Dudikoff

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for it (discounted for F-14 owners, naturally) as it's quite a lot of extra work that was never mentioned on the roadmap, but that's up to HB to decide, of course. Though, I would really love to have the F-14D as well (even without IRST if that's the major issue with it). It's a shame it got canned from the start, basically; it would have been so cool with the A2G SAR modes (as on the F-15E), AMRAAMs, etc.

Even the first photo of a Ukrainian 9.13 shows an R-27ER, from what I can tell.

The new interface to DCS sounds interesting. I'll try it out when I find time. Thanks for your hard work keeping VAICOM alive.

It doesn't, there was a diagram of its multiplexed radar signal somewhere. At some calculated distance from the target (depending on the target size selection), it would switch from sending the commands to the missile to illuminating the target for the missile.

A/EA variant was developed for a while in the 80s (ARH seeker, basically), but at some point further work was abandoned in the late 80s as they focused on the more promising R-77 design.

It also doesn't specify the hemisphere it refers to.

I think people are getting stuck on a certain version as if it was a static thing, rather than a continuous upgrade through their service. When these planes go through major overhauls, e.g. their WCS and radar processing computers get line updated and since their original stuff is obsolete, they get newer parts with updated capabilities (e.g. Ts100M processors that initially came with N019M radars instead of original Ts-100). So, 9.12A as released initially couldn't support R-27ER missiles as they weren't available yet anyway, but later on with various line upgrades it probably could with the correct upgrade package.

IMHO, it's more likely that it makes no sense for the MiG-29A given its short range, only 2 BVR missiles and the G-limits with an asymmetric R-27 loadout. It's more than enough to guide it to a single target via GCI that it will engage with both BVR missiles and finish off or engage any targets of opportunity with Archers before turning back as it's running out of fuel already.

I only mentioned it because R-27 was always advertised as a modular missile where you could easily swap between IR and SARH seekers on the same missile body so I suppose the same would probably work between older and newer SARH seeker heads. I mentioned Artem as they used to advertise exporting R-27 missiles. Not sure where Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia are getting their R-27 stocks from, but I would expect it's Ukraine rather than Russia.

So you have two receiver standards, one for the original set of channel/frequencies, one for the modified. Is there a compatibility problem in combining an ER body with the original R-27R receiver if the missile is as modular as advertised? In any case, I can understand if the Russians wanted to sell the new missile only as a package with the radar upgrades, but there's nothing stopping e.g. Artem from Ukraine to offer R-27ERs compatible with the original radar sets.

What's to adapt? There's only the difference of some receiver component in the seeker head. We have an export variant here and a plausible scenario here is that they used the older spec seeker for export to owners with unmodified N019 radars.

The R-27 is a modular missile, so you could just use the R-27R seeker on the R-27ER body (if the illuminating channels couldn't be modified differently). I don't see this as a reason for not having the R-27ER on the 9.12A (depending on the scenario timeframe, naturally).

Ulan Ude factory in Russian SFSR was producing the UB variant from the start, so it wasn't really a big issue for them.

AM Dawn, perhaps?

I feel it could have been cheaper given how a bunch of stuff was already developed/researched with the FC3 and how relatively simple the plane is avionics wise. I'm planning to buy it, but I do hope the radar and IRST systems are not just copy/pasted from the FC3 with some HUD updates. Lastly, it would be great if the avionics developed for it would pave way towards some other FF FC3 modules in the future(like e.g. Su-25A and Su-27S, eventually).