There is something very wrong with the F-18A radar and/or Aim-7F/M pairing, the missiles are so unreliable that even in the test drive they often don’t track the mig15s that are flying around against clear skies.
I researched most of the F-18A yesterday with the F-4J and the missiles behaved far more consistently even though the F-4J radar is considerably worse.
I’ve had countless of sparrows going 180 from the target without anything else in the radar’s illumination cone, or missiles just flying straight and not tracking at all