Improved Chaparral: Oppa Chaparral Style!

The Improved Chaparral SAM will help strengthen the ranks of the US and Israeli ground forces trees when it comes to War Thunder in the upcoming major update!

Improved Chaparral, SAM SPAA, USA (rank VI) and Israel (rank VII)

Features:

  • Two types of missiles to choose from.
  • Thermal imager.
  • 12 missiles onboard.
  • Lacks armor protection.
History

Originally the Chaparral SPAA was designed as an intermediate option until the development of the Mauler air defense system was completed. However, due to the termination of this project, the Chaparral soon became a prospective air defense system project for direct support of land forces. After a series of major improvements and the replacement of the chassis from the Bradley to an army tractor, the Chaparral entered tests in 1965, and was finally commissioned in 1969. The Chaparral received modernization throughout its service life, and was in service with the US Army until 1998. Aside from the American service, the vehicle was exported to Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Portugal and Tunisia.

The American-made Chaparral anti-aircraft missile system will appear in the US and Israeli ground forces research trees in the upcoming “Sons of Attila” major War Thunder update! While the Chaparral does not come with its own radar, each missile can be guided through a normal sight that also features thermal imaging. Let’s dive deeper into the details.

Download Wallpaper:

We’d like to let you know that the incoming Chaparral will arrive at a different rank and Battle Rating within the US and Israeli research trees. This is because of the difference in available missiles. The Chaparral in the US tree will receive two types of Surface-to-air missile — the default MIM-72A, which, interestingly enough, is an adapted AIM-9D Sidewinder, as well as the more advanced MIM-72E, which is available through researching this modification. While the Sidewinder will allow you to securely acquire targets from behind, the MIM-72E is an all-aspect seeker, which certainly makes it more devastating! The Chaparral in the Israeli tree will be located at rank VII, with the MIM-72E missile being available by default after purchasing the vehicle. The more advanced MIM-72G missile will be available through researching this modification, and offers a dual-channel (IR/UV) seeker with rosette scanning capabilities. The total number of missiles that the Chaparral can carry is 12: 4 on the launcher, and 8 spares.

Moving onto the armor, the Chaparral uses an adapted version of the M548 cargo carrier chassis, which means there is virtually no armor to speak of. This means that the Chaparral can be penetrated just by rifle-caliber machine guns. Because of the lack of armor, the Chaparral has a relatively low weight, which allows it to reach up to 61 km/h on paved roads, as well as being able to move smoothly off road.

4 crew members sit perfectly next to each other in the vehicle with their arms out to their front, hence the title reference! Look for the new Chaparral anti-aircraft missile system in the US and Israeli ground forces research tree after the release of the upcoming major update. Stay tuned, as we’re continuing to share news about the most interesting vehicles and features of the upcoming update “Sons of Attila”. See you!

You can greatly speed up the research of the Israeli Improved Chaparral with this premium pack:

Merkava Mk.2D Pack
Merkava Mk.2D Pack
The Kit Includes:
  • Merkava Mk.2D (Israel, Rank VI)
  • 2000 Golden Eagles
  • Premium account for 15 days
3 Likes

Shouldn’t this be named the M730 / -A1 / -A2 / -A3? The same way the Bradley ADATS is the XM1069

Also is the flight performance nerfs to the Stinger / Mistral ever going to be reverted, especially considering the MIM-72G is being withheld from the US version.

2 Likes

The stock missile being rear aspect only and the all aspect missile costing 13K RP is there for the sole sake of making people spend GE because damn that is painful in ground.
No matter which angle they approach the ground battle from there is no possible way for the stock machine to engage incoming aircraft before they’ve done their initial pass and hit allies.
Can that even lock heli’s?

1 Like

Will the Taiwanese one come someday as well?

3 Likes

Soo what is your excuse of not even mentioning Taiwan in the devblog on users list part?

Chaparral fits the 10.x range where no other Chinese AA can fit

2 Likes

ayyyee glad to see something i advocated years ago to be added, now if only the second part of my post was taken into consideration (the removal of the us adats) it would be great

now just add the m272 hawk for us and isreal and we would have a proper radar missile spaa for top tier

Take away the stock rear-aspect missile and drop the BR to 9.0
at 9.3 it’s going to be facing SU-25s all day long in a completely open vehicle with no mobility to speak of

1 Like

I feel a rear-aspect only missile at that tier SPAA is going to be pretty difficult to use, especially if the research of the all-aspect is going to take a lot of time. I’d suggest replacing the stock missile, with the MIM-72C - it is the MIM-72E but without the smokeless motor. Or at the very least, make the MIM-72C easily researchable

1 Like

Doctrinally, western SPAA rely on an external radar, while eastern SPAA tend to rely on a small onboard radar. But in the end, every nation in game must have similarly capable systems.

So either give all non-Russian nations a radar SPAA, whether ones that have an onboard one or a link to an external one, or remove Russia’s radar SPAA. Creating multiple standards for different nations is putting players off.

the LAV-AD could get its IRST radar that it shares with the Ozelot which would fill that niche I think?

wish it happened but for now I’m fine with living with this however limited the missiles are since it offers up more anti-air vehicle types for selection; while the ECCM seekers on the Israeli Chaparral offer a much needed bump in flare resistance I’d still get some use out of a 18-ish G SAM for the US

People are pretty blind anyways and if they’re eating Stingers they’ll probably kindly eat one of these missiles as well, with a better margin for error as well. Not the most perfect solution but eh good enough for now I suppose

Grinding Arcade is probably going to be the best idea since they don’t get countermeasures, and spotting is now restricted to only the person who called the airstrike in.

Recently played with my GerpardA1 with the stingers and i can tell you, both helicopters and planes get flares in GFAB, so good luck trying to get a lock on, in that very narrow window.

I’m a near-full RB player so I can’t say much for Arcade, so sorry if I can’t provide much in the way of proper comparisons.

However, RB generally tends to earn more RP and as a whole unless it’s a top tier vehicle (like actually 11.0+ range) I don’t struggle with modifications themselves that much and I’d also rather not try and intentionally play a mode I’m not even that fond of to begin with. In RB you don’t get markers which makes people tunnel vision quite commonly, so I’d much rather just do it in RB and get some use out of it as a plane deleter at moderate ranges (3-5km estimate)

I think that the new caged seeker is a major nerf and will significantly hamper this SPAA’s ability to effectively engaged targets…
It is just so pointless seeing that the air-launched variant of the MIM-72C has an uncaged seeker and the stinger equivalent of the MIM-72G seeker is also uncaged it just seems unreasonable, especially combined with the big nerfs to the missile’s maneuverability

@Stona_WT Since the Chaparral is getting missiles with dual seeker (IR + UV), does this mean, the Strela-10M2 will finally get its missile fixed and have the 2nd seeker channel added ?
Previously, it was mentioned by devs/mods, that the functionality is still not available.

Can I see what you used to change the IR seeker to 17° below the line of sight of the IR optics?

I find the biggest issue is that the turret is pointed much higher than the IR seeker, even though the IR optics on the chaparral are in line with the missiles AKA as it was in the first dev server