FWIW, A lot of the decent top tier players that I have watched have mentioned that while no HMD is a negative, it’s not that big of a deal. So I’d classify HMD as non-important.
That being said, @Morvran while Japan got a new SAM, it’s a sidegrade to the existing one as it still lacks range that is needed to actually make ARHs useful. It’s also missing plenty of features like IR datalink and LOAL. I think they should still be frontrunner for a new SAM like the Type 03 or at the very least, fix the current issues that it has (as well as the buggy stuff in general that TADS/TEL vehicles are plagued with).
I’ll have to take your word on that as I haven’t played SIM yet. Though, I’d think SIM would be ideal place for using vertical ACM as a stand in for HMD as I’d imagine you’d have more secluded dogfights like in GRB.
Saying Japan got something with the Type 81 TADS is like giving a C&P ADATs to Britain with a buggy CAPTOR-M and saying they got something lol. The only good feature for the TADS right now is the ability to basically spawn 2 SPAA and them being able to maddog ARHs. There’s no point to using the radar when all it does is alert CAS outside of your range.
I assume you mean to actually target as the ACM itself is super fast (some would say too fast when you’re trying to change modes and there’s targets in front of you)
dont know why they didnt add sky sabre or GRIFO last update, the iLauncher is pretty much the exact same as the IRIS-T SLM (pretty sure CAMM iLauncher is capable of launching iris-t).
They wouldn’t even need to add the radar because it is in theory able to work standalone with the IRST module
It should be, but it doesn’t work. IRL the SPYDER AiO has 4 seperate radars, but ingame it only has one functioning one and the other 3 almost act as fake radars on the radar screen. It’s obviously a bug, but one that has yet to be fixed.