AFAIK they bring no benefit over their equivalent single seat equivalents outside of aesthetics. Perhaps as event vehicles as they like to intro 2-Seater variants for events.
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Yeah, that’s what I was thinking honestly. An F/A-18B or D as an event vehicle, with a load of adversary/tiger meet schemes would go hard. It’d be useless, but again, something a bit refreshing
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With the Skin from the “Going Hunting” mission from Battlefield 3 the F/A-18F would be a very popular event vehicle.
I dont know if gaijin would ever do it but it would be awesome.
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Absolutely!
I personally just want the Hornet B/D for customs to zoom about in (tbf, that’s what I want a majority of vehicles for lol), and a lot of the time unique skins end up adding to the experience (for me at least).
I mean, imagine either spawning into a match (Air RB/Sim) or landing at an airfield (custom battles) only to be greeted with like 10 Hornets, all wearing these different camouflages/liveries…
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I don’t know, I don’t have more information about the RD-12 or the GE 402. The Gripen vs Hornet C comparison to me lacks an important indication of installed thrust, so I really don’t know. This is more of an academic debate than a practical one. I’ll take some graphs of the Hornet later and post them here.
The picture shows the increase in wing loading from the YF-17
The picture shows the degradation of acceleration time
Comparing wing loading and power to weight ratio, you can see how newer aircraft are inferior to their first versions
F-18C/D Lot 14 Block 36 and more had GE-402 engines. It is possible that the table shows these engines, I am not that familiar with the Hornet
From the last table you will certainly find a lot of interesting facts.
The F-14A is interesting, why did Northrop humiliate the Tomcat A like that? To make the F-14D look better for the US Congress?
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There were concerns about the missile packing capability of the F/A-18. However after using AMRAAM few times on dev server, I don’t think it’s going to be a serious problem.
While the missile itself is epic and lot better than AIM-7M, we still need enough speed and energy to use it well. And Hornet requires combination of SUU-63 pylon + LAU-115 launcher + two LAU-127 launcher 10-AMRAAM loadout. These stuffs are quite heavy and creates very high drag, makes maximum speed and acceleration even worse.
The Hornet would be very powerful within AMRAAM’s NEZ, but its slow speed would limit its ability to extend missile range. So in a BVR engagement it would be at great risk of being preempted. A further disadvantage is that a large number of missiles will adversely affect its weight and drag, making evasive maneuvers against 40-50g missiles more difficult.
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Gaijin doesn’t model massive reduction in performance from pylon drag. The Gripen is a great example, as it should go maximum mach 1.4 with air to air missiles loadout and can do nearly mach 2 anyway in-game.
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If so, I shall leave out the part about pylon drag. Then I wonder if I need to revise my opinion that 10 AMRAAM would not make the Hornet a ultimate game breaker.
It could change in the future but as of right now it wouldn’t be the case in-game. Missiles and pylons have very little additional drag currently. They primarily affect mass and center of gravity iirc so it will hurt dogfight performance and energy retention primarily due to additional weight but not drag.
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Given that the speed of the launch aircraft and the effective range of the missile are roughly proportional, it would be safe to say that the F-15 and F-16 are overall better AMRAAM platforms than the F/A-18, despite of less missile capacity.
For this reason, I don’t think 10x AMRAAM loadout would be a major balance issue―it’s more of a minimal measure to compensate for the Hornet’s inherent weaknesses in the Fox 3 meta.
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That chart isn’t quite fair comparing a hornet armed with missiles to relatively clean F-15 and F-16, and it still beats them at relevant altitudes for war thunder.
You’re talking about a 50-60 m/s difference advantage from a missile that is going to accelerate ~850 m/s anyway.
If you wanted to make this argument I’d recommend time to climb, acceleration comparisons instead.
You’ve got the point. Perhaps I am being too obsessive about this absurd issue.
TWR is a good proxy for these, and the F/A is lacking compared to the others.
A clean F-15A with PW-100 engine on standard day is marked in yellow. I will check the F-16 later.
We’ve been over this, the F/A-18 has an advantage in T/W over certain F-16 models and superior turn rate depending on whether you want to match fuel % or fuel weight.
Time to climb is acceptable, not too much worse than these later model F-16s. Superior to the F-14, Mirage 2000, etc… and those are not considered incapable.
i don’t think so
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Not really. You keep insisting on it without sources, and the only person I’ve seen agree with you is someone from your squadron who never used to use the forums. Not suspicious at all.
I think you misread the graph.
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F/A-18C w/ GE-402 engines has 19+ deg/s turn rate with 60% fuel load and 2x AIM-9, 2x AIM-120 loadout. This is higher than the sustained turn of the F-16 with equivalent fuel weight and armament.
Additionally, the GAO report which cites this information was given and I am referencing in-game performance data for the F-16 (which is higher than real life performance courtesy of the removal of the G limits).
Power to weight for the GE-402 will vary depending on speed, as does the F-16. Saying the F/A-18 suffers in T/W is to say that the Mirage 2000, F-14, J-8, etc all suffer from the same issue… while this is somewhat true it is still leagues ahead of any prior generation fighter and the WVR performance is above the F-15 or F-16. The ability to carry 10 AMRAAM’s, while not having quite the same climb rate, acceleration, or top speed… is still beyond the scope of any other early Gen4 fighters with the exception of the Su-27 which in theory could carry a similar amount of R-77.
The argument as far as I am concerned was that the F/A-18 may not be the most meta vehicle when added even with the 10 AMRAAM’s because of some perceived performance deficit. I assure you, this is not the case. I am betting that the F/A-18C, with the GE-402 engines… it will be one of the best or most meta vehicles in the game when it comes… especially if given the full 10 AMRAAM loadout.
Nice double post.
The graph for the F-16 corresponds to the pure F-16 C
Block 52 which had the more powerful PW 229 engine
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