Where are all the other gen 4.5 aircraft?

it’s a game and it’s not about the use same era tech, but by bringing comparable tech to all nations

it’s never about what is real or not, it’s a game, they still limit everyone by “balancing”, cuz most of the stuff is still classified

This is really the best take. I’m a German main, especially with air, so I definitely get the frustration people have with it, and even get the “now it’s their turn to suffer, haha !” feeling, but the reality is that we should be avoiding this sort of thing in the first place. There’s a lot of aircraft that should be added to multiple trees (as applicable) when they’re first introduced, or, even better, introduced at the same time as a foil or equal is given to the countries they’ll be fighting.

As usual, a lot of this would be much less of a problem if they just made the matchmaker ±.7 instead of ±1.0.

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Modern Russian radars have been proven far behind western counterparts, nothing new there

The game has always been balanced on capability rather than era.

Well… Loosely.

It should continue to be, or massive compression fixes are needed.

Absolutely. Great to see Germany with a dominant platform in air top tier. Usually updates come and go and Germany still lacks, it’s a whole different story now. And I couldn’t agree more with the ±.7 matchmaker. If Gaijin doesn’t want to decompress BRs and raise it to 14.3 or even 14.7, which is what we REALLY need right now, then they should make it so matches are in the ±.7 range.

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J11B and J15s are not Gen 4.5, just good Gen 4s, normal PD, basically throwing Su27, a better radar, PL12 and python 3+irccm together, kinda wild but not exactly gen4.5 exactly.

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Less drag at least, so it have improved kinematics although probably not 50Gs overload as it uses normal fins.

I agree with your conclusion about the J-11/J-15. The Rafail and Euroshitter will be the first Gen 4.5s to come which is exciting.

lol
Although it does bring the issue, we all know the difference between gen 4-5 is stealth, but Gen 4.5 could be a huge range, from Eurofighter to sth like J11BG which is sort of 30 years in between, the difference in avionics especially radars will be huge, are they really comparable? Never mind their missile choice. The early and late Gen4.5 has a huge difference, and although the stats about newer ones are pretty vague and guesswork based, they are really not that comparable to earlier ones, especially those that has classical PD.

My understanding was that 4.5 gen aircraft are characterised by their lower-than-usual observability to radar, super cruise abilities and extreme agility in all speed regimes. Not to mention advanced avionics and weaponry.

Would Gaijin’s implementation of these aircraft fit that criteria? Not necessarily but IRL no one disputes their 4.5 Gen status.

Issue is, flankers are insane with low speed manoeuvres, but slightly worse than others with high speed ones, in contrast, things like Rafale Eurofighter or J10 (aka delta wings) won’t want to go down to fight at 500km speeds. However we would put them all as gen 4.5 (J10B and newer flankers), but the difference is super significant between early ones and later ones. As of the standards, super cruise isn’t necessarily possible for things like sino flankers, but no one questions them as gen 4.5, slight stealth could also be achieved through both stealth paint and materials as well as design which we can’t see.

You’re thinking of the R-77M, the 77-1 still has grid fins, but at least from the data mine has a boost + sustain motor setup unlike the 77, it also weighs a lot more, overall delta V is slightly higher than the base 77 and with the better motor setup it should have better range but unless they fix the drag issue it won’t really matter

well, judjing by FlareFlo’s missile sheet, at 5km alt and speed of 1.0M missiles have these ranges:

MICA-EM - 23331m of range
Derby - 24624m of range
R-Darter - 24884m of range
R-77 - 25382m of range
PL-12 and SD-10 - 26920m of range
aim-120a/b - 28441m of range
R-77-1 - 29143m of range
AAM-4 - 31451m of range
aim-120c-5 - 32355m of range

So, even now aim-120a/b outperform any other missile by around 2-3km of range, R-77-1 would tie that and even slightly outperform by 700m wich is negligible, but when they add aim-120c-5 they would be better than AAM-4 with 32km of range again outperforming by another 3km of range…

FlareFlo’s missile sheet
in case anyone’s interested

I’m going to assume that is against a non-maneuvering target though, the extra weight and G limit of missiles like the R-77-1 will act against it at range more so than something like the AIM-120A, that may be how a missile like the AAM-4 is balanced, it weighs significantly more than the R-77-1 or PL-12 which are missiles that already weigh much more than AIM-120s, MICAs and Derbys

I do believe that even the R-77-1 would underperform against the AIM-120 at range and that kind of leads me back to the original point that they really need to fix the drag issues first, the R-77 needs to find a middle ground between the MICA and AIM-120, it shouldn’t have the range of the 120 as it pulls harder, but it should have more than the MICA as that has thrust vectoring.

In its current state the range is mostly fine without maneuvering but as soon as it turns it bleeds way more speed than it should

yeah, you’re right.
another point we could make is let’s say time to 20km range at 5km alt and 1.0M
Derby - 46 sec
R-Darter - 45 sec
R-77 - 44 sec
Mica-EM - 44 sec
R-77-1 - 37.5 sec
PL-12 - 37 sec
AIM-120A/B - 33.5 sec
AIM-120C-5 - 32.5 sec
AAM-4 - 32.5 sec

Well the F-15 E is a 4.5 or something around there and i mean the F-15 E is getting boosted up to 14.0 same the the typhoon and rafale so

F-15 E is 14.0 same with the Typhoon and Rafale

no it is not, its from 1985

maybe the EX and the upgraded USAF E could qualify but not the one in game

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True

we can also look at how much speed missiles have at that time:
Derby ~ 120 m/s
R-Darter ~ 124 m/s
R-77 ~ 135 m/s
Mica-EM ~ 130 m/s
R-77-1 ~ 160 m/s
PL-12 ~ 180 m/s
AIM-120A/B ~ 220 m/s
AIM-120C-5 ~ 225 m/s
AAM-4 ~ 230 m/s