H145M smoke mentioned :)
Zusammenfassung
Yes, although you should treat them as light tanks that are even more vulnerable, but they can be very strong at most BR’s.
For sure! But please understand that most of them have steep learning curves and an even more difficult stock grind (by some measurments one of the hardest in-game).
The Russian/USSR tree often has the best ones, with the USA being a close second, but notable tech trees are the French and Chinese ones.
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Real but this is cooler
Are there plans to improve Helicopter-only battles ?
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After I read some things I don’t think it’s that Goated specially when weapon pods magically fall off the brand new heli ( also still waiting for Cyprus to put spikes on it)
Spoiler
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Any chance Sweden could get the Danish MH 60R Seahawk?
The Swedish tree is still in need of a stronger top tier helicopter, and the Danish MH 60R seems like the best realistic option available.
Denmark has been approved to acquire AGM 114R Hellfire missiles together with M299 launchers:
It would sadly not give Sweden DIRCM, but it would be the first helicopter available to the Swedish tree with a MAW system, which would already be a major improvement in survivability.
Another interesting point is the M299 launcher. Lockheed Martin lists JAGM as one of the weapons supported by the launcher:
This could potentially give the Swedish tree access to FnF helicopter missile.
As has also been established previously, War Thunder does not always require a specific nation to have actually operated or fired every weapon available to a vehicle. There are already examples of vehicles receiving compatible weapons that the specific operator did not use.
Because of that, I think the Danish MH 60R would fill a very important gap in the Swedish helicopter tree. Even with only AGM 114R it would be a significant upgrade, while its M299 compatibility also gives it much more potential for future weapon additions such as JAGM.
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Small addendum regarding DIRCM:
This is more of a stretch than the Hellfire/JAGM argument, but there is at least a documented route for the MH 60R to receive DIRCM.
US Navy budget documentation for Tactical Air Directional Infrared Countermeasures (TADIRCM) specifically discusses DAIRCM integration and retrofit for the MH 60R/S fleet, including a planned retrofit population of 397 aircraft.
So while I do not argue that the Danish MH 60Rs themselves currently operate DIRCM, the system was clearly intended for integration on the MH 60R airframe.
That could make DIRCM an option for the aircraft in game, depending on how Gaijin treats planned/tested equipment compared with equipment actually fielded by the specific operator.
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Yeah, grinding helicopters has become way easier with a possibility to use ground vehicles for that purpose. Although I wish it could be other way around as well, because I have a little motivation to play helicopters currently, the new additions are extremely rare and spading is a torturing.
PVE mode just isn’t worth the time, you actively play it for a few hours and as a reward you get a single modification researched at max, and it’s not even about top tier (literally my Mi-24D experience). There are other better alternatives of course such as assault ground arcade and just ground realistic battles (since most of helicopters, if not all, now have stock missiles), but I wish helicopters PVE mode was useful for spading as well.
Also, in general, helicopters modifications RP requirements are insanely high, that’s probably because of classic “not popular” = “rare additions” = “niche content” = “high requirements” circle.
Sometimes I think it would be healthier for helicopters to be a part of ground or air branches instead of having a separate tab.
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spading them however should be made quite a bit easier especially the lower rank helis
on that note why is the 1st US heli so much cheaper to spade than all the other 1st helis (by about 35k)
nice. brits are eating good this update i guess
That’s not my child, Seaking is my child
In this case would the helicopter remain under British flag or receive Philippines/ROK flag, since afaik British AW159 don’t use SPIKE ATGMs (not even sure if they have a technical capability)?
The helicopter will have the British flag. They were tested and implemented to the platform in Britain and offered for export sales too.
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My bad, I thought they were implemented by request.
Hi Smin,
It’s nice to have this confirmed.
Is there any consideration to the Spikes being added to a separate Wildcat in the tech tree? Spike NLOS is an absolutely bonkers ATGM, most likely causing a BR increase from 11.3/11.7 with the LMMs up to 12.7/13.0 with the Spikes. While it would be amazing to have the helicopter as armed and dangerous as possible with the Spikes, it would also be a shame to have LMMs be rendered functionally redundant on their debut platform by a vastly more powerful (if less numerous) ordnance option.
So why not have the best of both worlds? An LMM Wildcat at 11.3ish and a Spike Wildcat at 12.7ish. The British Heli tree is pretty sparse, it could definitely do with the filling out, and the Wildcat is the modern workhorse of the Army and Navy so it would be good to have it well represented.
There’s even a few unique variants of the Wildcat HMA.2 flying around, like the CUAS equipped ones of Prince of Wales as outlined by @da12thmonkey here, which could be added as something like Wildcat HMA.2 (R09)
We currently dont plan two seperate variants. Spike itself, as we mentioned in the blog, is still up for discussion once we have the vehicle in game and avaliable for testing. This will then decide its BR.
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I mean that depends on if we get Sea Venom (>20km) and or SPIKE NLOS (32km static or 50km rotatory) as MITL systems. Both would have an impact on the BR.
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Thanks for the response.
Once the Spikes have been implemented and tested on the devs side, and the performance/BR discrepancy becomes clear, I do hope that two separate variants is something that is at least considered by the devs, it solves the problem of the platform either
A) being brought up to a BR where LMMs are functionally redundant, or
B) being implemented without its best weapons
But, like I said, thanks for letting us know the current plan.
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Then imo if you are still planning to implement Korean nation in some way, I think it would be wiser to safe Spike option for them and implement British variant without Spike, but at more comfortable BR.
Only to have the same issue come up with the Korean Wildcat? I’m not sure how that helps haha.