It definitly does… between a vastly superior FM and better ARH’s it has the advantage in both BVR (by quite a lot) and WVR. The KWS LV and F.3 Late both are superior in opportunistic kills, but the 9M is already very reliably flared if you know what you’re doing, and the 9Li-1 is just a worse 9M.
The plane isnt faultless obviously, but the F90’s outperform all other missiles to such an extreme degree that they can largely offset the issue of the poor RWR. Hence why I think 13.0 minimum with 13.3 being more likely the more reasonable BR for it. The KWS LV and F.3 late should both be dropped to 13.0 as well imo, seeing as theyre both effectively 11.0 airframes with 13.7 missiles.
Ive said it before, and ill say it again, the F-14A IRIAF was a stupid addition to the game, and will always be a massive balance issue due to firing missiles from the 2010’s from a 1974 airframe/sensor combo.
Largely irrelevant when you can easily get rid of them pre-merge and they have just about the highest pK% of all radar missiles in-game.
I’m not only taking 1 aspect of the plane into consideration, I very much know what the F-14’s can do. The aircraft in general is rather unergonomic making it difficult to be consistent in for most players, and the F-14A particularly has issues with its large heat signature and poor CM loadout. It does however have a very strong radar, particularly for BVR combat, and has a tremendous, although temperamental airframe. It does not change the fact that the F90’s are so far beyond the performance of every other missile in-game for BVR purposes that it largely offsets those issues. PARTICULARLY in sim, which is what I almost exclusively play due to how bad RB is. large improvements in weapon capability has just about always resulted in BR increases over the baseline aircrafts yet the Iranian F-14 sits at the exact same BR as the TT F-14A, despite being incomparably superior in the weapons department simply from the inclusion of the F-90, while the F-14B sits a BR step above it.
This is ignoring the fact that many still believe the baseline F-14’s are somewhat under tiered (once again, particularly in sim). The Iranian F-14A going to 13.0 would be much MUCH healthier for the game, once there it could be reassessed.
As an additional sidenote, I have my doubts the Iranian F-14 actually will ever go up in BR, because the vast majority of pilots who play it are absolutely god-awful at the game, thanks to the ease of acquiring the plane due to its event plane status, which is going to abnormally skew its stats down.