The 27 ER never dominated. All SARHs were trivial to defeat in the strong multipathing era. The AIM-9M was the missile that was dominating.
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The “stealth 27ER” is a bad meme.
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It was, undoubtedly, the singular best long range missile in the game for almost an entire year.
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It works.
The best long range missile at a time when BVR missiles were NOT META. The META was was ruled with an iron fist by close range fox-2 furballs because strong multipathing made all radar guided weapons toothless.
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This is an over exaggeration. IRCCM missiles were no doubt the meta but radar missiles were not “toothless”. They were effective in head-ons especially since IRCCM missiles are not effective at head-on aspect. Besides, the Flanker had the R-27ET which was and still is amazing if radar missiles aren’t your jam.
The R-77 isn’t the worst Fox-3 missile; the Israeli Derby and South African R-Darter are.
At least the R-77 is full-powered throughout its flight, unlike the high-altitude, extended-range trajectories of the Israeli and South African designs, which struggle to hit targets at either extreme of their range.
The problems faced by top Soviet aircraft are not just due to the missiles, but also the radars. N019 and N001 are simply garbage compared to NATO equivalents.
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They were toothless in that you could AFK your way into the merge. Their sole purpose was to punish anyone who took a gambit to try to climb above multipathing altitude to better position themselves within the fox2 furball.
The so called “stealth ER launches” are at best a novel parlor trick. They’re not a viable tactic for serious play and at best you’re just confusing new players that are looking for advice.
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Maybe on flat ground, you could probably only do this on Sinai.
This and not everyone had a perfect below 100m altitude. Terrain changes and some people aren’t in a perfect below 100m multipath zone. The R-27ER is a very fast accelerating missile and people sometimes don’t have the time to react.
It doesn’t matter. If it works in RB then its already a viable tactic. It doesn’t only work on “new players”, thats just your way of coping. Stealth ER tactic is also a way to force the enemy defensive early before they can even fire their AMRAAMs.
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R-27ER was OP but also SARH/ARH were too easy to dodge so we had to nerf multipathing.
It has an acceleration of 158m/s^2. This is better than the AIM-7F/M of 117, but worse than pretty much every other top tier SARH missile. Skyflashes for example have 181, and AIM-7E2 180.
Well yeah the Skyflashes have like 2.8s-3s booster time whereas the R-27ER has like 8s. Skyflashes are deadly within 4-5km and thats really it, beyond that they’re very easy to dodge a simple F-pole maneuver and its gone.
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If I could take 6x R77, 2x ET and 2X R73 it would be the perfect loadout.
If only you could take out 2 R-73s…
ERs have a 3.2s booster. Then it goes to a sustainer with less than half the thrust and around half the acceleration
Of course the ERs have high delta-v, but the claim of high acceleration was factually and objectively incorrect
I never claimed that the ER is the fastest accelerating missile, I just said its a “very fast accelerating missile” which is correct. 157m/s^2 for 3.2s is fast especially for a missile that has an additional sustainer, a sustainer of 26kN and its not “half of the acceleration”, its 93m/s^2 at the start of the sustainer. The ER also accelerates way beyond the max speed of the Skyflashes.
The Skyflashes aren’t even the fastest accelerating. The R-3R has a much higher acceleration at 230m/s^2, and the R-23R has an acceleration of 270m/s^2.
While the R27ER is the best SAHR missile back then, the multipath was also 100m not the 60m that we currently have, making them pretty easy to just ignore if you stayed low. This was represented by the meta back then as it was furballs every match with IR and IRCCM missiles, it was not a BVR match. Even the R24R at their respective BR wasn’t the best SAHR as that goes to the Aim 7F.
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But they were still very relevant. SAHRs were much better in the head-on vs IR missiles. SAHRs could also punish those trying to take advantage of altitude. You pretty much HAD to stay below 100m and that was difficult on maps with uneven terrain.
One tactic that made SAHRs extremely good was fly above 100m maybe like 500-1000m above ground, this meant the enemy flying below 100m had to point their plane up to lock on and fire their missiles or their missiles will hit the ground which made them an easy target while you can just dive and force their missile to hit the ground because of over lead and multipath.
The 7Fs were better for the most part but below 8km, the R-24R is much better. It has almost 2x the acceleration of the 7F and you can’t evade it unlike the 7F. Its also has a CW seeker so its not so chaff won’t work as well against it.
I just love how people will claim that the R-27ER was too overpowered when multi-pathing was 100m and it justified Russian planes have absolutely horrendous flight models and low countermeasure counts.
But now that Aim-120 is the best radar missile…that multi-pathing had to be reduced by 40 percent and that Russian planes still having horrendous flight models is still completely justified.
I don’t think the ER is OP. Its VERY strong but its balanced by the fact that the MiG-29 had R-60Ms, it would’ve been nicer if the MiG-29 instead got R-73s without IRCCM but that debate is old now.
When the Su-27 came out I genuinely believe that it was the 3rd best aircraft right behind the Gripen and the F-16C despite the shit FM because it could carry 10 missiles of which were R-73s, R-27ER/ETs the best loadout at the time paired with HMD/IRST.
Tbh I want the Flanker to get its correct FM, fixed R-77, and fixed IRST. But spreading misinformation by exaggerating to paint the picture that the Flanker/Fulcrum were bad and screaming “American Bias” is not the way to gain support.
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