Lets talk about the CAS history

Game Discussion General Discussion
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Basically, I want to have a timeline of what the top OP CAS was. Along with the sams they faced and such. (Mainly OP at the time) (Also just for Ground RB/Sim)

(Been seeing alot of post’s talkin about cas and just generally want to remember what was hated during those times)

Example: The top cas that was generally OP was:
(Can’t remember that well with new and sub nations added)

Spoiler

USA: FJ-4B VMF with 5 AGM-12’s (2014ish), F89 (2016), and maybe a10-A Late (2021) when introduced.
germ: Cant remember
USSR: Mig-27K, Su25
Brit:
Jap: Kikka?
China:?
Italy:Can’t remember
France:Mirage 2kD
Swed:AJ-37
Israel:?

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I would like to login the G.91 R/3 for Germany
And the G.91 R/4 for Italy
Back when Nords were actually usefull and had nearly 30kg TNT

For RU you could add the Su-30 and Su-34

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there are videos of nords being fired off the runway, and using the bomb-following view guided all the way to the battlefied, idk when thats from though.

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That was not the Nord, but the Bullpup of the FJ-4B VMF

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Here’s the thing: Germany and most other nations don’t have strong CAS like Russia and America. Even the German equivalent to the Yak 9 sadness is still nothing. If you want a list of strong CAS, all you have to do is look at who gets American equipment and who gets Russian equipment. Heck, even the best CAS at low tier is mainly just American planes in other tech trees/premiums because they get 2,000 pounders. Top tier is the same story: AGMs for all of America’s buddies, and now Kh-38s (to an extent, Kh-29s are good too on the Su-22)

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We gets guided missiles in 2018.

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For Britain.

Jaguar GR1A was and still pretty strong for the BR. With one of the first Thermal + Tracking Tpods and 2x GBUs. Which it got around mid 2022 iirc. Its only the more recent SAMs that have started to threaten it a lot more.

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Vikhr slingers till the limit of the guided missiles has been introduced.

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Let’s see, GBU CAS was OP from 2022 to early-mid 2024 in general.
IR AGM CAS obviously in the modern era until next major.
Israel, USA, France, Soviets. Gripen and F-16s with IR AGMs get a mention as well.

Before all the laser and IR guided weapons?

I don’t want to say Bullpups were OP cause nothing has changed since when they allegedly were and right before Stinger launchers were added. Then again I started maining those BRs in early 2019 when SPAA was prevalent.

The first instance of objectively OP CAS for me was Jaguar GR1A and Mig-27K, then CAS would power creep to thermal pods, and those would rule the skies into 2024 before Pantsir buffs made GBUs too hard to use.

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The damn GR.1A can go A2A with the bombs, something I find beyond hilarious. Same with the A and its AS-30Ls

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6.3/8.0 : Strikemaster Mk.88 is a good CAS vehicule from BP.

Can we putt Landcaster ? #12000lbs

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Forgot about the Lancaster, but that is also a relatively speaking new addition and came ages after the Pe-8

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  • JDAM Arado: Bombers did not lose their 3rd person targeting marker in RB, until the Ar 234 was abused en masse (external pylon bombs meant there was no delay with the bomb dropping unlike other strategic bombers with a bay). Wasn’t uncommon to spawn a T95, finally arrive at the battle just in time for the Arados to bomb you.

  • German WW2 A-10s: Not sure why German CAS has such a bad rep the whole time when MK-103s with HVAP were lethal, Do-335 B-2s shredded tanks and the Me-262 A-1/U4 Pulkzerstörer one tapped any tank. Honestly a squad of Do-335 B-2s has been the only time I have seen CAS decidedly swing a game in lower tiers.

  • Nuclear Rockets: British RP-3 rockets have large warheads, they were also really innaccurate, until a global patch increased the accuracy for all rockets and sent the RP-3 over the edge, you could kill Heavy Tanks with near misses. The HVAR was also made insanely powerful as top tier Cl-13/Sabres could wipe half a team

  • Pe-8: For some reason Gaijin patched the FAB-5000 to ignore all terrain and buildings for a while, combined with the tiny maps it wasn’t uncommon for a Pe-8 to blow up half of the lobby (getting kicked out of the game for teamkills in the process).

  • TV guided Bullpup: Shortly after the FJ-4B VMF was introduced an interesting “bug” meant you could use the missile tracking camera to follow the Bullpup while guiding it, even from the Airfield which used to be much closer to the battle.

  • “Valkyries”/Helicopters on intro: No Launch windows, no ATGM range limits, no real SPAA to counter it as Radars hadn’t been modeled (just an Arcade lead indicator to anything within 2km). The helicopter meta was to simply fly over the battle field at ~3km alt and rain missiles. Not much the opposing team could do until someone spawned a plane (and it was the hard counter as no Helis had AAMs yet). Also the one time the Mi-4AV was cheese; because it was a much lower BR it was possible to bring it into top tier games with ATGMs as a first spawn.

  • “Locked On” and the 2S6 Tunguska: “but that’s an SPAA…” I hear you say, yes you are right, it was also the only SACLOS SAM introduced that update and made the Mi-35M completely untouchable unless there was someone playing Italy and had an OTOMATIC.

  • The Vikhr: Fastest Heli-borne missile, Air Proxy, outranged everything that wasn’t an ADATS, doubled up as a Helicopter APS when gaijin added missile collision, made top tier unplayable when Helicopters could 1st spawn with ATGMs in RB. Also to anyone following Thunderskill it gave USSR a 100% W/R in Sim for years. Totally healthy addition to the game and totally isn’t still one of the best, if not the best Helicopter missile in the game.

  • S-13 Rush:

  • Nord Spam: Basically made 8.7 miserable as G.91 R/3/4s could sweep teams and radar AA couldn’t really do anything to counter it, as pilots could still guide the plane and missile at the same time. Bullpups were just as powerful, but everyone remembers the Nords because as soon as Germany gets anything good it gets massively abused into it gets nerfed into being useless (8.3 Puma anyone?).

  • Orbital MiG: Yes, while there was the tripartite of cheese with the MiG-27K, Jaguar A and Harrier GR.7 the latter 2 had serious drawbacks; you were playing Britain or France at top tier. Climb into space, no radar could pick you up because you were outside of search angles and no contrails. After a few minutes into the game you would just randomly explode with no warning. Vikhrs were still outrageous at this time too, really beginning the trend of USSR having consistently the best CAS at top tier (USSR Helis also covered the CAS gap in Night Battles, which were random and more or less shut off Mavericks and made the MiG-27K not as good).

  • Drone Age: Strike Drones would originally spawn above radar search angles as well as instantly within range of the whole battle and only cost around 500-550SP. Rather annoying. Not really tied to any nation in particular, but the MQ-1 was the best.

  • Su-25 Pingu-rocket spam: not as complained about but I’ll mention it, 8 CCIP rocket-propelled bombs on a platform that could tank multiple SAMs (especially Stingers) with it’s face. Pretty much the only reason the Roland systems and TY-90 platforms were uptiered.

  • Kh-38: Kind of an ongoing thing, not sure what the complaints are about tbh, not like it outranged opposing SPAA 3-4x over or anything.

Might have missed a few things but think I got the main stuff.

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