as far as I am aware, in the fire and observe mode you cannot lock a new target and the missile becomes manually guided only, which defeats the whole point of a fire and forget missile for warthunder, it just becomes a POV tow missile
its because of spike and kh38, but MMW brimstones or MMW anything would be worse than kh38, including anything that has MMW like LOAL capabilities
most MMW platforms additionally have some form of GPS guidance and/or intertial guidance allowing you to shoot before a target is found or in the general direction of a target and then let the missile find a target once it gets close enough
and technically yes you can shoot fox 3 missiles without locking a target, sure you need to lock a target to actually shoot the missile but you can drop the lock and even turn off your radar or fly away before the missile goes pitbull, and it will then use inertial navigation to get to where the target was before trying to reaquire the target itself
this is not what you called a “real LOAL” but just seeker find something random in it’s FOV. and all TV/IR ATGMs is able to do so in this game. what ever it useing gps like AASM, IOG like Kh38 or just locking the ground like maverick.
I really hope you are talking following a theme , not just bicker.
They are not better hellfires, it’s more like a side grade for range with sacrifice of speed. Plus no HMD and 8 ATGMs, that’s why I would rather say they are about equal, except the stupid RWR fix which too sooooo long that made it worse than AH64 for the most part.
Before you said that, you might want to remember how Ka-50 and Ka-52 railed top tier for a good 3-5 patches.
And for anti them we have anti-air more than 8km range, so what makes you think that DIRCM is that powerful until now?
Because DIRCM is currently overperforming and will start overperforming even more with the new update as it can completely nullify half the new top teir AAs, its also like the only reason or at least the main reason the ka52 and mi28nm are 12.0 instead of 11.0 or 11.7