Why is it that the Su22M3 shares the battle rating with the Su-22M4 WTD61? It seems clear that the syrian attacker is clearly worse, and by quite a large margin. The M3 gets less countermearsures, less turn rate and climb rate, and lacks some of the armaments that its more advanced german counterpart has. Not only that, the M3 is actually .3 br higher in Air RB. The only redeeming quality of the squadron version of the Fitter is that it has a slightly faster top speed, but I don’t think it makes much of a difference.
Let’s talk numbers and specifications:
Max speed: M3 - 2190kph | M4WTD - 2052
Turn time: M3 - 28.1 s | M4WTD - 27.0
Rate of climb: 142 m/s | M4WTD - 190 m/s
Countermearsure amount: M3 - 12 | M4WTD - 256+12
Has Kh29T’s: M3 - No | M4WTD - Yes
It is apparent that the Su-22M3 is way worse. Just the lack of countermearsures on the squadron Fitter makes it a sitting duck at 11.3 Air RB. In ground RB, things aren’t much better. The missing Kh-29T forces the pilot to stay dangerously to the ground , exposing the plane to fire from AAA and other dangers of flying low.
The Su-22M4WTD61 is in all ways a better aircraft. In air battles, it can engage both ground and air targets AND still dogfight without much care for running out of flares. In ground, one can stay up high out of effective range of SPAA or at least have more time to react to incoming missiles.
Now, there can be quite a few solutions to this problem:
A - Moving the Su-22M3 down in battle rating
B - Giving the Su-22M3 more flares (has been discussed a billion times, still think that it’s not a bad idea to give it the tail root flare thingys) + the Kh-29T like the one on the Su-17m4 and the Su-22m4
I’m sure there are more ideas that you have, so please tell what can gaijin do to fix the problem or just your opinion on the topic.
