Its not really any more short sighted than stuff like retarded bombs. Its obviously not something that would work in all situations, but in the situations where the jet can get overhead, theres nothing quite like it.
Probably has the single most extreme level of runway/airfield facility destruction of all airborne systems as well, being able to simultaneously do runway cratering, hardened aircraft shelter destruction, anti-personnel area denial, anti-armour, and anti-armour area denial by varying what submunitions are loaded within the MW-1 launcher.
for similar light targets to the ones those bomblets were for the F-4E could also carry a few of something like CBU-7 (also max of 18) which has 1200 fragmentation bomblets
probably, F-15E manuals I have only show them being carried on CFTs, with up to 6 on each side
if you add a MER on stations 2, 5, and 8 (like we have seen carried) you get 26 with 4 on 2 and 8, and 30 if you put 6 on 2, 5, and 8 (images only show 4 on 2 and 8)
I believe they were using TBMs with cluster warheads in the original NT mode
I remember the mode being extremely laggy at times, but it’s obviously almost impossible to tell, if that was because of those cluster munitions or because of the popularity of the mode lol
Dunno if those TBMs would have been enough to test, if the servers could handle someone just dropping 1000+ bomblets on the battlefield though
Are there airlaunched missiles with cluster warheads perhaps? I don’t usually care about ballistic missile stuff lmao
I guess the BK90 is kind of like that, just like that weird Skyshark thing lol
What they had in NT were 9M79 Tochkas and MGM-52 Lances apparently and I’m trying to find videos of them actually working during the event right now
Edit: also found M26A2s flying around in that mode, but again, can’t find footage of them working
Edit²: So, I’ve looked at two of MatAWGs videos which featured those cluster weapons and in the first one they straight up didn’t do anything and in the second one the missiles would just hit the ground and spawn a bunch of explosions afterwards
No submunitions at all, so I really can’t tell, if they actually got cluster munitions working during the event lol
I think the only criticism is it relies on non-bomber players to actually climb and escort.
Perhaps there should be a reward incentive? Like if a bomber destroys a base or gets a kill, fighters within X radius get a percentage of the rp/SL and if a fighter kills an enemy fighter that’s within x radius of the bomber, that fighter gets a bonus too.
There are unguided missiles on mi-8-amtsh-vn which are programmable to explode above a gps point to release 25 bomblets each. There can be 100 of them on the heli, meaning 2500 bomblets.
I saw them working, people sometimes asked why already destroyed warehouse was exploding over and over again as if it was a visual bug. Turns out it was cluster munitions. There were multiple explosions all over the warehouse site.
I hope will see some of the AA like the buk-m1 and such come in as multi vehicle sams in the tech trees along with that more anti ship missiles like exocets for the super etendard, kh-41 for the Su-33, and the A6 is also still missing its harpoons.