The United States in ground RB has a big problem, along with its problems in air, but thats a different situation. Im not talking about its tank power, since thats a different problem entirely. Im refering to its CAS abilities. Compared to the other nations in the game the United States falls extremely short. Lets play a game going “band for band”. Lets start with bombs, the United States has access to Paveways, laser guided bomb, JADAM/LIDAM/ER, gps guided bomb with longer range if taken the ER. Obviuosly the JADMS are the better option especially with the current SPAA meta. The problem with the JADAM is that once you drop that bomb its going to where you lased it, it wont change at all unless it is intercepted and destroyed. Lets look some other bombs in the game such as the SPICE bomb. This bomb is so much better than the JDAM in every way, as it is a IR guided GPS and glide bomb, meaning it can track targets, but then go to last known location making it marginally more reliable than the JDAM. Lets move on to Air to ground missiles, I will speak my opinion about the two new weapons added today later. The Mavericks are the main and best atg missiles previous to this update. IR guided, with a laser guided varient. These missiles are okay they are kind of slow and fall short of doing some longer range engagements, but are not horrible. Lets look at some other air to ground missiles used by other nations. The Brimstones are laser guided and to be honest I do not have enough informatioin on them to give my full opinion other than the fact that a lot of “Eurofighter cas videos” use them. Next missile belongs to the Su variety of vehicles, these are the Kh 29, 38, etc varitey of missiles. You get six of these long range high speed IR guided munitions, along with the incredible flight model of the SM2 these missiles are absolute brain rot. So, what else does the US get? Added today were the JSOWS, found of the Pobit, and the SLAMERS, found on the F18C/E/F. These two while cool are no where good enough to compete with the other counterparts. The JSOW is slow and you only get four of them, yes it has smaller RCS, but as you all know from the f117 it doesnt do much. Also in addition it is only GPS guided, yes I know its a bomb and not a missile. The SLAMMERS on the other hand are decent, but are still slow and you only get two. The SLAMERS do have a greater range than the mavs, and have GPS along with IR so that does help, but you only get TWO, thats a third of how many the Russian can take. I am not here to argue that the F18 should get more because im sure thats realistic for it to have two, i am more questioning what could the US recieve in the future or should have gotten instead? The United States has always been painted in real life as this huge CAS airpower, but in warthunder it is one of the worst for it.
I agree that the US needs better CAS, but the F/A-18s get four AGM-84Hs, not two.
literally just give US GBU-53/B and limit it to IR guidance to start and that solves 99% of CAS issues
It has the exact same issues as laser guided bomb but now with less killing power as it is HEAT warhead instead of HE.
Oh do they checked this morning I did not see that they had four I thought they could only take on pylons 8/4.
Yeah I have heard complaints about the Brimstones, but not having used them I do not have much opinion.
Yeah, pylons 3/4/8/9 for the F/A-18E
A big issue is that there really arent too many “equivalents” to things such as the Kh-38MT or even the Kh-29TD.
The U.S. should def get the GBU-53/B, though, thats overdue for top tier U.S. aircraft. (Along with the F-15E RMP but thats something else lol).
The most i can think of is the AGM-53A Condor but that can only be added to the F-14, A-6E and A-7E, which wouldnt make it too competitive due to the subpar platforms or missile count (F-14A could only carry hypothetically 2)
I totally agree, but you know how Gajin is, “Oh we don’t have enough information about that to add”, then procedes to add a new Russian missile shoruded in classification making up value for it.
Oh damn okay then, goodbye mavericks
IMO, they are better than GBUs purely due to the motor and how many you can bring. Sure, you may need two to kill some targets, but that is rare from my experience, and you get three per pylon compared to one/two GBUs. On the AESA Typhoons, the SPICE 250s are 100% better though
In my opinion the problem is that the way Warthunder CAS is played is hugely different than how it is done in real life. For example paveways in game are pretty much useless, but in real life they are one of the most used weapons for CAS. Most of the United States weapons are aimed at outranging or going undetected into enemy territory. Also things like bunker busters would be useless in game as there isn’t really anything special for it to destroy. CAS in wt is super fast paced, close and tacticle, which caters to these more close range agile missiles and bombs.
I mean the Spice bombs are just complely better than any American bomb in game and it makes me disapointed.
I was moreso thinking along the lines of supersonic air to ground missiles or bombs for the United States but yeah war thunder CAS aint exactly 1:1 with real life. If it was a lot of american weapons would be able to shine a lot more than they currently do in game
XD no
Im confused what other nation do you think is worse than the US for CAS?
8x Spice 250 on the EF 2000, HOSBO on the 12.3 Tornado. I’m not even going to include Brimstone since its laser.
Since BR isnt really an issue, 12.7 GRB swiss late Hornet with mavs not only has more FnF munitions per sortie while retaining the targeting pod, it also has much better FM ans can carry two 9Ms as oposed to SLEs 9L-is as well as single AMRAAM while being only slightly higher in BR.
Honestly using Tornado with HOSBOS was pain, and i was looking forward to them so much.
Sure, more flat trajectory. Coincidentally something SPICE 250 doesnt have as it is unpowered bomb.
But mavericks have flat trajectory as well.
You wont have time to use them all. It takes time to guide them in and since that requires for launching platform to have LoS to target, its extremely vulnerable to SPAA, especially the current gen.