According to MBDA, the Bw plans to buy Brimstones for the Lw.
They say “newest version” so I’d assume Brimstone III. No mention of a platform but its likely to be for EF considering that Tornado is slated to be replaced soonish and because Brimstone is likely not integrated on the German Tornado variants.
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maybe, maybe not. worth noting that Tornado is no longer considered category A so its either out of the picture or low risk
Time will tell. It’s supposed to be replaced by 2030 which is when F-35 and Typhoon ECR will take over but I’m not sure that will happen by then, in which case it might be decided to enhance Tornado’s combat capabilities in the meantime.
This reminds me of all of the bug reports on the bagel that are “not a bug.”
or all the acknowledged bug reports that gaijin is dragging their feet on fixing, like the AIM-54C missing a reduced smoke motor, or the Puma missing over 50% of its armor in some places…
To be fair, fixing AIM-54C’s smokeless motor as well as its acceleration would make it broken at this point. And AIM-54 is nothing new in terms of what’s being held back. Magic 2 being 50G, or AS-30L missing its inertial guidance, or AS-30L missing an interchangeable X-12 warhead are some of the few examples off the top of my head.
Gaijin will “fix” some of these missiles once they deem that they’re appropriate to come.
But consistently asking for the AIM-54C to be broken before everyone else has their fox 3s would be unfair.
How so? The thing only effective against players that borderline ACTIVELY fly into it. Even with a low smoke motor, itd still be pretty visible at high alt where contrails form, and it still gives an RWR warning when active. I fail to see how a missile that is only effective against players that are borderline afk would suddenly be broken if it got a low smoke motor and some acceleration fixes.
Also, if that was their issue, they could just tell us its currently for balancing purposes instead of just ignoring the issue or telling us we don’t understand very unambiguous technical documents and reports.
Magic 2 has already received a wealth of changes and is a very respectable air to air missile at this point, while the AS-30L is also an incredibly strong ground attack munition. I do agree they should receive their realistic capabilities, but to pretend they’re in the same situation as a missile that is borderline useless as anything but a skill check for the absolute worst of the worst air players is a bit disingenuous…
Yet again, bit of a difference between asking for something like the low smoke motor to be implemented alongside the other missiles that are categorically better at their respective jobs that received their low smoke motors (AIM-9M/AGM-65D) and asking for every single issue of the AIM-54C to be fixed right away.
Off topic at this point anyways, the point was gaijins handling of well documented bugs, acknowledged or not is pretty opaque and rather spotty and unreliable.
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No disagreeing with you on that, but it’d be a controversial statement for Gaijin since the official line according to Smin is that they don’t balance missiles, when they absolutely hold back implementing reports for balance…
The official line when they’re holding reports back is, “The issue is still being investigated.”
I mean, smin also specifically stated recently that the reason all radar missiles were suffering a crippling level of multipath was due to a balancing decision (which i thoroughly disagree with, but whatever, its their game, they can keep handholding the kids using moms credit card money to play top tier while eating sand i guess), so idk how itd suddenly be any more controversial to state a missile was being held back for balancing purposes.
Personnally, I think the F-14B and AIM-54C were added too early by gaijin out of sheer laziness, and can deal with the fact that some features may be being held back for balance, but when gaijin categorically refuses to admit that a reported bug is in fact a balance decision and/or OPENLY contradicts primary or secondary sources (such as with the recent statement regarding the max g-load of stingers and mistrals for example) I dont think theres anything much more controversial than that, and personally believe this is the primary cause of the leaked classified documents phenomena, which gaijin then uses as free advertisement…
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I think also one of the reasons for the leaks is because the community by now knows how bad of a job gaijin does in implementing modern vehicles, that theyre either totally gimped or literally unplayable and when we know theyre wrong they can just go “prove it with a source” which we cant do since all of them are classified, and then some people got just so upset and mad at gaijin that they just said “f*ck it” and leaked them, beacuse its literally the only way for gaijin to change something.
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I loved the arrogance with their statement “we dont think the west was capable of building something better then the USSR” basically was what they said.
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Theyve used that argument multiple times as justification for their stance on western tech at this point. It seems to be a genuine core belief at least some of the devs have, if not most.
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Didnt also one of the devs say something like “The only equivalent to the R-73 are missiles like the IRIS-T and AIM-9X”, along those lines?
Yeah, hes said a lot of highly questionnable or just verifiably wrong things lately. I used to have a lot of respect for him on the old forums as he would bring a lot of documents to discussions and unlike other devs would actually commonly get involved, but lately his takes have mostly just been “Russia GOOOOOD, Westoids BAAAAD. Stalinium rule the world, primary/secondary sources are irrelevant in the face of my mighty preconceived notions based on soviet capabilities during the same time period!”
He also brought up the super common, dumb as rocks “AIM-54 is only good for killing long range strategic bombers and cant hit small nimble fighters!” myth, which is just outright wrong when the vast majority of AIM-54 kills are against fighters, with only like, 6 out of ~54 verified kills being against bomber sized targets…
This isnt really the thread for that though, so we should probs move the convo elsewhere and talk about the Eurofighter instead
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Yeah I also liked him for actually communicating with us but yeah now not so much.
Anyway Eurofighter, very sexy plane imo.
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well yeah but only like in terms of maneuverability. thats why iris-t, 9x and asraam were created in the first place
even then though, IRIS-T was created to be strictly superior to the R-73, seeing as the germans literally had the missile on hand, and the initial version of the ASRAAM was not, which lead to the germans leaving the program iirc.
The ASRAAM appears to have become over the shoulder capable since then, though im not 100% sure on that claim, and i’m also not quite clear on what kind of maneuverability the 9X has.
In terms of seeker, its outright no contest. From the sounds of it, only the latest russian ir missiles such as the R-74-M2 actually closes the gap with the ASRAAM/9X/IRIS-T, with even the R-74M only claiming 75 deg off boresight from a quick search…
The Germans left due to a fundamental difference in design philosophy. They wanted the maximum possible maneuverability right off the rail (hence IRIS-T using TVC), while the British were willing to sacrifice a bit of maneuverability in order to gain substantially more range (hence ASRAAM has a larger motor and control surfaces).
The Australians demonstrated ASRAAM’s over the shoulder capability by shooting down a target drone (with a direct hit from the missile) that was being made to chase the launching aircraft.
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It depends, but probably somewhat worse than IRIS-T.
AIM-9X uses thrust vectoring, but has a worse motor for that purpose. To be exact, the same Mk 36 Mod.11 already found on the AIM-9M. With a boost only profile, it only has 5.3 seconds of burn (and thus TVC maneuvering) time. IRIS-T with its boost-sustain motor will likely burn much longer, and thus also use its TVC much longer.
AIM-9X Blk.II has the same motor and only adds a datalink and lofted trajectories, but the effect of lofting on a short range AAM seems questionable…
Blk.III got canceled and its replacement still seems some years out
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