In my opinion its time to change top tier nuke planes and introduce stealth/modern bombers or newer jets that are able to carrie nuclear bombs
Current Nuke Aircraft Disadvantages:
They already take a lot of time to take off and get to speed, lets not forget that the other players that spawn with a Jet have air spawn while you have to take off and with modern jets they get to your airfield pretty quick even if they spawn after you
We need to wait, but I think with the new SPAAs it will make a bigger challenge droping a nuke because you are slow with poor mobility (because you have a nuke) and the new SPAAs have good range with good IR and Radar missels.
They dont have any flares or chaff making it kinda hard to get to the battlefield because of the CAS spawn, even more people spawn a Plane if they hear the Nuke alarm, you can multipath against radar missels but if they use an IR missel its game over. At least give it 20 flares
I agree with other two points but new SAMs will make little to no difference.
They are still relying on ground based radar that cant see over horizon or solid obstacles such as hills to launch and unlike other CAS planes you kinda dont have to worry about finding your target and being accurate with nuke. So nuke carrier can still approach the drop zone lawnmoving and rise at the last second in order to drop - and by that point it doesnt matter if its intercepted.
Maybe if we get datalinks and AWACS one day, but otherwise they still have the same limitations.
Terrain following already makes even Pantsir unable to frag nuke carriers, and close-range only Stingers and other IR missiles would stand any chance, and still likely be too late.
F-16A with center-mount B-61 is possible though.
Note that nuke operations mean no AAMs, and one of the few things where I agree with doctrine being represented in-game.
Soviets would remove flares from Mig-21s and just use JATO bottles instead.
I was talking about IR missels like the 9X and Python 5, and probably the IRIST since the last stage makes it IR guided. But ye, you still need to lock the target but it will probably be easier since they are IR missels with a good lock range and the SPAAs have pretty good search radars while for example the Pantsir is SACLOS guided and the missels dont fuze when you are flying low.
There are maps that will make it easier and other maps that will make it pretty hard to have a lock , but as I said we need to wait and see
These dont have datalink as far as i know, they wont have same range as ARHs. They are intended for short range defense and will be more similiar to strela, if strela was bulking in gym and was shooting T.
Yes IRIS-T and SLM have terminal IR guidance but you still need radar lock to get most of their range.
Which is still limited by the horizon or solid obstacles.
You could have AESA radar (im sure one of the new SAMs has it) and it still wont be able to see through hill.