Ya my personal knowledge/feel comes from stuff like Wargame and Highfleet too.
Goppy is vastly more knowledgeable about a lot of this stuff, that's part of the reason I wanted to host him.
.
The thing with IR is the range is vastly more limited than with Radar. That's why they get deployed in manpads and air to air missiles instead of longer range anti-air systems.
Usually they're either combined with radar detection, fired, and then the Ir kicks in at a certain point once they've closed with the target (in which case your initial active radar use is giving away your position anyway), or they're used from ranges short enough that IR alone works.
obviously specific ranges are classified... But IR detection of people and vehicles from a $50-100k bubble on a plane or observation tower was 14km when I was Researching my motorcycle warfare piece and i'd imagine you wouldn't get much better than 30km even trying to hit a jet engine against an empty backdrop... just the amount of atmospheric moisture you're looking through at that range is going to scatter IR information
By contrast the radar systems covered in the piece are detecting and locking on 100-150km away.
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Notes -
Ya my personal knowledge/feel comes from stuff like Wargame and Highfleet too.
Goppy is vastly more knowledgeable about a lot of this stuff, that's part of the reason I wanted to host him.
.
The thing with IR is the range is vastly more limited than with Radar. That's why they get deployed in manpads and air to air missiles instead of longer range anti-air systems.
Usually they're either combined with radar detection, fired, and then the Ir kicks in at a certain point once they've closed with the target (in which case your initial active radar use is giving away your position anyway), or they're used from ranges short enough that IR alone works.
obviously specific ranges are classified... But IR detection of people and vehicles from a $50-100k bubble on a plane or observation tower was 14km when I was Researching my motorcycle warfare piece and i'd imagine you wouldn't get much better than 30km even trying to hit a jet engine against an empty backdrop... just the amount of atmospheric moisture you're looking through at that range is going to scatter IR information
By contrast the radar systems covered in the piece are detecting and locking on 100-150km away.
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