I’ve had enough. We need to talk about the current state of top-tier ARH (Active Radar Homing) combat, specifically the “Anti-Ballistic Missile” (ABM) meta that’s completely killing the game’s skill ceiling.
Right now, if you’re flying an F-15, Su-30SM2, or any top-tier jet, you don’t even need to notch or perform defensive maneuvers anymore. If you see 3-4 AMRAAMs or R-77-1s coming at you head-on, you just spam your own missiles back. 90% of the time, your missiles will “intercept” the incoming ones mid-air.
Why this is a massive problem for War Thunder:
Zero Realism compared to DCS/BMS: In any actual flight sim like DCS or Falcon BMS, hitting a missile with another missile is a “one-in-a-million” fluke. It’s almost impossible due to high closure speeds (Mach 4+) and the tiny cross-section of a missile. In WT, it’s a reliable defensive tactic. Seeing a Su-30 fly in a straight line and swat away 5 AMRAAMs with its own R-77s is pure arcade BS.
Seekers are “Magic”: ARH seekers are designed to lock onto a massive aircraft, not a tiny, fast-moving missile. In-game, the seekers prioritize incoming missiles as if they’re primary targets. This shouldn’t happen.
The Death of Tactics: Why bother learning the “Crank,” “Notch,” or “Barrel Roll” when you can just out-spam the enemy? It turns tactical BVR (Beyond Visual Range) combat into a “who has more missiles” clicker game. It rewards zero-skill gameplay where you just fly straight and click.
What Gaijin needs to do:
We need to drastically nerf the seeker’s ability to lock onto small-caliber munitions (missiles). Intercepting a missile should be a 5-10% luck-based event, not a 90% guaranteed “Shield.” If we don’t fix this, top-tier will remain a circus where whoever spams more Fox-3s wins, regardless of positioning or pilot skill.
Some might say that air-to-air missiles actually intercept drones and cruise missiles in the Ukraine.
Possibly. But cruise missiles are fairly large and slow targets, while drones are very slow and unwieldy. An usial FOX3 A-A missile flies much faster, and a fast target is much harder to intercept than a slow one. Otherwise, NASAMS/Patriot missles would be intercepting Zircon/Kinzhal/Iskander and Oreshnik missles en masse, but we don’t see that happening.
Anyone else tired of getting “Missile Collided” three times in a row instead of an actual kill? Let’s push this to the devs.
The problem lies on the fact War Thunder completely lacks any type of radar frequency mechanic, which undermines any type of real filter on what the radar shows to you.
In the end, a team of Su-30s can throw a salvo of 6 missiles each and mechanically you wouldn’t be able to fire back because your radar would be literally overrun by scanned —and inaccurately read— threats.
but at the same time missiles are used to shutdown ballistic/cruise missiles and drones in RL
so i dont really know what to believe
yes a missile is small and fast which means it should light up like a xmas tree on pd radar and proxy fuse exists
but on the other side there is argument that missiles are used to kill planes so its more a shrapnel shell good against planes not so much against small targets
and RL isnt much help either given the total lack of large scale air to air combat
and current events are not really helping because Ukraine is stuck with 13.0-12.7 soviet airplanes(besides the f16ns they got later) and we all know how good those radars are
umm small and fast means is would be significantly less likely to be seen not the opposite, not really sure how that got mixed up.
aam are also significantly smaller and have almost no rcs compared to a cruise missile
modern missiles use a continuous rod they shouldn’t have any issues
also current events for air combat don’t just include one war, f35s were literally uninterrupted over tehran and American 40yo stealth technology is somehow still superior to the best aaa terrorist money can buy (from Russia)
Honestly Israel is the best American arms marketing team ever
It is rather absurd that some jets (Su-27 and 30 are the biggest offenders) can just shoot enemy missiles down and basically become immune to counterattack.
Only the most advanced radar/IR seekers should be capable of locking and tracking missiles anyway. ASTER 30, IRIS-T, MICA are the only ones I know of that are advertised as actually capable of locking up small missiles at sufficient distance to intercept them. Others would probably need a larger weapon (Phoenix or Fakour 90 sized probably) before they can see it from far enough away to intercept.
But we also definitely need smaller team sizes for top tier. At the absolute worst it’s possible to end up with an enemy team that can launch something like 12*16 missiles (or 12² missiles if you have the smaller matches option actually work) at once and that’s just far too much in the air to actually deal with.
Their radars can definitely warn themselves of incoming missiles (at least for su-30)
Shoot them down? That’s a different issue, but r77 seekerhead/similar ones has a lock on range of 2 km for a 0.001m^2 target or something like that, so if host radar is data linking missile in it can prolly intercept it.
Not advocating for it, I think it’s dumb and ruins gameplay, but it’s certainly possible. After all eventually top tier is going to be just shooting down missiles/just clicking a button to kill people, just look at how everybody wants unflarable next gen ir missiles which will nuke everyone once you get within 10km of someone.
As well as actually being able to shoot down incoming munitions. (Like it’s advertised)
8 (EF, Rafale) vs 12 (F-15C GE, Su-30SM2) doesn’t seem entirely balanced for keyboard-smashmaxxing, I believe Gaijin should look forward on removing missiles fake RCS, at least for the current meta, as you’re explicitly giving an advantage to missile busses to just dictate through missile count, not even positioning.
I mean stuff like rafale had free reign over old meta due to its advantages. I don’t see issue with the current meta considering there are many planes in sim that have enjoyed continual domination for months.
Before it was rafale, now it’s rafale, euro and the missile busses.
This is just another meta, that’s only been exasperated now because now almost all nations got a top tier aesa instead of just 2-3 nations
