Hello, if you’ve played US toptier CAS recently, you’ve probably realized it is extremely weak, especially compared to the rest of the game. The only exception currently is the AH-64E, which can already easily by countered by two competent pantsir players, and with the upcoming intercept everything Pantsir SM-SV, it might be weak too but that’s a separate discussion. If your playing aircraft at toptier your realistic options are: F/A-18E, F/A-18C, F-15E, F-16C BLK 50, and soon the F-16CM BLK 52 Pobit. As it stands now across these platforms your best options are 1. AGM-65D/G/F, a very slow and short range missile that hasn’t been meta at all for quite some time, using these now a days is just borderline cannon fodder if SPAA are on the battlefield to do how close you have to push in to effectively use them. Back when everyone has SACLOS only SPAA, no FnF they were actually quite solid with pop up attacks, but now with anyone being able to launch at you just by seeing you on radar for a split second, they are very weak and difficult to make use of. 2. LJDAM-ER/JDAM-ER, honestly these are very fun and rewarding to use when they work but with that being said it’s not often. Of course since these are just glide bombs they are extremely slow, quite often when facing spaa like Pantsir, BUK, SAMPT, HQ-11, CS/SA5 I find them getting intercepted with ease, often before they are even halfway to the target, assuming these players aren’t total noobs. Another critical flaw is the regular JDAM-ER cannot have their trajectory changed, and with the LJDAM-ER you can change it but with how long range these sam systems are now a days you are putting yourself at quite a large risk of being destroyed when holding your laser lock. And more importantly with these is the fact that you don’t even get enough of these bombs to overwhelm anyone. Someone correct me if wrong but as of now the plane with most of these LJDAM-ER/JDAM-ER as of now is the Superhornet with 10, although that might not be the case anymore on dev since I believe F-15E is getting them too. Regardless of that it is honestly just light work to almost every SAM system paying attention to their radar. It’s worth noting that gaijin seems to extremely overestimate how effective these are right now as the F/A-18E sits at the GRB BR of 13.0, while F-15E sits at 12.7 with the ability to use the max amount of mavericks the Superhornet can still use, 6, while carrying a hefty load of bombs with it too. 3. GBU-39 right now paired with the large amount F-15E can bring might be USA’s current best option, and yet it still falls quite short in my opinion, not to mention the other toptier fighter that gets them is the F-16C with only 8 total, and there’s also A-10C which is just borderline unusable obviously at toptier. As for their performance once again they are an unpowered glide bomb, and have no FnF capability on moving targets, or even a laser option. The one singular advantage they have is they can sometimes be overwhelming for spaa due to the volume F-15E brings. In my opinion though, 2 or more decent SPAA players can easily handle these still. It’s also worth noting that because you cannot drop GBU’s in a bomb series, you do put yourself at high risk if you were to let’s say drop 20 at once, so half the time you are not able to be overwhelming with them. It also doesn’t help that the fighter with a lot of these is a total brick, especially when loaded for cas. Another thing about these is they have a small warhead and got nerfed awhile back to have I believe a 6M CEP. (Circular Error of Probability, essentially how far out the bomb can miss the target in Meters, based on rng) Because they have a small warhead and a decent sized radius of where they can miss, this makes them rather unreliable at getting kills. A lot of the time they will be off target and only damage them with shrapnel. Another issue with their small warhead and inability to be guided after drop is that an SPAA player can easily just move long before they hit and be safe. Just as a reminder all of these mentioned systems can be intercepted by SPAA easily already and it will be easier with SM-SV.
Some solid options that could come to the game right now and not even be broken are:
GBU-53 Stormbreaker, (as an IR only mode) Americas equivalent of spice-250/ LS-6 IR
JAGM-F, (as a laser only mode) Americas equivalent to Brimstone
JSOW A-1, C, C-1, an ever longer range JDAM-ER, but with reduced RCS that probably won’t be modeled any ways. C adds an IIR seeker, but in real life it’s used to autonomously identify targets such as buildings and fortifications, it isn’t used to track ground vehicles.
SLAM, SLAM-ER, Americas equivalent to KH-59, and the upcoming KD-88, KD-88A. These are guided cruise missiles with great range but extremely slow. The ER I know at least has a terrain following option which might actually make it good, but I don’t expect this to be modeled and would be surprised.
All of these I just mentioned already have a direct equivalent in the game, and all but JAGM-F are subsonic, which it’s not even much faster than Mach and it is not FnF in the laser only mode they would add. Furthermore, all of these come in rather limited quantities, with the exception of GBU-53 on the F-15E, but the GBU-53 total would not even be much more than the Gripen E, or be more oppressive than they are on something with an actual good FM such as the Aesa Eurofighter. Besides, as of they done in the past they can always limit the max total for balance. None of these systems I mentioned would be broken or op now, and most certainly wont when the update comes out. They can all quite honestly be handled somewhat easily by solid SPAA players, especially pantsir players. With that being said I don’t understand why these have not come to the game yet, and I believe they should be added quite soon, so US CAS can from relatively bad or super mid at best, to pretty solid. Thanks all for reading and feel free to share your thoughts. Let me know if you agree or disagree.