Most of the time I don’t even bother trying to merge with an F-15 if it ever gets too close. The Flanker has the top speed advantage on the deck to out run the F-15 and gain separation to do a 180 and HMD + R-27ER the F-15 (same tactic I use for the MiG-29). Even if I do get into the merge its not like the Flanker is helpless, the R-73s exist to close the gap.
Is it really that big of a difference? I know the F-15 is superior at climbing but its not enough to gain a massive advantage enough to equalize the difference between the 7M and R-27ER. I’d know because I climb in the Flanker to fight F-15Cs.
It will help a little bit, but not much. It mostly just lowers the barrier to entry to flying the Su-27. Experienced Flanker pilots were already making use of IRST to establish HMD locks out to 20+km (conditions permitting). The addition of 20km HMD range really only is saving the Flanker pilot the extra time necessary to press the button to swap between IRST and radar. Maybe half a second. Half a second can matter but it’s not game changing. It will make things more convenient. It will be an appreciated quality of life change for those situations where IRST failed to hand the lock over to radar or if fog/rain/clouds prevented the usage of IRST. But the only functionality that we’re gaining is a capability that we already had with a workaround.
The core problems faced by the flanker are that its missiles suck for everything except point blank ranges, and its flight model sucks for knife fights. There are other problems facing the Flanker but this is the crux of the problem behind it. It has a flight model that DESPERATELY wants to avoid close combat at all costs, but its weapon systems only hold any kind of advantage over its rivals in close range combat. Honorable mention to the 27ET being a sneaky sucker punch every now and then.
The only two things that will really fix the flanker is if Gaijin finally fixes Russia’s flight models so that they can actually compete WVR, or if they just give the Flanker the 27EA so that it can actually compete at long range as a missile boat.
I’m a sim player which plays much differently to RB, so different aspects matter more, and others matter less when you compare the jets in the two game-modes, so those out-running tactics for example aren’t as ideal in sim and furballs aren’t as frequent. You usually end up focused in 1v1, 1v2 situations unlike RB where you’re constantly picking between several potential targets in the fur ball with markers on, which I believe the Flanker is probably better at than the F15
I see people praising this missile all the time… In my experience, when fighting a player that is aware of you, and ready to spam flares as soon as you launch (not even pre-flare), I have nearly 0% hit rate with the R73. 99% of my hits are when the enemy lost awareness for a second and was late to flare, or if they decide to run and fully give me their rear aspect with afterburner. Some people say it’s unflareable below 1km, but I’ve certainly not seen that… I’m just finding the R73 nearly as helpless as the flight-model when the enemy is actually paying attention, certainly can’t rely on it in a 1v1.
The flanker is definitely not bad but at least compared to F15A, that was the general consensus with my BVR duel tests (this was like half a year ago). These duels are of course very specific scenarios where we start on the runway at the same time, meaning F15 gains a significant energy advantage at the beginning of the fight every time, so it might not be as forgiving as a normal realistic encounter would play out, the 15A did definitely close the gap between 7M and 27ER against the MIG29, however in general su27 won most duels, with some wins for the 7M. It depended much on the tactics used. breaking lock with notch is extremely strong if you’re quick to re-engage, which the F15 is VASTLY superior at due to the horrible Flanker radar.
Speaking of notching, the flankers don’t even get a digital RWR until the 27SM. I always get a laugh about american mains complaining about the RWR on the F-4S and F-14A being “unusable garbage”. Booo hoo it doesn’t fingerprint every opponent and all it does is tell you PRECISELY what angle that the threat is incoming from so that you can notch perfectly. I’ll take America’s “unusable Garbage” over the SPO-15 every day of the week.
I mean J11A in theory received an upgrade to RWR with the MAWS but GAIJING denies any J11A upgrades except for the ones visible (I thought they were blind). I wonder what the Su30 RWR will be if it comes, cause it should be a bit better especially since it was based off SU27M-UB.
I don’t have much clips of the R-73 but I do have a clip where 3 of my R-73s track an F-16AM ignoring flares. 2 of the R-73s failed to hit because of my over ambiguous launch parameters.
I mean same goes for the 9Ms. As long as you’re 100% paying attention they’re easy to dodge but IMO the R-73s have much higher chance of being “unflarable” than the 9M.
Testing the Su-27SM vs F-15C with combat load:
Su-27SM with 4 x R-73, 1 x R-27ER, 2 x R-27ET, 3 x R-77, 30mins of fuel
F-15C with 2 x Aim-9M, 6 x Aim-120A, 35mins of fuel
(I bring more fuel on the F-15C because it slightly drinks more fuel)
Test conditions, runway to 1000kmh IAS then 30degree climb to 10000m altitude F-15C: 1 minute and 41 seconds then leveling out with M0.99 speed in reserve Su-27SM: 1 minute and 45 seconds then leveling out with M0.97 speed in reserve
I don’t doubt that the Flanker loses more speed than the F-15 when turning but I don’t think its “a lot”. I think I’ve tested this already simulating 2 notches and 2 re-commits with 5 second recovery time in between at 7km altitude and both the F-15 and the Flanker lose about the same amount of speed.
One thing that these test don’t really account for, is the target cluttering.
It’s not as big as a problem in SB, because you rarely have to filter between more than 2 aircraft at once in your radar screen.
In RB, you have sometimes 5 contacts that are relatively close together (which includes AI planes) and the soviet TWS tends to completely crap itself when trying to pick one target between several in this situation. It makes the reaction time worse in general and give another advantage to the planes with higher refresh rate.
Partly because of N001 but also due to the limit of range, cause R77 is just so fast in losing energy after burn time is out and R77 is expected to be against AIM120 and not AIM7 so it is sort of unusable due to a combination of radar, avionics and it self.
N001 will make sure of that, if it is just worse in comparison to ARAAM I will be fine, planes such as Mig 29 SMT do just fine with ZHUK, but Su27/J11 with the twist cassegrain MECH is just useless, mostly a radar problem although range is a problem if radar is worse as well cause then you are like J7E in the last patch, always dodging first, playing back hand all the time.
You don’t have to play the backhand with the Su-27, I regularly try to challenge F-15s, F-16s at 10km altitude. The radar is not unusable, it sucks but it works. Really my only complaint with the radar is the limited search angles and slow refresh rate which isn’t world ending.
Yea that’s maybe it
Got the smt thought I am getting a suffer bus
But nope it works really well just the rwr which is supposed to the best in the game by far doesn’t seam to detect stuff from above
I Even almost won a sustained turn Fight with an F-16 while being Stock (but I was almost out of fuel so could be that)
Good I switched to Russia so I am ready wen they are “competitive” again
Sadly difficult to tell what they do in the F35 F-22 Eurofighter Meta also hi to Sweden(think Finland has or will have F35 so that’s something)
In fact, Gaijin can directly add more modern Flankers such as Su-30MKI and J-11B(early) to solve the problem, and then put them and some other stronger aircraft at present into BR 14.0. 27SM and J11A are only minor modernization upgrades of old Flanker.
After all, it is not easy for the J-11B (early) equipped with modern radar and PL-12 missiles to outperform the F-15JM with the current Flanker’s FM…The MKI’s empty weight has increased to more than 18t，although PESA radar, it is hard to say how powerful it is.
Even better, the MKI and J11B entered service very close to the time the F-15C received its HMD.