It is true that the Eurofighter nations considered air to air capability to be a higher priority, however to say the Eurofighter was not designed to be multirole is false. AST 414 was the original UK requirement issued for the Eurofighter in the early 1980s, it plainly states the aircraft must have a good ground attack capability in order to serve as a replacement for the Jaguar.
This seems unlikely to me, the RAF originally wanted to get rid of the gun to save money, but then found out that due to the need to buy ballast kits and update the FCA it would be cheaper to retain the gun. So for a period of time they retained the gun and just didn’t issue any ammo for it or allow the crew to use it.
When pilots complain about the lack of a gun they are likely talking about the lack of a useable gun, rather than the gun physically not being there.
If you have evidence to support your claims then please share it.
Rafale had a larger emphasis on air-to-ground, but both entered service without air to ground capability.
Tranche 1 Block 1/2 Eurofighters were air to air only, with ground attack capability added in Tranche 1 Block 5. All Block 1&2 aircraft were later upgraded to Block 5 standard though.
F.1 standard Rafale’s were air to air only, with F.2 standard being the first ones with ground attack capability. Funnily enough LF.1 standard Rafales (the very first standard to enter service) actually did lack a gun.
Its a known factor that UK requirements doesnt always meeted. In fact Challenger 2 is a famous example in this case.
Just because UK asked for something doesnt mean it was designed to be that way from the beginning.
EFT was designed to be Air Superiority Fighter until they realized they can use it for multirole efficiently.
Thats why First Tranche models doesnt even support basic Cas capabilities.
So in other words they had no usable guns, which indicates that First operational Typhoons had no gun for CQC and CAS which proves my point to begin with.
Cause like @_OceanFish said First block of Rafales were actually rushed to meet minimum requirements, unlike EFT.
Anyway this a Rafale thread and we derailed it enough.
If you wish to continue this conversation there are dedicated EFT threads for that.
Tranche 1 Block 1 had a fully functional BK27 fit to the aircraft, it only received operational clearance by the time Tranche 1 Block 2 was received.
Maybe this is a misunderstanding of terms. It had a gun, it always had the gun, it just took a couple years to work up to its release to service. This happens pretty frequently with airframes that are “worked” up to an operational standard.
It would be more correct to say “The Typhoon wasn’t cleared to use its BK27 gun until 2 years after the introduction of Tranche 1 Block 1.”
Some research today shows that the new changes is correct. You can see it for yourself using the motor manufacturer’s archived pages. I used to think these informations were classified but they were not apparently.
These changes will result in quite a bit higher acceleration due to decreased burntime and increased thrust but should still maintain the overall same ranges(?). The devs reached a separate conclusion than I did, a better one too.
Shouldn’t it then be 1.88s instead of 2 (would be a really nice little buff)?
Could they have accidentally made a typo in the thrust values during calculations leading to the wrong burn time when checking for total impulse?
Total impulse in that datamine matches the one listed on that page: 2.0 \cdot 27950 = 55900.
Yet the thrust in game is 27950 instead of 29750 and the burn time is 2 seconds instead of 1.88. Notice that 9 and 7 have swapped places.
I am thinking that before implementing the change, they checked to see that the burn time and thrust values give the listed impulse, as a sanity check. However, when entering the thrust value into the calculator they entered the wrong value of 27950, and so they got 55900 / 27950 = 2 seconds. To match the total impulse, which arguably is the more important value here, they used 2 seconds for burn time.
OR puts on tinfoil hat
The website is wrong and the thrust value is indeed correct and they are the ones who made a typo, didn’t have the burn time, so they calculated it from the total impulse and average thrust. This then of course assumes that Gaijin used a different source for this.
If you read the thrust chart, an accurate missile motor modeling would have the missile use a total of 3 seconds burntime. But this would require booster+sustainer modeling. But that is all booster missiles in-game and it is not special to the Magic 2. R-60s, R-24s are supposed to also have longer burn time than the current in-game burntimes. But again, that would require booster+sustainer.
Booster missiles are supposed to be modeled in-game as booster+sustainer. And booster+sustainer missiles should be modeled as booster+booster+sustainer. But that is a lot more work than Gaijin is willing to do and so we’re left with the simplification we’re at now.
I think the simple answer is that gaijin tested the thrust and burn time but found this combination would yield the closest results to the kinematics in the manual because they didn’t adjust drag or other factors.
R-60 and R-23/24 series have less burn time than real life because these missiles had a slow ramp up to full thrust compared to something like magic 2 or aim-9. Gaijin can not model this dynamic ramp up in thrust so they find a median where it produces sufficient thrust and burns long enough to meet most minimum and maximum shot conditions.
Too much tin foil on my end then, didn’t see that you had the link and there was a thrust chart.
Do you know why the list the burn time as 1.88 seconds? Is it because the burn time is 1.88 seconds and the rest is the residual burn (the graph seems to fall sharply after that mark).
Yes, I believe that is why. Residual burn goes on for another 1.2 seconds or so which is a ramp-down.
@vizender makes a good case for why the Magic 2 would benefit from having booster+sustainer for better accurate modeling for example to account for missile ramp-up/ramp-down.
