The purpose of the modifications had little to do with hit rate and more to do with new guidelines for potential targets such as low flying cruise missiles. Development of the monopulse seeker also made it possible to enhance other qualities like look down and ECCM.
The warhead was more than sufficient, the increase was made as a response to more agile maneuvering fighter targets and larger size of bombers among other things.
The R-27 like all missiles requires weekly maintenance and inspection. Poor foreign nations who could not maintain their missiles essentially had to use them or lose them, with most ending up doing the latter.
The USA is one of the few countries that can consistently use their equipment week after week in endless training cycles and still afford to maintain them, and we at least have the facilities to do so … some of those nations equipped with R-27E didn’t have any facilities at all.
Sad that the goat missile maybe getting a nerf, but it’s for the better of the game
Probably not getting “nerfed” - even if they choose to make such an arbitrary change without sufficient evidence it is currently underperforming as it should reach peak G load at much lower speeds than it does currently and the turn radius should be nearly halved at lower speeds.
It’s just odd, I will probably not be reporting because I’m too lazy (I would have to go wayyy more into detail in the bug report of how mechanestically it uses dual plane guidance… plus I don’t trust myself with Russian bug reports because I completely mis interpreted my last Russian bug report due to translate gone wrong). Maybe a native Russian speaker can do it but I will probably not
I also had this feeling that if you were to report it and went in to detail about
It would get insta slapped with: Not a bug
First, dont you think theres a lot of guesswork in that? even numbers in reports have logic behind them, Ill explain… Stick with me bros :D !
[[[[[ AIM-7M ]]]]]
in 1991 during the Gulf War, considering all the reliable sources we have public access to, like documents, documentaries, the usa’s own defense forces, magazines, books, and interviews with those involved, 71 to 76 AIM-7M sparrows were fired and they shot down 22 (<-- oficial USAF source) to 28 +1/2 not confirmed Iraqi fighters over seven weeks.
Important: most of the shots were against mig 25s and the estimates varies between the source and the year of publication.
that estimate lines up pretty well with what Kizvy says:
So we really can say the sparrow showed good availability and reliability, but other factors weighed way more, like better pilot training and a huge edge in tech, infrastructure, support, and intel info, total air supremacy, and finally the low morale of the Iraqi pilots who already knew they were beaten.
now lets look at some descriptions of the engagements below (ofc all with 7M):
1- “Two mirage f1s at low altitude carrying exocet missiles were shot down by saudi f15s, the first shot was around 20 km, the other f1 could have counterattacked with matra super 530 missiles at about 10 km but got taken down by the wingman with a sparrow too.” (in this specific case the mirages were flying pretty low, briefly losing part of their situational awareness to react to the shot).
2- “In one of the few air combats three migs were shot down at 14, 10, and 6km. a pair of mig25s were attacked by four f15s and one of the migs was shot down at about 9 km.”
Now lets take a closer look at a third engagement.
Starting with the american doctrine was all about flying high and never attacking when outnumbered, once the requirements for an attack were met, the goal was to saturate the targets situational awareness with long range shots from multiple different directions and then make a safer, more careful approach, when closer thats when the missiles would be most effective, because by then the target would have already lost a lot of situational awareness, good positioning, and their aircrafts speed.
You can see this in what was the first kill of the gulf war and supposedly the one with the longest ballistic path for the AIM 7M, pulled off by Capt. Jon “JB” Kelk flying his f15c who shot down a mig29, the exact launch distance wasnt officially released but its believed to be the longest, with a distance around 25 to 30km from the target since the explosion and destruction of the target was confirmed at about 15 to 16km away.
when we see this part of the report it almost sounds a bit optimistic, because that’s how its told by the winner, but lets look at the conditions:
Capt. Kelks f15c wasnt alone. He was flying in a flight of four f15cs, callsign pennzoil 61 to 64. Kelk was number 3, “pennzoil 63,” leader of the second element, the full flight was:
pennzoil 61: Capt. Rick “Kluso” Tollini (flight lead).
pennzoil 62: Capt. Larry Pitts (lead’s wingman).
pennzoil 63: Capt. Jon “JB” Kelk (second element lead).
pennzoil 64: Capt. Mark Williams (63’s wingman).
it was a 1v4 where the mig 29 couldnt really do much, flying low and disoriented against f15cs with the advantage in quantity, altitude, speed, and training.
Most of the other long range kills followed the same strategy with launch distances averaging 20 to 10km… this shows that when the final shot was made, the american pilots were really aware and used to their weapons and were getting the most out of what the missile could do.
This is where a lot of people get confused about a missiles real capability, because they link its ability to kill a fast, maneuverable target to its max launch range (for the AIM 7M thats 100 km), the sparrow had that crazy launch range for a fox 1 back then exactly to fit the american A2A strategy, but that doesnt mean the missiles gonna fly exactly 100 km and kill a target, like we saw above, at best after a long chase it could take down a mig29 or mig23 at 25 to 20 km, with the targets already slow and clueless about the situation, and a lot of times before dying to the sparrow they do just crash into the ground because of the wild maneuvers and insane speeds they had to pull off, sometimes just dozens or even a few meters above the ground…
(its actually funny seeing people in war thunder firing shots with the premium f18c from 40km away with a 7M (important detail: ((in an f18))), thinking theyre gonna frag the target lol.)
[[[[[ R-27 ]]]]]
Its kinda unfair to talk about the missile like that and generalize everything because it makes it sound like the missile was terrible, but lets give it some context, just like I did with the sparrow…
At least in the Eritrea~Ethiopia war in 99 to 2000, when you look at the raw data, the R 27 up to that point actually seemed negative, there were about 24 to 29 shots (sources, 24: ACGI, 29: Defense express).
The only kill with the R27 in that war was by a Su27s/ub (the exactly varian is unknown) flown by russian mercenaries, the target was a mig29 that got hit, the aircraft was badly damaged and crashed while trying to land.
In this case the russian mercs were supposedly experienced VVS pilots flying for Ethiopian, and apparently they complained a lot about the maintenance the Ethiopians did on the R27s, the R27 was considered efficient and reliable for its generation, but it turned out to be sensitive to handling and needed well trained teams and excellent infrastructure to operate and maintain. Even the ussr/russia, who made the missile had some trouble keeping it up, so imagine countries like Vietnam, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran and so on… these countries didnt even have the tech teams to do their own maintenance over time, in those rough places the missile was sensitive to dust and humidity, showing that even storing the weapon was harder for them, and that explains a lot what happened in Africa and in some middle eastern countries.
In other countries with more resources, even with less than ideal operation R27 has a relatively higher hit rate per shot. Heres the Examples:
1- On the night of January 17, 1991, Captain Khudair Hijab from the Sixth Squadron (flying a mig 29) damaged an F111F, the last of a flight of three, with an R60MK, a few minutes later Hijab hit a B52G with an R27R that landed in Jeddah, with the pilots saying it was damaged by a SAM.
Even though these arent the same kind of targets as the ones I showed above in the gulf war, it showed the missiles worked well in both cases and there werent multiple shots or shots in separate sorties like in Ethiopian~Eritrea war.
Going back to the Ethiopia and Eritrea war, I know both countries had mercenaries in their air forces, russians/bulgarians in Ethiopia and ukrainians flying the migs in Eritrea, but I havent read anything talking about the ukranians training level, but given the conditions I’d say the pilots from both countries flew well considering what they had, since they didnt have intel support, didnt have air support, and didnt have good infrastructure to fight in their sorties, not to mention the terrain was really mountainous and made high altitude flying tough, so they were stuck flying low and using low altitude tactics for most of the conflict. There were a lot of sorties and encounters, most of the engagements were ambushes which makes it even harder for the R27 to hit.
In the end Ethiopia got air superiority with just two su27s, finishing the conflict with zero losses and 6 kills, most of them being Eritrean migs.
with all that I really hope I helped you understand things a bit better!
Lol. Impossible. No mig 23 carried r27 in service
R27r at least with the export model that we have data for is heavily overperforming for seekerhead, and is currently using guidance that no other missile is allowed to have,
T model is certain,y underperforming though, just don’t have enough sources to give it better flare rejection. A
Same goes for r24t
Just look at my post on it in the 27 thread.
It’s unfair and benefits from many game conventions that it would not have irl
Come on Gaijin time to model drag from external stores cant be carrying 40 missiles and have no disadvantage to flight performance. 😛
yeah, I actually made a mistake with my old notes, they just werent updated enough, after I looked into the conflict a bit more, what really happened in Abkhazia was:
March 19, 1993: a russian jet (reported as a Su 27 by Georgia, some sources say Su 25) was shot down by Georgian defenses near Sukhumi
July 4, 1993: a Georgian Su 25 was downed by an Abkhaz surface to air missile near Sukhumi.
it was just a mistake, it’ll be fixed!!! ( too much text, really sorry)
sounds like just AI slop anyway lol
He might’ve been confusing it with the 23 98 that was essentially just paper and never was actually built.
Ik there’s bort 36 but that’s just been shown with weapons and not actually tested or anything
Nah, like… for very technical subjects my english is still a bit complicated to type so I need double check it lol, this is the reason why I sent it here :D (still having a lot of good things to share)
how would bad english affect posting wrong info?
I would argue it’s more so doctrine and tactics that made the su-27 dominate the 29s.
For example, they usually used a mig -21 flying high as bait and then flew their su-27s close to the deck.
Mig-29s were usually sent solo, and one of their valuable pilots even got jailed for speaking up on working conditions or something similar to that.
Overall, the su-27 proved capable, and the r-27 series proved to be horrendous
I fixed it, didnt I? I pointed out myself what actually happened in georgia, and as someone who’s on the forum you know as well as I do how hard it is to handle a ton of data and not make a few mistakes every now and then, and even if they happen, this is a forum, that’s exactly what this place is for. What do you want me to do after all? give you a cookie, a cake? attention? anything else Im missing?
the russian mercs seemed to have a bit more skill in that situation, I even read about them coming out on top in a 2v4 where they still managed to shoot down a mig 29, but like you said too, they used a bit more strategy to make it all work out and sadly I cant read other languages where there’s more data on this, but it’s probably safe to assume the migs got caught in an ambush anyways
what I meant is that the concept of the missile wasnt actually that bad, the idea was to deliver a lot of performance and be a relatively smarter missile, bringing that revolutionary vibe, but then the project got too advanced for the reality of the country that made it and for the people who operated it, thats why I brought up some of the challenges the ground crews faced to keep it running… in the end we see this kind of disaster, and thats something thats happened and still happens with a lot of weapons that look excellent on paper but end up giving us terrible results in practice
No clue. But the devs should have access to an R-27 book by the Moscow Aviation Institute (it is only available in a few libraries in Russia, no online copy).
Probably if R-27R/ER got nerfed we will MiG-29 sits with R-73?
