F-16 Fighting Falcon: History, Performance & Discussion

Both are pretty good options, I’d recommend playing the 13.0 one to grind the 13.7 one so you get a feel for the F-16

friends recommend i skip the 13.0 one because its overtiered and IR missiles at that BR are not enough for a novice like me, are they correct?

Well, can’t you report it now if you want to?

Unfortunately yes, they’re correct. thanks to the current brs, there’s no reason to play it when there’s the F-4F ICE and F3 late at the same br with better missiles. Tho this doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, Just means you gotta be more aggressive and smarter with your plays. Still would recommend giving it a shot. For all you know you could enjoy it

Keep in mind that I’m not really worried about US laws.
All I care about is whether those documents are acceptable for Gaijin or not …

If you live/travel in the US or somewhere that has extradition treaty with the US, you want to be extra careful so that you don’t end up in prison like that DCS dev.
Because I don’t think the courts will accept “Senior Tech Mod said it’s OK” as an answer …

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Well, sudo did most of it already.

F-16A MLU & F-16AM misalignment of AGM-65 HUD Reticle and AGM-65 missing HUD symbology and radar slaving:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/BGlSWNjMcd6A

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I made the report because currently in the game can only equip the F-16 with an early model MAU-12 pylon.

F-16C/D, F-16A-MLU have incorrect pylon model

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/E0BtveCDXTQK

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Gaijin pls make PIDS capable carrying AMRAAM/Sidewinder in the F-16AM, it’s literally been a year now

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I just want radar hmd man, surprised the radar can’t support it

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And hopefully add PIDSU for F-16C

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Made a report about the frequency coverage of AN/ALR-56M on F-16Cs
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/Fj5VhFQDCI1G

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Issue on AN/APG-68 missing NCTR
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/9SlVTxINGbUl

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From what I can tell the HMD bits (along with some other interesting stuff) is in the Tape M3 doc
I asked a senior tech mod about it and was told that due to the “explicit export restriction warning and distribution statement D” the Tape M3 doc can’t be used …

Kind of a shame as 40nm ACM and HMD, and finally fixing the HMD (On all planes) and making it act like ACM mode and acquire targets automatically without the need to repeatedly press the lock button, would be nuts …

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Yeah, the 40 NM would be nuts. Type 1493 has 74 km lock range on the DEV. I was going to use the 40 NM range alongside some other “evidence” to show that there are no technical restrictions on a boresight HMS in terms of lock ranges on Soviet radars (the 10 km on the N019 and 5 km on the N001 should only apply to vertical ACM).

There is another thing that could probably be reported (depending on if it is listed in the earlier Tapes or the 34-1) and that is the 50° wide 3 bar TWS exclusive mode on APG-66/68 radars (did you or anyone report that already?).

Oh, and thanks for doing the HMS suggestion. Was too lazy to do one myself.

Isn’t Soviet HMD for the IRST (rather than radar) anyways?
IIRC the HMD equipment is part of the IRST system / directly connected to it.

Potentially with the ability to then transfer the lock to radar.

The only issue I can see with that would be the limitation of IRST laser range finder (Since realistically you would have to supply range information to the radar to reliably transfer the lock from IRST to radar)

For example one source mentions a range of “0.2 to 3km” for OEPS-29:

Spoiler

And for OEPS-27 it says “affords aiming” so it’s probably also only a few km if the source is correct:

Spoiler

This potentially means that the Soviet radar HMD is either ahistorical or severely overperforming in range …

Let’s continue the Soviet HMD discussion in the Flanker thread:

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/sukhoi-su-27-30-33-35-37-flanker-series-su-34-fullback-history-design-performance-dissection-part-2/228540/655

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/VbcPcb7Wa23B

@CalvinAz Hey bud, inspired by your issue (Community Bug Reporting System) 2 years ago,
I made another post about this issue
(Community Bug Reporting System)

Hope you can provide more valuable insights and ideas.
:)

I think Gaijin’s understanding of the ALR-56M comes from the (older) ALR-56C. The TEWS manual of the F-15C can be found, and it mentions that DF is only performed on high-band signals (ID’d as a threat), whilst guidance correlation on SAM guidance radars is performed for low-band signals.

However, yes the use of a dual blade antenna on the F-16C is quite peculiar opposed to the use of a single blade antenna on the F-15. So possible this got changed.

Though in the NATO document, a layout of the RWR antennas is shown for the AC-130J, where it says in plural ‘low band antennas’ and singular antenna for F-16. This may suggest that multiple are still needed for DF. I tried looking for some pictures of the antenna on the C-130J, but it’s not super clear. But I do see something more looking like the compass sail type antennas mounted on the C-130, which again suggest that the F-16C probably doesn’t have C/D band DF, unfortunately. So I am slightly leaning to that Gaijin is correct here. Likely they deemed C/D DF coverage to not be worth it irl (for now).

What you may want to perhaps look into is the ALR-69 on the F-16A ADF. It similarly foregoes the C/D compass sail antenna array under the intake (looks like a square box with fin) for a dual blade antenna under the nose. Possibly however it’s because for the ADF they did not think DF for low-band was necessary for the ADF role and so the C/D DF coverage it has in-game is actually wrong, but that’s just speculation.

Anyway, according to the TEWS manual, ALR-56C (and likely also M) should be able to show if the signal comes from above or below you. Apparently the right wing receiver is slightly different from the others, and does that in addition. Idk if any RWR currently show that however.

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Currently the EFT and Rafale both have global coverage of the RWR which i assume is what your talking about with the TEWS manual
Im not sure how this changes the visual display but i do know atleast if you place the target on your belly or directly above it will still get a RWR tone

Regardless that would be a pretty nice change for the F-16 definitely makes it easier to notch missiles