As much as I want the UK to be meta, throwing in weird One-Off’s into the tree to make the UK a horrible mishmash of nations with no consistancy beyond “They’re commonwealth” would be rough.
The choices we’ve got are:
Canada
Australia
South Africa
Britain Itself
These 4 nations alone, give ample amounts of vehicles to the tree and maintain the current precedent and make the tree look cohesive.
South African Mirage F1’s, Mirage IIIs
CF-18 or Australian F-18s.
Eurofighter Typhoon
Just this selection gives you an easy progression from early Gen 4 to Gen 4+
For ground, you don’t even really need extra nations. Britain’s got it covered.
For air, Tracked Rapier, RapidRanger, Stormer LMM, Blowpipe S.53, and with the final SPAA being Sky Ceptor.
The tree absolutely doesn’t need weird shit like Pantsyr or T-90s or F-15s.
I think we might be looking at a situation more similar to what seems to be happening w/ the Mitsubishi XF-2/F-2: rather than having plans for a reduced-capability variant to come first, they’ll hold off on it until it can come w/ full capability.
Yeah I agree. In air I dont even really think we need any of those.
Sea Harrier FA2 with a good set of AAMs gives us a 12/12.3
Harrier Gr9 after that gives a good progression on the Harrier Gr7 and is a good platform for Brimstone
Tornado Gr4 gives us a good platform for ASRAAM to be tested
Early Typhoon
Typhoon
I’d throw in a few BAE Hawks. Some options available for Britain, but also a lot of export models that might give different weapon laodout options and roles. Which is why I’d be open for export models.
I think F-18 could fit really well into the British tree because it would share the same missiles where as SA ones I think all used different missiles, like the Gripen I think is Python
Personally think we’re not far away from full AMRAAMs, R77’s and Gen 4+
With F-16C we now have the game’s first Gen 4+ Fighter. SMT is on the same level. I imagine the next steps will be getting comparables for other nations. Likely before the end of the year with the Gripen promised this year.
Yeah. The question isnt Britain, its Germany and Italy. Where Britain has options for Prototypes, I dont think there are for them. (or Something) But all 3 nations would HAVE to come together.
Pretty much why I made the comparison to the F-2: it still has the capability to come over-armed right now, but we might not actually be too far off from the intermediaries between what we have now and what would be on par w/ it in that configuration - which might explain why we aren’t seeing any indicators for it to be coming in an explicitly under-armed config.
The same might be happening to Eurofighter, but unlike the F-2 there 's been no mention of it of any kind - it 's probably further down the road than the Mitsubishi. Though it might not be too far off, overall.
I recently came into possession of a few more books about Soviet weaponry, so I think I’m going to do some digging into the OEPS-27 and the MiG-29’s analog, to understand the whole IRST complex on Soviet planes as a whole.
But as far as I understand, the VTAS was a HMS that aimed the seeker/radar/camera. I’m talking about the IRST itself tracking and passing data to the FCS and slaving the IR weapon/gun to the target that is acquired via IRST. To quote Ziggy “slave IR seeker without radar support”. Yes, the IRST can be commanded using the VTAS HMS, but on the MiG-29 it doesn’t need HMS to do this. Further, where is the IRST on the F-16?
My point is that the “sensor-fusion” is something that the West picked up after it had been exposed to the MiG-23/25/29, and something that didn’t exist in the same functionality until 1990 on the F-14, 2015 on F-15, and baked into the design of the F-35.
The devs on the Ru forums have confirmed already that Gripen is coming this year. So we can expect AMRAAM capable Gen 4/Gen 4+ Delta Wing aircraft this year.
The Gripen will be a multirole for Sweden. A theme Gaijin appears focussed on. The F-16C is a multi-role, the SMT a multirole, The Gripen will too.
With the way the dev streams spoke about AMRAAMs, it was explicitly stated we’e see changes to F-16Cs arsenal in an upcoming update where everyone gets them at once.
Therefore, i’m thinking we’ll see:
USSR get R77 on SMT
USA get AMRAAM on F-16C
Germany get Eurofighter, either full or DA.X. could also be given a MIG of some kind.
UK will get DA.2, Sea Harrier FA.2, Tornado CSP or EF2000.
Italy will get Eurofighter either DA or full EF.
Japan will get their F2 either limited or full.
China will get J-10
Sweden will get Gripen as promised
Israel will get a BVR capable F16
To quote the Brits, we’re taking the piss out of the idea that commonwealth is an acceptable alternative to either more careful foreign selections for the UK, or development, in-game, of more domestic designs.
By the logic used to justify the T-90S Bhishma, the UK really could actually get the MiG-29UPG and Su-30MKI. Both of which would be absolutely ridiculous.
Eurofighter ain’t happening before 13.0, but F-4F ICE with AMRAAMs will, and Italy can get Gripen C.
Japan won’t be getting F-2, and will be on F-15J without ARHs until BR 13.0, but F-15J can get AAM-5s, AKA the Japanese R-73, for 12.7.
That’s my thoughts.
Don’t forget the Yak-141 and J-8F, those are the ones we already have solid proof to expect MR-ARH on !
And, I think I saw something abt an Italian AV-8B+ being in the dev files somewhere upthread - it 's a candidate for this type of weapon too, if that 's true.