Behold, the F-14A (Late)
a man can dream
Just leaving this here:
Maybe, just maybe, the devs would pull a Yak-141 and put the AMRAAM on the D because the Navy had thought about it but politics got in the way.
4 Likes
Do you guys know how much the aim54C differs from the A ingame? Is it better or almost the same?
Its equivalent or worse in almost every way actually, only thing its better at is its inertial drift which is better, but largely irrelevant in-game.
- The warhead is smaller (because irl the C uses a directional warhead with a smart fuze and can create equivalent or more shrapnel with less TNT filler, leading to a ~25% increase in effectinveness irl, but a nearly 10kg drop in TNT in-game with no advantage)
- The missile is heavier with the exact same motor (unlike irl where the motor is a reduced smoke motor but gaijin refuses to add it to the AIM-54C), so it accelerates less quickly
- The seekers are the exact same (barring inertial drift) despite the irl one being a completely new all digital seeker instead of the old analogue one (the radar dev specifically doesnt believe the digital seeker would change anything, and also peddles the myth the AIM-54 was bad against small maneuvrable target despite the vast majority of its kills being against fighters irl, and pilots claiming it was an potent dogfighting weapon, and that was the A variant, not even the C variant)
The devs at gaijin have some sort of weird hatred for the F-14 and AIM-54 as a whole quite frankly, to the point where theres literally no reasonable argument anymore for why they keep holding them back so harshly.
5 Likes
I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before but I went over some older aircraft recently and noticed some discrepancies. The F-14A is about 650kg too heavy on empty weight if the SAC sheet is to be believed.
4 Likes
I just unlocked the F-14B, what’s up with the radar??? It’s completely broken. I mean actually broken, in every single game the radar is constantly refreshing/flickering (like it’s turning off/on rapidly), losing lock for no apparent reason and sometime just completely freezes.
I have over 2000 battles with the F-14A, this never happened to me, except the radar “freeze” but it’s rare. With the F-14B it’s pretty much every game. I use manual radar control if this makes a difference and this happens with TWS.
What a huge disappointment.
EDIT: Just did another game, it happened 3 times in less than 1min after take off. Jesus Christ. Too lazy to make a video right now but I’ll do it later.
2 Likes
The radar on both planes is seriously bugged especially in TWS mode, sometimes fully hampering your target engagement. It has been like that for a while. Extremely frustrating when it happens. I think i had the ‘‘freeze’’ bug on f-16 but i have been fine with f-14.
2 Likes
They may be both bugged but this is an issue specific to the B model.
The radar is constantly refreshing/resetting like every 10sec, how is this usable? How do you even use phoenix in these conditions without hard lock? Because of this, the datalink will always break just after firing making your aim-54 go stupid.
It’s not just an issue because of aim-54, this is a huge handicap for me when using sparrows.
I’m just gonna ditch the F-14B and go back to the A. What a shame.
1 Like
Try putting TWS into the narrow scan. AWG-9 TWS still sucks but if you can isolate a target and get it in the narrow scan, it is a little more reliable. I’ve found the standard scan only useful for initial detection.
The TWS was particularly not great and from what I’ve heard… incapable of tracking maneuvering targets very well. I understand it’s broken and whatnot at the moment… but even if they fix this small issue it was overperforming to begin with.
Yeah, it had the nickname Track While Lose.
However, in game AWG-9 TWS already doesn’t hold track well with anything maneuvering so I’d say it’s probably not overperforming. It’s just poorly modeled. RIOs had a lot of tricks they would use to operate the AWG-9 and damn near none of it is modeled in game.
3 Likes
It theoretically could per the pre-production SAC
Just leaving this here:
Maybe, just maybe, the devs would pull a Yak-141 and put the AMRAAM on the D because the Navy had thought about it but politics got in the way.
4 Likes
All that was required to install the AIM-120 onto fleet F-14D’s was the pylon installation (bolt-on) and software update.
3 Likes
Im guessing the bolt on was too expensive as they were gonna retire them soon anyway
Essentially, the Super Hornet was selected not long after the D entered service, and upgrade programs for the D dried up.
1 Like
Well if they don’t add the F14D next update i don’t see why it cant come with AMRAAMS
2 Likes
No, it was literally Dick Cheney flexing his political power. Discussion is against the forum rules, but look it up. They could easily have integrated the AMRAAM to the F-14D and political red tape prevented it from happening.
6 Likes
Amen.
I put it in the more…politically neutral…way