In my last couple of posts I talked about some ideas for reworking detection and to bring some proper idea of “stealth” into the game.

Cap made a useful video about Radar Cross Section (RCS) in DCS World a while back, check it out here. Unlike DCS from 4 years ago, but like DCS today, Revolution v1.2 adds some RCS modelling for aircraft and their attached stores.

For aircraft, you are now given an RCS value (2.95m above) which will vary depending on which stores you add to your aircraft.

The “clean” Manta has a base RCS of 0.2m² and adding anything other than an internal gun increases this value (The added flare above bumps this to 0.3). The larger the added item, the greater the RCS gets.

The AWACS equipped Albatross has a HUGE RCS compared to a stealth manta. Which makes sense, you don’t really have any such thing as a “Stealth AWACS”

All of this now means the RADAR visibility of different aircraft varies depending on what they have fitted.

A fully stealth mode Manta (Gun, 1 flare, no camera) can get to within 3.5km of a RADAR before it shows up on the operator screens (Due to mod limitations it will show up on the holomap, but I’m hand-waving this away as the carrier’s sensors combine multiple sources etc etc)

A strike manta carrying bombs, or torpedoes or rocket pods, and a camera will show up at the usual 10-15 km range.

If your enemy decides to put 4 rocket pods on an AWACS, then you will see this coming MUCH farther way than 10km.

Aircraft	Spec	Detection Range
MNT	Internal gun	2.7 km
MNT	Internal gun, 2x AA	5.7 km
MNT	Obs, 5x M-Bomb, flare	11.0 km
ALB	Obs, 4x IR	11.2 km
ALB	Obs, AWACS, 2 guns, 2x IR	16.0 km
ALB	4x AA	8.0 km
ALB	Obs, 2x Rocket Pods	13.0 km
PTR	Obs, 2x gun	12.7 km
PTR	2x gun + airlift cargo	14.4 km

Doing all the above extra modelling has meant that it is now a lot easier to bring in the idea of an RADAR Warning Receiver (RWR).

The RWR can now give you a warning when a nearby RADAR sweeps over your aircraft. If you are smart you can use this to hunt down or evade a RADAR source.