The Typhoon wasn’t a reasonable counter just yet, though I would say it is a reasonable counter to the F-15E, there should have been some aircrafts that came before it.
F-18C should have been added to Germany in the way of the Swiss. Italy, Sweden, UK, and France were doing just fine with Gripen and M2K.
Or better, the Spanish. Or an Argentine F-16AM. But Switzerland is just such a poor idea for a subtree.
Or just the F-4F ICE with triple Mavs.
Given everyone else fielding multirole aircraft for GRB (aircraft that can happily defend themselves from an enemy aircraft whilst simutaneously putting down decent CAS) like the F-16. It is really unfair to expect a nation to compete with something like a Tornado IDS. Also the ASSTA3 was already added, it just adds GPS guided bombs to the Tornado ASSTA1, which is a minimal buff compared to aircraft like the Su-25SM3/Su-34 firing KH-38s, Rafale firing AASM or F-16/F-15 firing AGM-65.
Tornado really doesnt cut it anymore. Even the Tornado Gr4 with all its upgades, struggles.
Its most important role is multirole. That is why nations like Britain wanted it over the aircraft the US was offering the UK. In the UK service at the very least, it replaced the Jaguar, Tornado and even the Harrier for CAS and in all its actual deployments where its seen combat, that is what its been deployed to do.
Given the ahistorical Brimstone variant, missing loadout options and lack of ground radar. It is underperofrming quite bit. Even PW4s are underperforming in a few ways.
Typhoon IS the best CAS for Britain, Italy and Germany. And whilst Britain and Italy have some alternatives that works well in CAS like the Harrier and Gripen. Neither are brilliant when doing both CAP and CAS like the Typhoon can. For Germany… It is their only competitve top tier CAS
Gripen with R-Darters vs F-15Cs and F-16Cs sucked. It just wasnt fun. You were outranged constantly, you had to rat until you got much closer.
I also didnt grind the British tech tree to just play Swedish aircraft with placeholder weapons for South Africa
The Typhoon was first and foremost a fighter, hence why initial variants didn’t have A2G ordinance. You are putting CAS as the most important in supporting jumping to the multirole variants- it’s like skipping the F-15A and C to get the E, in a nerfed state, immediately. At the very least have one update with a correct Typhoon.
I wouldn’t be absolutely certain, but I can’t actually find much about about the listed system, but the Brits seem to think that the F-15 had one (ALQ-127 / -153).
Could either be received via the Legion IRST pod (Talon Hate), or by modeling A2A search modes available to Targeting pods.
What does Spain have to do with Germany? Pretty sure they have more to relate with Italy in that respect. Argentina still does not have their F-16AM to my understanding even if a contract was signed. This leaves only Switzerland which is already confirmed by leakers.
It was considered a priority to replace the Tornado F3, but work on giving it ground attack capabilies started before it even entered service. (it was designed for it from the get go) Given the RAFs history of training pilots to either dogfight or mud move. There was a lot of work to transition to a multirole platform. Given the fact the Harrier Gr7/9 and Tornado Gr4 were all relatively new and doing well covering the ground attack side of the RAF. The priority was given over to replacing the Tornado F3s. Though the Typhoon F2 was only in service for 5 years before being “replaced” by the Tyhpoon FGR4 in 2008.
If the Typhoon should have been limited to A2A only (and I think this may have only really been a restirction for the UK, I dont know when Germany or Italy added A2G to their Typhoons) then so should the F-16, F-15, Rafale and even the Su-34. Its unfair to deny 3 nations their multirole just because there was an earlier variant and given the timeline for aircraft like the F-16/F-15 getting CAS then we would have gotten a near identical typhoon with A2G in March. All that extra grinding just to get a multirole seems a bit silly
To be fair, I would never be absolutely certain on what the US can pull out from the back of their vast storage rooms in whatever they wish to upgrade their aircrafts with. I only claimed it would lack the MAWS as there does not seem to be sufficient sources for anyone to bug-report with currently (otherwise why hasn’t anyone bug-reported it yet?).
The Legion IRST Pod would some weight to the F-15C, and it couldn’t provide any targeting information, as the manufacturer has claimed it requires two different aircrafts with the same targeting pod in order for targeting information to be utilized.
Actually, Britian was the first to A2G ordinance, Germany didn’t until Block 10 and Italy late Block 5.
Yeah… the F-16ADF (well, ignoring the A), F-15A/C, and Su-27/SM were all air variants before adding a multirole vehicle. And for the Rafale, it has the same problem as the Typhoon and should have been an M F.1 not C F.3R.
Again though, they may have gotten A2A only first and then multirole but they still got multirole 2 years before Germany did, a year before Italy did and 9 months before Britain did.
(if the Gripen can really be considered a true mutlirole given its highly limited hardpoints)
Its rather unfair to deny the Typhoon 50% of its capabilties jsut for the sake of a 3 months wait and extra RP grinding.
While the M F.1 does exist, don’t you mean the C F.1?
C F.1 doesn’t exist, the F.1 standard was naval exclusive. The first land-based C models were F.2.1s, the F.2 model being defined by the integration of MICA-IRs. Similar to the Typhoons’ IRIS-T/ASRAAM this missile can’t be added yet but I resent Gaijin for adding an aircraft model with such missiles, without it, when there are model of the aircraft that historically used the AIM-9 and Magic II.
Only partially true. The radars capabilities matter less in air RB due to the spotting system, but they do still matter. In gamemodes where there is no spotting system, the radars capabilities matter significantly more, and the Rafale is unmatched in radar capabilities.
Eurofighter countermeasures are almost entirely BOL barring the 32 large caliber countermeasures. Until BOL CM’s are fixed, they remain the worst CM’s in-game qualitatively, necessitating 2 pops to roughly equate the intensity of 1 normal flare, have less than half the duration, and a slower rise time to boot.
The number of CM’s awarded by BOL is a quality in its own right sure, but it has its own issues in that regard. The Rafale gets 112 large caliber chaff, which are particularly good due to the mechanics behind decoying radar missiles with chaff, while 16 large flares + 36 regular flares remains a decent to good load of flares. Couple that with the fact the Rafale is the uncontested king of WVR combat, which significantly limits its need for large numbers of flares and you get one of the best CM suites at top tier.
You most definitely can. Muzzle velocity is near top of class and on-hit effect is top of the class with the M791, making it the easiest gun to hit targets with (least lead, most range) and the gun with the highest likelihood of killing when scoring a hit.
As for duration of ammo:
EFT BK-27: 1700rpm, 150 rounds, 5.3 sec trigger time
F-16 M61: 6000rpm, 512 rounds, 5.1 sec trigger time
Su-27SM GSh-30-1: 1800rpm, 150 rounds, 5 sec trigger time
J-10A GSh-23-2: 3396rpm, 200 rounds, 3.53 sec firing time
F-15C/E M61: 6000rpm, 940 rounds, 9.4 sec trigger time
Rafale M791: 2500rpm, 125 rounds, 3 sec trigger time
Gripen Akan M/85: 1700rpm, 120 rounds, 4.24 sec trigger time.
Rafale does have the lowest trigger time, but that’s about the only bad thing about it. Either way, I did say arguably the best gun, as though its the easiest gun to hit things with and to kill things with, the low trigger time can be a turn off for people which might prefer the much more forgiving M61.
Your method of analyzing what the best missile in-game is skewed in the favour of your narrative, and ignores the realities of the game-modes and airframes employing the missiles.
First of all, maneuverability matters less than off-bore capability. All top tier missiles have the maneuverability to hit a straight lining target, the MICA-EM is however by FAR the best missile in off-bore capabilities, to the point where it could be debated the only other missile that could genuinely even be considered to compete in this aspect out of the fox 3’s is the R-77.
Next, overall range matters less in-game since the notch in-game is so generous. Yes, of the top tier fox 3’s the AMRAAM has the most early game presence due to having the longest effective range, and allows it to pressure opponents first, but this hardly matters when the Rafale can just sit in the notch and wait for targets to get within range before momentarily turning in to fire a MICA, or to begin a dogfight. This is a similar case to how the MLD dominated when it was added despite the F-4J having substantially superior range with the AIM-7F over the R-24R.
The actual TTI difference of the top tier missiles is also not that far off:
The largest TTI at 9km alt, 50km launch (your params), is 46s (R-77) vs 43s (AMRAAM). MICA also has the lowest TTI until about 40km and the highest impact speed out to 25km as an aside.
For the 1km alt scenario, MICA is king until ~11.5km in impact velocity, and ~19.5km for TTI.
The MICA is the uncontested king of sub-20km shots in-game, which is where the vast majority of the gameplay actually occurs, period. Saying the missiles all have their niche is true, but ignores the fact that some niches have larger impacts on gameplay than others.
Has the best energy retention and by far the worst maneuverability. The energy retention is great for remaining threatening in longer range shots if the missile isnt decoyed, but the worst maneuverability limit its use the most in-game as well. Both the MICA and AMRAAM are missiles of extremes in-game, but the extremes in which the MICA excels are also those that are the most relevant in-game.
Nobody would use the 120 deg scan on the EFT as it has a tiny vertical scan area. If you want to actually compare scan area’s, the Rafales 70x31 deg is literally best in-game, the Typhoons “best” volume is 70x8deg, less than a third the scan area. The Rafale also scan significantly faster, and updates the designated TWS target every 0.1s vs the CAPTOR-M’s average of ~4 seconds.
It is entirely fair to factor bugs in. Improper modelling or not, the reality of the game is that the Rafales radar is so far beyond every other radar in-game that its laughable to even bother comparing them. Until bugs are fixed, this will remain the case. As for the comment of gaijin deploying fixes quickly, thats simply not true. Gaijin fixes SOME bugs quickly. The Rafale has been a huge benefactor of this, the eurofighter has not, and most vehicles simply arent either.
This argument holds no water as I’ve already covered with how inferior BOL are qualitatively. BOL should be outright superior to regular flares, and more akin to large caliber flares, but are instead modelled to be the worst CM’s in-game. This was a balancing decision to nerf the Gripen back when it was significantly overperforming, and has unfortunately hit multiple other jets negatively (F-14B, Tornado, Gripen nowadays, EFT).
Not having Brimstone 2’s significantly relegates the EFT’s strike capability. Brimstone 1’s are so incredibly slow you can often beat them to the target with the EFT if you wanted to, and they arent F&F like Maverick, AASM, and Kh-38. They also have the least range of the bunch. You’re simply better off using LGB’s when using the EFT.
I haven’t actually seen anything stating that the ranging function requires a second bearing, after all Kalman filters could work and Passive ranging is definitely possible.
I was wondering what you were typing :D
To be fair, we have been looking at certain aspects divorced from other factors such as platforms/airframes employing the missiles for awhile now.
Keep in mind here that you have said the only other missile that could compete with the MICA in off-bore capabilities is R-77.
The reliability of sitting in the notch and using multipath is not feasible due to uneven terrain in a lot of maps, reduction of multipath, and the addition of angle-gating in all top tier fox-3s.
If off-boresight capabilities are so important, why isn’t the R-77 considered better than the AMRAAM too? Yet no one claims this.
The lack of maneuverability only matters at ranges of below 4km* in frontal head-on situations where AIM-9M is better in those situations anyway. The AIM-9M is far stronger than the Magic 2 in a frontal head-on situation. The AIM-120A massively suffers in maneuverability due to the guidance delay, but beyond that, it cannot be outpulled.
15E has less gun ammunition. 512
I’m so very confused now;
The right hand Electronics box clearly states “IR Tail Warning set”, but the ALQ-127 / -153 is a PD radar based system. I have literally no idea. Also it’s not mentioned in the later F-15C SAC’s either.
And the F-14, -15 , -16 are mentioned in the -153’s entry. (we do know that the -153 is a solid state version of the -127 so the discrepancy makes sense).
http://www.designation-systems.info/usmilav/jetds/an-alq2aly.html#_ALQ
That is an interesting claim… And not what I have seen.
