Nowadays, I don’t think Russia has great aircraft. Then again, doctrine is different. Russians treat their planes like flying artillery, Americans focus on air superiority.
America was losing both, to be fair. American pilots were being taken out of the sky through ambushes and anti-aircraft guns. On the ground, America could never hold an objective. Sure we see cool videos of napalm, but when the Vietnamese got into the skies, they did quite well. Just sucks that Vietnam never had much aircraft compared to the US.
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Yes Russia did produce great aircraft. They are modelled with none of their limitations their Radars work far better than they did. The missile work far better than they did R-60 and R-60M have a horrendous record when they have been employed.
But Western aircraft are missing features and technology that would nullify Soviet aircraft. Did you know Foxhunter on Tornado could completely jam/disable the Radar on a MiG 29 and Su-27…
There is compromise made for gameplay and Russia have never had to compromise in this game.
Have you played this game? R-60s and R-60Ms are terrible. And the fact that AIM 9Ls show up before the R-60Ms (A-10 gets AIM 9Ls at 10.3, while Su-25 gets them at 10.7) is a joke.
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And prior to that no other nation had front aspect IR missiles the MiG 23 with R60M was the first while British Phantoms were using rear aspect Aim9Gs
From my experience 9Ls and R-60s are on par with each other.
Oh, and I’m well aware that Britain gets gimped in the sky. Eurofighter has a worse radar, Brimstones get some weird laser tracker while America and Russia get IR slingers from 30km away, Tornadoes get… yeah. I view it as less of a Russian bias, and more of a Big Three bias. Russia and America unfairly dominates the skies and ground (to an extent), while minor nations get severely nerfed, like Britain’s Tornado, Eurofighter, Grippen, etc.
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9Ls are better in my experience. They work a lot better from behind, unlike the R-60Ms
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I still remember community confused when they added R-60Ms for MiG-23M because they said “We don’t add all-aspect missiles” at that time.
Mavericks aren’t really usable beyond 10 miles. The gimping occurs because of technological differences and overall player skill.
Mate, the British Phantoms are terrible in general. The only ones that get all aspect (Phantoms wise) are the German ones and Israeli
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FG.1/FGR.2 was good until they added MiG-23MLDs.
I assume you weren’t there at that time…
Also I will say you primarily play Arcade which may vastly skew your experiences
I was, sorta. I was in props/early jets at the time. I just never liked Phantoms. I bought the F4S, absolutely hated it, and realised if that’s what America is like, I’m done playing America.
I play Arcade for fun, yeah. I do play Air Realistic though, but just to spade stuff. It’s a dreadful chore, but I am positive in what I’ve played recently.
That and I do most of my 1v1s in Realistic. Otherwise I also do 1v1s in Sim.
The MLD was added in 2021 and you made your account in 2023. Did you have a previous account by chance?
I thought we were talking Phantoms?
I started either early 2023 (it was a winter month, that’s all I know), played the hell out of War Thunder, and I believe I got the F4S in April or May of 2023. Played that, hated it, and then I moved away from America.
The memory is foggy, but that’s all I can be arsed to remember
Modern analyses of KDRs in Korea like that in MiG Alley: The US Air Force in Korea, 1950-53 show that performance of Soviet Pilots to American Pilots was in favor of the Americans, but not by much. 1.7:1 is a number that sticks in my mind, but I can’t find the source for it right now.
The important thing, however, was that the US was able to maintain air superiority and achieve their tactical and strategic objectives despite the close-run air battles.
I highly recommend avoiding youtube videos as sources/informational pieces. Most of them use poor sources like topwar.ru (or none at all…).
I know the Russians did good, but we’re heavily restricted to avoid WWIII (or so they say). Chinese and Koreans decided that they were playing Arcade and could respawn (spoiler, they couldn’t).
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You said you were there “sorta” at the time. You can check your account creation date on the regular war thunder website under the search player function. What Freelancers was referring to was the British Phantoms becoming terrible when the MLD was added, over a full year before you made your account.