I believe the Yak-130 deserves a balance adjustment, particularly in Ground Realistic Battles. Its combination of four TV-guided bombs and strong flight performance makes it extremely effective as CAS.
Player-reported statistics from June 2026 also suggest that it significantly outperformed the A-4E in ground kills per battle, although these figures should be treated cautiously.
I understand that the Yak-130 lacks countermeasures, RWR and air-to-air missiles. However, these weaknesses do not completely offset its ground-attack capabilities.
I believe Gaijin should consider increasing its Ground RB Battle Rating or limiting its guided-bomb loadout. The goal should not be to make the aircraft useless, but to create a fairer experience for ground players.
There’s a reason the Yak-130 is so popular. Having KAB-500Kr guided bombs at 9.7 on an already capable aircraft is ridiculous. A lot of SPAA at that BR struggle to deal with it, and there’s barely anything they can do when it’s dropping guided bombs from a distance. It definitely deserves a BR increase.
That makes it DoA. The KABs can only be dropped in range of CAS as they barely lock at 3km and they also dont fly very far even compared to Walleye. At 10.0 you have 8-10km SPAA that can kill the Yak way outside its KAB range.
They moved it up from 9.3 to 9.7… AND moved down a lot of good / decent CAS and CAP aircraft.
The fact that the J-7D and Chinese F-5A are at 9.7 is incredible.
The fact that the Su-22M3, Su-22UM3K, and Su-25 are also 9.7 is even more incredible.
This should be applied to all the guided weapon carriers, not only the Yak-130, you have the A-4E at 9.3 with 2x walleyes on the USA one, 2x walleye ERs and a GBU-8 and the ability to carry it’s AIM-9s with the A2G loadout in the Israeli one and both have RWR and CMs and while their FM is worse then the Yak they are far from bricks.
At 9.7 with the Yak you have the Swiss hunter with 2x mavericks, again with RWR and CMs.
At 10.0 already you have the Ayit with 2x walleye ERs and 3x mavericks along with RWR and CMs. and AIM-9D/ Shafrir 2 missiles A FAR better load out then the Yak
the KAB-500s don’t have much glide capability, they don’t glide in like walleyes and especially the ERs, never mind the mavs.
So while the Yak could stand to go up, there is a lot of other stuff that would need to go up too.
ahh yes, just see those M-247 HEVT stealth belts with you eyes, why didn’t I think of that!
Even engaging them with the Type 93 they can usually only roll the 1st and sometimes the 2nd missile, then you slam down the gas into the tree line you parked next to LOS the bomb.
Sure, you can dodge some missiles with a barrel roll, but that doesn’t change the fact that it has no countermeasures. I’m not saying the Yak-130 shouldn’t go up in BR, because it definitely should. Its CAS capabilities are way too strong for 9.7. I’m just pointing out that the aircraft still has its weaknesses.
It will also get uptiered to 11.0 if it goes to 10.0. There are already few dead planes like AMX or TRAM that got raised and that completely killed them.
The A-4 Yak-130 meme? Do you have the latest version?
Unfortunately the whole CAS BR structure would need to be reworked given what’s already at higher BRs.
Germany, they have R-60s at 9.0 and R-60MKs at 10.3, well within the Yak-130s BR range.
10.3/10.7 on A-10s, 9.7 on Tornado IDS
not really, you wait until the yak noses down into the attack run and are using the targeting optic, they never see it coming. usually in the A-4 you pop auto CM in that phase to mess with the radar (or IRST on that Chinese AHEAD SPAA), the A-4 (especially the Israeli one with ERs) can also glide the walleyes in better meaning they don’t need to over fly the target and dive on it as much which helps too.
And again, 10.0 already has the Ayit with mavericks, the Yak-130 can go up, but only if we stop pretending it’s the only OP guided weapons carrier causing problems at those BRs.
German Mig-21s too regular R-60s on SPS-K @ 9.0, MF @ 9.7 and R-60MK on the bis-SAU/ LAZUR-M @ 10.3