How?
They stripped the capabilities to use weapons and the F-15 ACTIVE was a research plane, not planned to enter service
the picture i used, is 1 probably the early variant cuz of the 2D thrust vectors, and 2 has GBU’s (atleast that is what it looks like), AIM-9Ls and AIM-7s
I’m pretty sure the picture that you posted isn’t a real photograph. The F-15 on there has the tail number 71-291, while the real STOL/ACTIVEs tail number is 71-290.
This is the F-15B with the tail number 71-291.
From what I have read online (including these forums), the STOL/ACTIVEs radar and gun was removed to install the canards and everything else that would allow it to be armed was removed in the demilitarization process.
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well who ever made this did a great job making it look real. anyways, if its combat ability was stripped away, than it was originally supposed to have weapons, which would’ve still checked off the requirements
In order to install the canards they had to remove the gun and the radar.
In order to be used by NASA for research, they had to completely demilitarize it.
Obviously I can’t tell whether it would be possible to install any kinds of weapons after it was used for research, but the gun and radar definitely couldn’t be installed again.
Unless you can prove that it could be armed again, you’d have to find images of it after the 2D nozzles were installed, but before it was demilitarized for research purposes.
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DCT is ww2 era
I suspect that image may have been altered by Mcdonnell (as both 71-290 and 71-291 were held by Mcdonnell) as part of a proposal or mockup for the original F-15 STOL project (before ACTIVE which used the 3D nozzles)
here is photos of 71-290 before it was obtained by NASA and made into the ACTIVE upgraded version
from here
https://shipbucket.com/references/Squadron%20Signal%20books/epdf.pub_f-15-eagle-in-action.pdf
see while it was sitll numbered AF71290 without the NASA logo seen below on the same plane but with the 3D vectoring nozzles
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Judging by the fact that the F-15B 71-291 looks like this:
And this Reddit post has a whole album of the 291 in different liveries for different purposes over the time of its life:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarplanePorn/comments/196izoy/f15b_710291_the_most_diverse_eagle_ever_built/
I’m pretty sure that the picture of the 291 with 2D nozzles and canards is either highly edited or a very high quality mock-up drawn by a talented artist.
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yes thats what i said, I suspect by mcdonnell themselves as a mockup image for the proposal for F-15 STOL MTD, sorry if that was unclear
just kinda got myself caught diving for info about 71-290 cause theres a lot of misinformation about it tbh (mostly the extent of the active program is getting stretched into what had already been done to that airframe by the F15 STOL MTD program)
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Gotcha, I just felt like adding a pic of 71-291 would be good to nail the point down.
There being a lot of misinformation about it online probably is a result of the 290 airframe being modified multiple times for different purposes.
It doesn’t help that it seems to get mixed up with the 291 and that info about 290s time before NASA seems to be hard to find.
yes exactly
cant say for the reliability of it but this website
gives a good timeline of many of the f-15 airframes
the edited image supposedly was from 1984 which is during the period when the 71-291 airframe was still being used as a integration testbed for the enhanced tactical fighter programme (the F-15E)
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Hydroplanes should also get the ability to lay smokescreens no matter what mode they’re in. The Ar196 for example does it in naval but not ground or air.
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Would be cool, but I don’t think that it would be a good idea to have that ability in ground battles
Being able to lay a wall of smoke around the enemy spawn to trap them might be a bit OP lol
I disagree with that. If you smoke up the entire enemy spawn then your teammates don’t get anything out of it either. Not OP, just creates a temporary problem with both team’s mobility
From a “people only care about kills” perspective, yes, this would be kind of useless.
If used strategically this would absolutely be OP tho.
The griefing potential is also massive, but people already have plenty of vehicles to spam smokes in an attempt to grief anyways, so this wouldn’t be a real problem.
“If used strategically” means diddly-squat in WT rn. A BTR-ZD and an IS-2 could run an entire lobby if used strategically yet that doesn’t happen often. Same thing with smoke-laying planes.
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Well DCT may be shortened if they’ll give lowrank machine, for example to 5 or 6 medals. AND they can run it parallel with different event, that happened once already
Valid point
Gaijin still seems to care about that aspect though, well, at least some decisions make me think they do care lol
Wiesel sitting at 7.3 because of thermals and LRF
They removed the ability to launch Spikes at UAVs and no MITL for ground launched Spikes (yet lol)
They love blocking off hard to reach spots that give too much of an advantage when utilized by players
Ground vehicles can’t exceed their listed top speed when towed
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Please continue the discussion in official thread linked above :)
PS. Gratz for few of you, who pointed on Mistel :)
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