The question is ultimately what is “safer”, high and fast but maybe from further away to drop Glide GBUs or very low but closer to fire Brimstones
The advantage of Spear-3s, they are both in one
Way too many variables to decide realisitcally which is better generally, so it really comes down to situation vs situation.
Yes. And the current conflicts with « near pear » nations in the east has shown that it’s not usually multirole jets that destroy air defenses but a saturation of drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles. Those jets have largely been relegated to SHORAD duty or dumbing glidebomb on villages at the frontlines on both sides.
Tho they don’t use the neck plus ultra of air to ground munitions but cheap, expandable weapon kits
I don’t think it’s fair to compare Russian SEAD/DEAD with USA and NATO.
As many have said US is more than prepared to destroy any SAM network in the world.
Nothing could stand up to it.
and we also have a recent example of air power being able to either suppress or destroy a relatively modern air defense network
Ukraine has been using AASM, so it’s not too far off. Tho I count it more in the category of « cheap expandable kits », tho it has a larger range than the Russian counterparts, since they seem to mostly use the GPS variant
The US have also relied on massive saturation strike with ground, sea and air launched cruise missiles to deal with SAM networks.
I also don’t think they’ve dealt with a network as complex as what we can find in Russia and Ukraine, with a mix of quasi static long range systems but also a large number of very mobile mid-short range systems, tho if they had to do this I expect they’d get most of the more dangerous long range systems over the course a a large saturation attack and then use F35s and laser guided munitions to deal with shorter range systems from outside their effective range.
It’s not that different from what Russia does, they just do it more chiurgically. Ukraine has also been far more resilient in keeping their air defense systems up (with the aid of NATO) against Russia compared to say, Iraq in 1993
While I agree and we cannot use the Gulf as the metric we can just look at the sheer volume and capability the USA can deploy.
F-22 for supressing air assets
F-35 for Jamming and Decoys
B-21 for long range stand off strikes
Then when it all calms down you still have F-16/F-15s
Russian network would crumble as would Chinas they wouldn’t know what to do and yes some US airframes would be shot down. The goals would be achieved.
ASRAAM was originally planned to use a sapphire seeker dome, with magnesium fluoride also being developed as a backup in case the sapphire version didn’t work out. I don’t know which one they ended up using in the end.
Interesting in that regard is the transmittance of these two materials:
Magnesium Fluoride: 0,120 μm to 8,0 μm
Sapphire: 0,150 µm to 5,5 μm
The CCD of the ASRAAM uses “Indium antimonide” as its material which detects IR radiation in the band of 0,5 µm to 5,4 µm covering nearly the complete transmittance band of Sapphire. I don’t know if that’s good because usually the more you approach the borders of the transmittance range, the transparency lessens so I assume it would be preferable to have more “buffer” in that regard.
Well the E-scan in game could easily be underperforming quite heavily
Woah, i didnt expect Meteor to be that fast while cruising. This and 300km+ range? This is monstrous
MALD + AARGM-ER + F-35 is a nasty combo
Thats what happens when you stick a ramjet on something and dont need space for oxidizer, so you can carry way more actual fuel
I doubt that it cruises at that speed for its best range
iirc it throttles depending on how long of range the shot is, and that is well above the most efficient speed for a ramjet (typically stated as mach 2.5-3.5 ish)
Probs more around M3.0+ for optimal range, since thats the speed at which ramjets are most efficient.
A reminder that ramjets need to travel relatively fast, since they rely on ram air effect to do the work of a compressor, so slower does not necessarily mean better. They have a lower limit.
yeah that sounds about right
they do but they also have a lot of drag at higher speeds because they need to decelerate the intake air to subsonic velocities
Hmm, which Typhoons are equipped with CAPTOR-E?
IRL.
Kuwait and Qatar Typhoons operate the Mk0 variant of the CAPTOR-E and have done for a number of years.
Germany is in the process of upgrading their Typhoons to the MK1 variant of the CAPTOR-E, with the first due to enter service very soon. There is unconfirmed evidence they do have operational Typhoons with the Mk0 variant as a stop gap until Mk1 was ready
Spain is also upgrading the Mk1, not sure on the timeline for them, but probably not far behind Germany
Britain decided to wait for the Mk2 variant of the CAPTOR-E and has a test aircraft fully equipped, deliveries of the Mk2 will probably be another year or 2 away, the current timeline is for operational aircraft before the end of the decade
Italy. I think are going with the MK2 as well, no idea on a timeline for them.
Any Tranche 2 or later Typhoon can be upgraded to equip CAPTOR-E
In-game, all 3 nations will get AESA, it would be unreasonable for only 1 or 2 to get AESA on their Typhoons and the devs have said that every nation will get an AESA equipped aircraft, there simply is no other option for Germany or Italy
While getting a new radar will be nice, it still won’t fix problems with the AMRAAM and 9M
No, unfortunately it wont, but fingers crossed they’ll finally do something for either this major too
If EW/ECM is planned sooner rather than later, then a general update to how radar guided missiles (Both SARH and ARH) is probably in order first.
Though if given the choice. Id probably choose BOL to be fixed first. Been playing some matches today, and ive been doing okay with the 9Ms and C5s, but getting screwed over by chaff that barely works
A little BOL fix would be nice, especially since it would benefit a lot of aircraft
