It in fact does accelerate from Mach 1 to 1.3 in like 35-40 seconds (and keeps going beyond). The catch is to do it at medium alt, say 5km. Which is where you wanna be to crap on unobservant enemies down low anyway.
Otherwise - if you simply rush for the bases at multipath alt - it really is rather slow. But thats your choice.
That’s why i said “in a practical match”. Yeah, it can reach mach 1.3 if you fly straight at altitude for up to a minute or two. But there’s a few caviat to that:
comparing one of the brickest mach 1.3 plane (that takes a whole minute to even achieve mach 1.3) to the best dogfighter of the entire 11.0-12.0 BR bracket is also a crime.
It’s R-60Ms, not aim-9Ls. Things may pull hard but can’t guarantee a kill unless you fire within 2km, not to mention being piss easy to flare. And again, the literally better MiG-21Bis is right there, thing’s mach 1.5+ with the only downside being a “worse” rwr (have less sectors but sees J band) and less countermeasures.
In case anyone is curious, here’s my recording of my Su-22M4 (30min fuel, 6 R60Ms) flying straight at 5km altitude. Takes 1 whole minute to accelerate from 500kmh IAS to mach 1, then another minute to go from mach 1 to 1.3. Something to note is that it can lose all this speed by slightly turning at all, since this thing has no energy retention unless the wings are swept out.
I’ll ask again, where am I going to find 1-2 whole minutes of no interruption to build up all this speed beside at the start of a match?
Primarily its incredible energy retention, extremely good guns, and being near impervious to missiles due to artificially having a heat signature lower than a literal icicle.
If while flying any F-5 you get killed by any member of the Su-17/22 family, I may have to question if you were even at the keyboard.
Dude it’s the Su-22, have you ever played one???