this weapon, like it has real life range of freaking 200km or something like that, and in ArmA anything beyond 2000 meters is not really working at least on my computer. Its strange, I'll crank up setViewdistance to 10000; and still cant see at much anything. Perhaps we can reveal the enemy planes to the fan song which would be group leader of the launchers... which would fire then... I have no idea, most likely not. So at the moment it all comes to this; helo or jet flies to viewdistance "oh no SA-2!" and then the missile comes and bang you're dead

It would be very cool if we could script some simulated long viewdistance radar thing, that the missiles would track you out to 15km or so and if there is no obstacles between you and the launcher, its open season on your butt. But again, I'm fraid its not possible (at least beyond my scripting abilities), hmm maybe this Mandoble guy has some missile scripts for this?

Anyways, now its feedback time guys.

[kutya]

How about making separate reload scripts.
One instant (used for init) and one with a realistic reload time?
I'm not into configs, it's just an idea.

[anzacsas]

snake man ,

if your cranking up the viewdistance you will also have to crank up your Object Quality Options as this sets the Object LODs in game .Anything over about 1300m viewdistance requires full object Quality or else you wont be able to see any Objects (trees,Units etc) beyond this point.

The SA-11 Gadfly wasnt setup too bad in OFP .If you still Have this it might be worth a look at that config to get some ideas.

On our Server we run a modified cfg and one of the mods to it is to allow the shilkas to engage from 3500 m away.This is done through the AI rateoffiredistance parameter as above mentioned and works much better than the defualt 2000m or whatever it was.

So i think the Sam's should(in ARMA of course) fire up to 5klm away.

The AA guns could engage from a little further too .As i said before the default engaging distance is not really enough.

Also they could do with a little dispersion too.(another mod to our servercfg that works great)

I have read some books and a few said that the only way a pilot could spot a launch was from the Large puff of smoke as the ignitor rockets come to life and a yellowish glow from the rockets firey exhaust.

[HitmanBM]

Hello to everyone. Just a little correction about SA-2, if you want to make it really "realistic":

1) SA-2's speed was actually Mach 1,5 --> ~ 1650 km/h

2) The SA-2 was ineffective against targets flying below 1000m, but I guess you'll have to pass over this fact

[The-Architect]

Your 5 minute loading time is fine. If a mission maker makes a good mission a pilot should be cranking up and flying a little ways before he gets into enemy territory anyway. Also, how many good missions are you going to have where the player is a fixed wing pilot? The Arma maps are only just big enough to make them realistic.

I don't think you should make the SAMs effective against low flying stuff. You should use the MANPads for that, Strela. These were in the South in the 70s as A1 pilots were getting hit by them. You should think about putting them into your mod if you haven't already.

"The system was also given to North Vietnam forces, where along with the more advanced Strela-2M it achieved 204 hits out of 589 firings between 1972 and 1975."

Talking of accuracy, your SA2 should be pretty erratic here's a list of total losses of aircraft broken down. As regards the losses to SAMs it should be noted that it included SAMs of all types.

The following figures were reelased in October 1973 by the DoD, and were up to and including 15 Aug that year (last day of official operations) and start in 1962.

Fixed-wing losses to enemy fighters 79
Fixed-wing losses to SAMs 197
Fixed-wing losses to AAA/small arms 2,140
Fixed-wing losses to attacks on air bases 145
Fixed-wing operational losses 1,158

Total fixed-wing losses 3,719

Helo losses to enemy fighters 2
Helo losses to SAMs 7
Helo losses to AAA/small arms 2,373
Helo losses in air base attacks 205
Helo operational losses 2,282

Total helo losses 4,869

Grand total 8,588

I've also given you some pictures of typical SAM site layouts. Perhaps a few details of just hexagonal roads could be added to your maps. Would look good and mission makers could add the SAMs themselves if they wanted. Big SAM sites didn't really start appearing in the south until later in the war though.

This was taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis. SA2s were used.


This is a good picture of a SAM site layout.

[HitmanBM]

The SA-2 could also be used as an unguided anti-aircraft shell. You could set the timer on how much time would the missile fly before detonation, aim and fire. This is what NVAs did in 1972, to overpass the heavy jamming of B-52's.