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…
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
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
i mean its only a few years of being 4.5
AIM-120s are just cracked 220 and 225 m/s is pretty good
yeah, but they should be around 14.7
That is true
more like 15, i dont think theres a single 4.5 in service before 2000
Yeah
You can imagine how much difference that would make trying to hit a moving target as well, you could probably dodge most of those missiles kinematically but much less likely for the top 3
I wonder what it would look like if you brought it down to 15 or even 10km
By notching? you could do that. Not sure what ‘kinematically’ means. Something to do with mass idk