Hard to believe it will be almost 4 years since then
Yeah, been a long time. When things like All-aspect IR missiles were unheard of
Vietnam yes, Gulf no.
Why? AMRAAMs and 4th generation jets. We got one piece of puzzle in the game but second piece is only being added with this next major update.
Rules of engagement change drastically with missiles like AMRAAM.
Also (obligatory “It’s Wiki”) if you look air engagements which happened in Gulf War, you’ll notice that number of aircraft usually never goes over 10 (combined)
Most often it’s a flight (three or four) of USAF/USN jets vs two Su-25 and two Mirage F.1s (example)
There were far more aircraft in Gulf engagements than people think.
Just as there were far more aircraft in WW2 engagements than movies and video games represent.
I think the only time aircraft were anywhere close to accurately represented were bombers during bomber raids.
But their fighter escorts were always missing.
You’re comparing apples and oranges here
Aerial combat in WW2 is VERY different than aerial combat in Gulf War.
Maybe there were in total but in the engagement itself, less aircraft participated in actual fights than in ARB with current settings (16v16)
At least to my understanding
16v16 is 4 squads of 4 aircraft, which is actually less than what fought in Vietnam engagements by a factor of over 4, and less than half of Gulf War engagements.
Then there’s the fact that squads [I’m not looking up the jargon militaries use] could be up to 5 aircraft.
You hear about the squad engagements most cause… well pilots are usually the ones writing and not their command, and the squads are usually over 10km apart, sometimes closer in V formations [Vietnam].
It all depends on the decisions of the pilots and command.
You’re forgetting that a) Gulf War was basically a one sided affair - apart from day 1, where the Iraqi Air Force scrambled (allegedly) around 120 aircraft to intercept. Not to mention that you had strike aircraft coming from Turkey, hundreds of aircraft launching from bases in the Gulf, and plenty more off flattops in the Gulf itself, which meant that Iraq, a (mostly) landlocked country a couple hundred kilometres wide, now played host to an encirclement on three sides. As well as, to put it bluntly, Uncle Sam and his pals ruining every Saddam Insane’s day (here be my Jarhead reference) for around 6 weeks by flattening everything that looked vaguely military.
Quickly chalk up how many actual air to air kills were there in Gulf War 1?
A grand total of… 37 confirmed. Over the entire course of the war. Which was a touch over a month. Bearing in mind only one of those was actually Coalition. The vast majority of Iraqi airpower that was capable of air-to-air action was destroyed on the ground, or fled to Iran.
(at least according to this, the maximum destroyed on a single day was 6 aircraft. Air-to-Air Victories in Desert Storm)
You’ve also got to bear in mind that Iraq was using a fairly (at least on paper) well integrated radar system, and the Coalition with AEW support, that basically meant everyone had a much larger Situational Awareness than here in WT. Obviously from the start of an intercept, a Pilot wouldn’t necessarily be aware of an aircraft’s presence… which for the most part is the case in WT, thanks to the map sizes and capability of radars.
I suppose what I’m arguing for is slower paced gameplay, with more focus given to positioning pre-intercept and fuel weapons management. While I can definitely appreciate its much more fun and entertaining for some to play 16v16 cupboard sized map gameplay, it would seem that there is a not insignificant amount of people who don’t want to do that.
For my benefit could you name an instance where that’s the case? My understanding is a lot of Vietnam engagements were purely CAP/Escort flights engaging enemy fighters intercepting US Strike/Bomber aircraft, though I’d gladly be proven wrong, as because I’m a Brit I’m quite frankly not in the know with Vietnam.
The word you might be looking for might be flights. Also who runs 5-ship flights? Because I’ve only ever heard of 4-ships, though that’s a NATO thing from what I know.
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Depends on days and missions,…
Irak war, and Desert storm saw missions with 8+aircrafts
Maybe the pinnacle is the 83 aircrafts striking Bagdad, during Operation Desert Storm (3rd day of Desert Storm)
The key difference though. Is that in WT. Even in Sim, you are taking off within the combat zone.
Vietnam, Gulf war, Afghanistan. Etc. You’d take off in one area and travel to the combat zone (A distance so far for OP Granby that even with external tanks, Tornados had to tank on the way in both directions)
In Sim, you take off, and begin to climb, in aircraft like the Tornado F3, you almost immediately begin tracking targets. With ARH you are almost immediately within theoretical firing ranges and you may not have even retracted your landing gear yet.
(ARB is even smaller)
Thats the difference.
Whilst 128 x 128km is probably fairly realistic for a CAP station or CAS station for many modern aircraft. They’d likely transit into and out of the zone for things like taking off and landing. This is where bigger maps are needed or smaller teams.
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it’s also worth nothing they were tanking with the 2250 litre tanks. The Hindenburg ones. not the 1500 litre ones iirc.
Not almost, you are. Under ideal circumstances, given where you are within the map, you are within firing range. Just there’s the small problem of you all start on the deck, not 35,000ft. Otherwise Phoenix would actually be in range.
Didnt actually know they were using the really big tanks. Thought jsut the standard. So yeah, damn really far
You’ve also got the small issue of some aircraft were firing Tomahawks (yes B-52s I’m looking at you). Missiles that’d have the range to go from one end of the map to the other and still wouldnt be out of fuel.
I really hope we get Storm Shadows at somepoint. and they’d be able to hit cross map on a 256x256 map I think
But yeah. Its about time we get a bigger map. Above about 10.7 ish. they feel too small
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to be honest at any BR where you start going supersonic or have SARHs (exceptions for the AIM-7C/D, AIM-9C and R-3R) they start to get too small.
The only reason this isn’t a problem is a) multipathing being a hard counter to Radar Guided missiles, and b) people not going for altitude due to there being a horrible imbalance in Radar Guided weapons capability (R-27ER i’m looking at you mostly, with a sprinkling of AIM-54 Phoenix)
Which is fine, but, it gets very boring after a bit to repeat a bit of “hug the floor, shoot missiles, miss, shoot more missiles, kill, repeat, profit”
There’s also the small matter of Ground Targets being very monotonous and difficult to strike (I mean, most strike groups tend not to be very effective when you’re having to fly through contested airspace to attack your targets)
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Yeah, the floor hugging is really boring. Why i’ve been playing so much 10.3 recently. You can sit at some alt safely.
But doing some Tornado F3 recently in Sim. And was basically defending before i’d reach max speed.
yeah, Id love an overhaul of ground targets to attack in SB. Bigger maps would help with that
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they won’t reduce the number of players per side too much because then their stupid EOMM wouldn’t be able to properly balance the teams so it wouldn’t be possible to limit the too fast progress of better players.
money money money
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I want to be positive about this, but am highly skeptical due to how uncommon night battles (another optional toggle) are. Maybe it will be more common? Or just use this suggestion, since it just appears odd to have the option for (maybe) smaller teams instead of having the option for (maybe) bigger teams.
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Operation Bolo is one of the very limited examples of high number of fighters in one area, though that was by design for an ambush. Read up on that one, it is very entertaining. Keep in mind, this was an exception, not the norm. What you mentioned is basically how it was in Vietnam.
For a modern day example, here’s how some Red Flag exercises go. It’s a 2v12, after 7 minutes the 2 aircraft win.
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If those are introduced, they’d be fired at stealth aircraft, which wouldn’t be anywhere close to 200km range.
storm shaddow is anti ground. not anti air.
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