If gps guided GBU-39s are all that are new on the F-15E and gimped brimstones and jdams are all that is new on the Gr.4 it feels like the Su-34 is the only real upgrade for it’s nation.
Of course we will have to wait for the stream and server to be sure.
Which was short-sighted in retrospect. ARM’s are still not a precision weapon, and were even worse 40 years ago. Soviet planes were also designed with FOD screens to take off from damaged runways.
Not an exact perfect counter, but MRAD is seriously lacking to this day, and something like SAMP/T and other weird semi-mobile AA is the only thing they could conceivably add.
I get being annoyed by the opportunity cost, but the modernized Hind really isn’t something worth bitching over. It’s so heavily modified that the chassis is about the only thing making it a Hind, and is far superior to vehicles like the Bison or Bisharma, which, to my understanding, are just Indian operated Russian vehicles with minor modifications at best.
I agree with this to an extent, copy paste vehicles should be done sparingly in tech trees to fill in holes where needed to complete a line up, and should have been put into service with the country in question.
That said, I don’t see why you draw the line at Eastern and Western tech of all things. Copy-pasting western vehicles across western nations does more damage to the uniqueness of trees then the cross pollination of East and West tech, as it is literal copy-paste, whereas vehicles that have basis from the other side aren’t all copy-paste, such as the heavily modernized Hind where almost everything Russian was removed.
Unlikely as there is no way the F-117 can maintain that high of a br. It’s subsonic, with no countermeasures or method of defending itself outside of dropping bombs and hoping that the tailing aircraft gets caught in the blast radius.
Well… there is always stuff like the HUMVEE that fires AMRAAM and Aim-9X
Its not just ARMs though, things like Cruise missiles like the Tomahawk to also consider
And UK and Germany are developing vehicles that fire ASRAAM and IRSI-T respectively. So they are being worked on. I still think in the event of the cold war going hot. The NATO plan would have worked well. These days, dont take this the wrong way and im not going to say more. The Russian dont really stand much of a chance.