First off sorry for using AI in my previous post, I was too tired and was lazy before but now typed it all out so you all will hear me out and I’m probably voicing what some players at 14.0 want to say. All I have to say is that after flying 14.0 almost nonstop the past few days, I have to speak up.This is not just power creep. This is a case where one nation got a modern fighter and the rest of us are stuck flying tech that simply cannot keep up. This is about the Rafale C F3-R and how it performs in Air RB compared to everything else on the board. It is dominating and there’s no getting around it.
Im just fed up and just want to enjoy 14.0 man is that too much to ask?
I use the aim 9m from like 4km rear aspect and creep up in my F18C late but the pilot knows and flairs and banks hard because Rafale is the only jet right now with MAWS in Air RB. That means it gets alerts for IR missiles. You try to sneak an AIM-9M, an R-73, or even a Python-3 and it flares immediately. The moment the missile comes off the rail, the Rafale knows. It kills a huge part of the IR game instantly. This matters because most other jets rely on IR missiles for close range finishes. With the Rafale, you don’t even get that chance unless the pilot is completely unaware, and let’s be real, they rarely are and with how bad the radars for most of our nations but magically not the rafale have been lately WVR is what we go for mostly right.
Next, the radar. The Rafale has one of the best radars in the current tech tree. In Air RB it holds TWS lock better than anything the US, USSR, or China have. You can crank and pull hard and still get a steady lock in most conditions. In contrast, the F-15C, F-16C, and Su-27 all lose lock easily in hard turns or if the enemy does even mild terrain masking. The Rafale’s radar reliability means more consistent launches and longer-range tracking. In a BVR meta, that’s everything.
Then there’s the missile. The MICA EM is the best radar-guided missile in the game right now. It ignores chaff more often than it should, and it has better terminal maneuverability than the AIM-120C, R-77, or PL-12. You can crank and chaff and it still often hits. Meanwhile AIM-120Bs and Cs fall for single chaff bursts all the time. Even R-77s with lofting get defeated more reliably than a clean MICA shot. And because the Rafale holds lock longer, those MICAs stay tracking longer, even past 12 km. Pair that with the Rafales radar and you’ve got a 2021 jet raining havoc on the 14.0 BR.
Flight performance is the final nail in the coffin. The Rafale turns with the best of them and retains energy like it’s cheating. In a dogfight, unless you’re flying an F-18C Late or a MiG-29S with full fuel dump and ideal entry speed, you’re not beating it. And even if you do outturn it slightly, you don’t have MAWS. You’re eating a missile the second you commit to the merge while the Rafale just flares and re-engages.
Now, are there jets that can keep up? A few, but only barely, and only if the Rafale pilot makes mistakes. The F-18C late can barely beat it if you stay low, flare correctly, and catch it in a dogfight after draining its energy. The MiG-29SMT or Su-27 can win in merges if they’re flown light and aggressive, but you need the element of surprise or terrain. The J-11A with PL-12s can get kills if the Rafale ignores you in BVR, but it’s rare. The F-15E can outrange it in a straight line and has better climb, but again, without MAWS or reliable missile tracking, it’s a gamble.
The problem is, none of these jets were meant to fight a 2021 frontline multirole. They are from the 1980s 1990s and the early 2000s. They don’t have MAWS, they don’t have modern defensive avionics and mostly they don’t have great radars pared with a great missile like the MICA EM. Their radars lose lock. Their missiles fail. They were never designed to go toe-to-toe with something like the Rafale. In real life the Rafale would be facing the Typhoon, Su-35, F-15EX, J-16 or F-35. But in Air RB, it’s going against legacy frames that are patched together with better missiles and hope.
This is why 14.0 feels so lopsided. France has a full Gen 4.5 fighter with real-world combat readiness as of 2021. Everyone else is flying Cold War leftovers AND EARLY 2000s fighters with tech upgrades and maybe a new missile. When two or three Rafales queue up together, the match is done before it starts. You either catch them on the deck early, or you get hunted from 15 km out.
If Gaijin is going to leave the Rafale at 14.0, then give the other nations proper counters. Let Germany have the Typhoon. Give the US an upgraded F-15 or Super Hornet. Let Russia field the Su-35. Add the J-16 for China. Or decompress the BR to 14.3 or 14.7 so these jets don’t fight each other every match.
Because right now, this is not skill versus skill. This is next-gen versus old-gen and honestly in Air RB where BVR kills define the first minute and dogfights define the rest, being outclassed in both means your only hope is that the Rafale pilot messes up. That is not balance. That’s a mismatch.
You can call it what you want, but everyone flying at 14.0 right now knows exactly what I’m talking about. We’re not fighting equals. We’re playing catch-up against something that was never meant to be on the same battlefield.
This is not top tier. This is a showcase and most of us are just background noise in the Rafale’s kill feed.
EDIT : Moreover if we want to talk accuracy then explain why it is fair that a 2022 Rafale is flying around with early 21st century jets, even the f15E used is an early APG 70 and not even the AESA APG 82-(v)1 and the engines are the only update to the PW 229, this is the early 90s variant of the f15E so imagine in that sense we were to bring the equal counter part of the rafale to the game which is the modernized f15E, even the F15C MSIP II was modernized but we are stuck with its most early legacy model when BALANCE is getting the latest model for other nations,
THE only reason that US, dominated was because before other nations GOT BVR capable jets we got them and when new BVR jets came specially the new additions they ended up being the LATEST COUNTER PART and not the LEGACY.
