Gaijin’s terrible interpretation of the F-4E is absolutely astounding. The aircraft in a field of pulse-doppler aircraft while it’s own radar is not accurately modeled with an airframe that’s being held down by the insane let-me-pull-sustained-12g’s-with-no-problem that makes aircraft the F-4E would historically have been able to rate—now impossible to do so, even against early Mig-21s.
What makes me livid is how none of the advancements the F-4E had, or uses for the RIO are completely and utterly left out of the game.
While the Mig-23, F-16, F-14 Mig-29 sit pretty with pulse doppler that it least somewhat does what it’s supposed to, the RIO in the F-4E does absolutely nothing in the game even though he basically controlled and was the master of the entire radar system of the plane, no manual locks, no manual tracking, no attempts to narrow down nutation to reduce radar clutter returns. Instead you’re faced with a broken automated BVM that barely works because even though the enemy is above the horizon, the bottom of the square is 0.0000009 degrees below the horizon, making lock utterly impossible.
Gaijin could learn a lesson or two as with the phantom Phamiliarzation video series, they go in-depth with the F-4E’s RIO could do. Of course, this is an ARN-101 standard, but Gaijin couldn’t even make up their minds if they wanted Agile Eagle or not to be on the F-4E in it’s initial release. The F-4E is just a massively broken aircraft that’s been messed up since the game’s release.
Source listed: DCS
B R U H
The plane is perfectly fine where it is at right now, however there are inaccuracies with it.
The model we got is a mishmash of late 'Nam / early to mid 80s blocks.
Even then, the best solution I’d suggest is make a foldered late model of it with AIM-9Ms, AIM-7Ps ( which were available at the time this thing was still around, the datalink would negate the non PD radar to an extent) and Pave Tack + Mav Ds.
I see where you’re coming from but you’re gonna need WSO manuals to prove a good point. Afaik they shouldn’t be hard to find, but the later ones would probably be preferred
I have them all downloaded and used the DCS video as a video resource instead of dumping screenshot aftet Screenshot of documents. If you’d like I can.
Also, the video series actually shows some of the documents to explain further
sadly for you:
DCS isn’t considered as a source, even if models are much more detailed → because all of those models also have some inaccuracies.
but most importantly though → primary documents for such old aircrafts are foundable, therefore it makes DCS less valuable than Maintenance/pilots/technical documents.
Like I said in the comment below. I used the video just to avoid having to link multiple pages of documents as they show the relevent documents in said videos. Anyway, here are the relevant pages.
CAA (Computer Automated Acquisition) from page 1-37, 1-38, and 1-39 respectively:
Images from Source 1: WSO priorites and radar handling and functionalities from pages: 1-58, 1-75, and 1-76
Image to showcase that the radar beam could be manually actuated.
Images for Source 2: TISEO (Target Identification System, Electro-Optical) Contains pages: 1-43, 1-44A, 1-44B, 1-44E, and half of 1-45
Source 1: TO 1F-4E-34-1-1 Weapons Delivery Manual 1986
Source 2: TO 1F-4E-34-1-1-2 1986 Supplemental Weapons Manual
Best if you make a bug report on the gaijin bug report site. Dunno if it’ll get through but it’s worth a try.
The one thing that might be worth actually reporting is the F-4Es later RWR system, the combat tree or whatever they called it.
Still, i dunno if it’ll get thru on the forums, best to use that site really. And use the actual documents, just dump em in if necessary, they’ll just laugh at you if you post a dcs vid.
That’s not an issue of the F-4E, but WT in general: All aircraft are flown as if they’re single-seaters, and the copilot/RIO/WSO or whatever only helps if the pilot gets shot, if at all, but has no other function.
It would be nice if a similar system like for ground and navy would be implemented also for aircraft, and the additional crew member would actually call out some stuff, either info that the pilot doesn’t have or at least for immersion sake info the pilot does have. We now have Bitching Betty, so maybe based on this a similar system could be developped…
Not if it retains some existing ordnance (GBU-15 / AIM-9J).
The options for the US F-4E (depending on Block #) is the PAVE Spike (AN/AVQ-23) [Block 35~48] and PAVE Tack (AN/AVQ-26)[Block-48 and later]. Though as we have access to the GBU-15 the modeled aircraft in game is at least a Block 48 so should only have access to the Pave Tack, and be fitted with TISEO.
The earlier F-4D would have access to more basic systems like the Pave Knife(AN/AVQ-10), the first actual TGP, and the earlier PAVE Light(AN/AVQ-9), laser designator.
The thing is though, it’s one of the few aircraft that absolutely needs it’s RIO to do his job or else the entire system fails, and seeing as there will be or is no fix for this in the near future, I doubt this plane is going to perform as it should any time soon.
Except most of the Aircraft you listed have Pulse-Doppler and/or at least are able to fling missiles when they want to. Heck, the F-14 is one of the best dogfighter top-tiers in the game with Multi-lock functionality added to the game and Fox-3s usable. The issues it has do affect the aircraft, but when you have one plane be functionally useless because of utterly garbage implementation. That’s an issue that needs to be fixed so you don’t have a dead-end aircraft.
This issue affects them to a smaller degree than the Phantom whose entire radar system has been gimped to where you can’t even lock onto targets directly in front of you if you’re too low to the ground because 1 leaf entered your radars FOV and completely clotted the thing out, at that point, you might as well not even use the sparrows.
Or the fact the F-4E can’t even out rate early Mig-21s even though that’s literally how they fought and beat them. Thanks to mister 3rd person and “I can sustain 13Gs for almost 10 seconds”
Adding to the above, when the Israelis gave their F-4Es fixed / locked open wing slats the Phantom crews consistently beat Mirage and Nesher pilots in ‘friendly’ turning duels. And, to demonstrate their confidence of the Phantoms’ superior fighting ability, one of the maiden flights of Israel’s first F-4s involved a daylight low-level pass (with afterburners) over Cairo International Airport.
…Catch me if you can (top right)…
(Image Source)
During the Yom Kippur war, a primary objective for the IAF’s F-4s was to bomb any airbase known to host MiG-21s. The bomb-laden Phantoms were often fast enough to evade any MiGs sent to intercept them, and outpace any Deltas sent to escort them.
^A typical Airbase Attack payload (1970-1973): ten 750lb bombs, two external tanks, one AIM-9D in case the crew decided to dogfight. (Image Source)
From my research, Israel lost six Phantoms in air-to-air combat (one F-4 fell to friendly fire) over several campaigns, for ~116 hostile aircraft shot down. By comparison, WT’s Phantoms are somewhat less impressive.
I like this, but how much was this due to flight crews only being able to pull 6 to 8 gs for several seconds instead of pulling 12 and just holding it like we can do in game.
the only time we will EVER get this kind of fixing for any aricraft that isnt current top tier is when gaijin runs out of new shiny jets to dangle in our faces for the next update, they dont care about havign a balanced game when all they need to do to succeed is release the next shiny new toy
