First things first. The F-14A Early is not a bad plane however how Gaijin has treated it its defiantly a lot rougher then it really should be.
Firstly the RWR…I genuinely shocked how terribly they implemented the AN/ALR-45…the thing is just a whole bunch of question marks and they don’t even use the threat bands to “mimic” the system in question. The actual ALR-45 uses solid and dashed lines to give you all types of information like whether a radar is air or ground based, if its going cold or hot, what threat level it is ect
Something that also effects this but also more modern systems is the fact gaijin still hasn’t made them filter out friend or foe…meaning if your in a large group of friendlies your RWR is next to useless. It also for some reason gives you a missile launch warning if you just “near” a friendly that fires a missile not even facing your direction.
SECOND…why the **** am I able to fly next to a Mach 5 missile?..one of the reasons the R-27ER is so effective is because it ACTUALLY goes Mach 5 which means you can out joust planes like F-14s and F-16s with their slower AIM-7Fs and Ms…so why the hell is the AIM-54A so slow?..
and THIRD why does TWS STILL not have the ability to see multiple targets at once?..It means you waste your whole opening phase of the battle guiding 1 missile onto 1 target Not that this matters as much because by the time your slow ass missile has gotten even close the enemy has already made it halfway down the map and is turning to engage meaning it misses anyway.
Also idk if its me or gaijin’s spaghetti code but when launched in TWS without an SST lock I haven’t actually seen the missile go active and track by itself…if I lock the target with SST and then break that lock it does…but just in TWS mode it doesn’t seem too.
Maybe all these issues I speak of are fixed with the AIM-54C as gaijin has done this stuff before but it shouldn’t be the case that a need a brand new missile just to get the performance it should have in the first place.
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it takes time for a missile to gain speed, and r-27er wont get to that speed unless you fire it when going at mach2 at 12-15 km altitude.
Did you expect your phoenix to accelerate to its max speed in 1 second?
AIM-54s have their long range because they have long booster & sustainer stages.
That long time means less thrust so it doesn’t get to its max speed quickly.
TWS can see multiple targets at once, it just displays them on the radar screen rather than in 3rd person. You fire your AIM-54, then switch to another target to fire your next AIM-54. So long as the previous target remains tracked on the radar screen it will continue sending updates to the first AIM-54.
Not the case in game for a good long while, I’ve stepped targets countless times in the B and A only for all 6 54s to track onto the first target or go dumb. Gaijin broke multitarget midcourse guidance for the 54s a long time ago and never seemed to have fixed it for reasons unknown.
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To my knowledge it was never the case but yes, this has been my experience with it too
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As someone who has most of their DCS hours in both the F-14A and B…I find this very frustrating. I must admit having suffered through more games in the F-14A I will say when I fall back on my OG tactic where I simply guide 1 AIM-54 in TWS to its target I am actually getting more success but the time I waste getting that 1 potential kill makes me a liability for the rest of the team.
I still feel while the acceleration isn’t as bad as it first seemed it still doesn’t feel like I’m getting the full capability of the missile…I haven’t been able to get kills outside of its “lock” range (where the outer circle closes all the way) of 35-40km (depending on speed and closure rate)…idk if the missile simply never locks onto a target if that second ring isn’t closed or if its because of Gaijin’s drag model causing it to slow down too fast. That issue has been an issue across the board though so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the case and it still hasn’t been fixed.
This is the same weapon I can fire extremely reliably at about 35nmi (60km) and get kills no problem…so much so that I tend to employ them much further then that at 45-60nmi (80km-110km) and still get a solid 50%+ kill ratio on missiles fired.
In war thunder I’d be lucky if I get that at half the range.
The only reason I’m slightly salty about it is also the fact MOST aircraft in War thunder don’t actually have digital RWRs…in Mig 29s and F-16/14Bs I get letting a lone F-14 just continuously ping you with his radar is a bad play…but half the aircraft in this game shouldn’t even be able to tell what plane it even is.