This confirms for me that you are experiencing a placebo effect. AIM-7M and AIM-7P are exactly the same missile kinematically.
I already showed you how much faster R-27ER is than AIM-7F/M/P.
Saying AIM-7F/M/P is insanely fast puts a smile on my face. You are either under a severe placebo effect or you haven’t used any of the top tier Fox 3s, or both.
The most likely to win is a Gripen or F-16A Block 10.
Yes of course, you do need to factor them in, but you can’t make one side rely on them.
You just don’t understand how important the missile’s kinematics are for Fox 1 combat. It’s all about who hits who first. If you hit the enemy first by like a second, that’s already enough. His radar is destroyed and his missile doesn’t track you anymore.
If you start notching in Fox 1 combat, you lost the BVR part of the engagement. The enemy doesn’t have to notch, since you decided to notch and your missile doesn’t track anymore. The enemy can just launch another missile and another one to keep pressuring you, until he gets on your six for free, because you were forced to notch the entire time he was pushing you.
It’s not just about the range, but kinematics overall. It’s about speed, drag and energy retention. You can’t outpull a 30 G missile, so it’s all about if it has enough energy to reach you and still be hard to outpull, even if you’re maneuvering and draining its speed.
The difference between Super 530D and AIM-7M is smaller, but still quite big, so yes, a Mirage is not likely to win a BVR engagement against AIM-7M.
During the Fox 1 meta, R-27ER was the best missile, then a huge gap in performance, then AIM-7F/M, then another big gap in performance, and then all the other missiles.
Just for scale:
Kfir? Sure, but it has only 2 Fox 3s, it lacks the combat endurance to maintain air superiority.
F-14? The IRIAF one, yes. The standard ones? No. I already showed you just how much faster R-27ER is than AIM-54s.
The game is unplayable right now (someone should be fired for this update), your results don’t matter.
No it doesn’t. F-18 is a very good plane, but it’s not good at everything lmao. That plane would be a Gripen A.
It’s slow, its turn rate isn’t the best, it doesn’t retain speed well, basically a completely unsuitable airframe for BVR. AIM-9Ls are much better than R-60Ms, but also much worse than R-73s or Magic 2s. AIM-7M/P is a good missile, especially the P, but it’s much worse than R-27ER.
Also F-16 and F-15 have better radars if I remember correctly, but I’m not sure.
I assume that by everything you simply mean a digital RWR, a working radar and good flight model on top of that.
Gripen comment
There was never a Gripen without AIM-120s irl. Gripen A should be removed from the game or be basically a copy paste of the C version.