Only later Rafales use AESA AFAIK which brings them Brimstone equivs (AAM-HAMMER) so I think only PESA’s for the Rafales if they come.
The aircraft in-game have the correct radars, these aircraft started off with mechanical arrays and later got Electronically scanned arrays, F-15’s got them ~2008 iirc, F-18 isnt here yet, F-16C got it same sorta time as F-15 i think.
Passive mode would be huge. ECM would also be nice, because we could defeat RADAR missiles head on with the correct AESA radars. Not to mention with the HMDS we should be getting real time target data in the helmet and System Fusion for a better overall picture.
This would help sim battles tremendously avoid IFF incidents. You know right away. No guessing.
Which by the way, modern tanks do have. It shouldn’t be guess work. We had IFF Plates in the armored vehicles 30+ years ago during the 91 Gulf War. Hell we had IFF patches to better assist our air support 20 years ago in the early days of Iraq. Plus cats eyes on our helmets.
down the line there should definitely be a variant of the F-15 and F-16 based on 2010’s service, with their AESA radars, AIM-120C/D and AIM-9X. I can only see that being new vehicles to grind though and not a change to the currently in game F-15C and F-16C since those new weapons would make it a totally different beast
I might be wrong but didn’t they equip like 3 squadrons with the V2(?) radar and then go back and equip every aircraft with V1(?) radars later on, as in 2008.
Plus there’s no need to make the best aircraft in-game any better right now.
Bigger maps (way bigger maps) with one AWACS for each team (even as a target mission from time to time) and data-link would improve the sim gameplay so much.