This is just catagorically incorrect. Almost every missile but the R530s use CW seekers, which are immune to chaff. This isn’t hidden information or anything, it’s available on the wiki. Go ahead and find me a Sparrow with a pulse seeker head. I’ll wait.
These pulse seekers are why French SARH missiles (especially the R530F) are considerably worse than their counterparts in other nations.
It’s biggest flaw is the delta V. It’s a very slow missile that quickly burns it speed in manuevers and cannot generate it very efficiently. This gives it a much shorter range against manuevering targets, and once it stops burning it’s incredibly easy to outroll it as it haemorrhages it’s very little speed very quickly and stops pulling any reasonable amount of Gs.
It absolutely won’t force the enemy to go defensive. Unless you consider slightly pulling and dropping a single blob of countermeasures “defensive”. And doubly so if the F-4E has already fired an AIM-7E at you, which requires you to notch and/or multipath it to avoid.
Yes, there will be players who see a SARH being fired at them and notch because they don’t know they don’t need to. But planning to capitalize on the stupidity of your enemies is not generally a good plan.
It’s very rare for an A-10/Su-25/A-6E to climb to a height where the RADAR can lock them, and even if they do the second they see something approaching them they’ll just start throwing flares and chaff out like crazy. They have RWRs, they’ll know what you’re planning if you’re paying attention. Those flares are part of why the difference between 2 Magic 1s and 6 AIM-9Js is so large. Both are easily oneflared, so ultimately it just costs less when a XS fires one to check if they’re paying attention.
Besides, unlike the flareless subsonics that they victimized, the XS (and other supersonics) have relatively little difficulty avoiding the range of those all aspect missiles. They almost always fly in a nice, predictable pack, and as long as you don’t overcommit to a fight near them, they’ll never be able to catch you. There’s a reason I almost never die to them in the IIIC, even without countermeasures.
Because these planes generally don’t see missiles that would require an RWR to counter, the difference in minimal. The only SARH missiles they see at the tier are other R530s, R-3Rs and AIM-9Cs (With the occasional AIM-7D from F-4C players with a deathwish). None of these can be fired outside a range where you won’t be able to see them come in with plenty of warning, and none are hard to defeat with the amount of warning you get.
Yes, both get uptiered into more competant RADAR missiles where RWRs are useful, but in those situations you shouldn’t really ever be climbing to a height where they can hit you in the first place. There’s no point trying to joust with the R530, and the XS doesn’t even have any RADAR missiles to use. There’s no reason not to just hug the deck.
