Dragon1-1

Looks like it's not official yet, there was an announcement some time ago that they were supposed to be gone by now. It doesn't seem like it's officially retired yet. In any case, those jets Israel took out were pretty much museum pieces, so worn out that they couldn't actually fight all that well, if at all (as seen by their utter inability to do anything about the Israeli strikes). Iran finally managed to buy Su-35s, I'm pretty sure that the Tomcats will be sent to static displays once those arrive.

...and if they were accurately simulated, they'd find out a nuke is nothing more than an oversized HE charge. You don't want to be near one when it goes off, but the "end of the world" is alarmist nonsense cooked up by activists and clueless fiction writers (or those who think "civilization" ends at US borders, since USSR had more than enough nukes to collapse that). Humanity didn't end when Mt. Tambora blew, and that was on order of 800MT, and deep underground. Nike-Herc's 20kT high up in the air is a rather less apocalyptic than that. That said, the MiG-21 has nukes as an Easter egg, and they absolutely kill performance. DCS engine is just not made for weapons with such a huge blast radius. It'd be a major subsystem with very limited utility, especially since details of nuclear delivery systems are all very classified, so they would likely be AI only, or at most restricted to the analog platforms where their operation is known. Nuke stuff is well guarded by everyone who has it, and for good reason.

Hopefully now that the Iranian F-14s are officially gone, the US government will release its death grip on anything related to F-14D sooner or later.

It wasn't shaped charge, it was blast-frag (T-45). Nike J (Japanese version) was actually incompatible with the nukes.

I'd rather have the MiG-21F-13, but in any case, HB has more than enough in the pipeline. I don't think they could take on another module in the near future, there's still the FF A-6 they hardly even started on.

It's very likely that the company that does the jet for MSFS will be the same that'll do it for DCS. See Heatblur, who develop their planes for both in parallel. The company will benefit from research and modeling (both 3D and physics) done for one when making the plane for the other. It makes no sense for ED nor HB to work on Rafale.

I suspect spherical Earth will help with that. One thing about the "feeling" of altitude is just how far the horizon is up there. In DCS, there's no real horizon, the maps are flat. It works at normal mission altitudes if you're not looking too closely, but it's missing the "hey, did I just fly into space?" feeling at the extremes.

No, Block 15 MLU did, and only in foreign service. The MLU package gave them avionics and cockpit similar to F-16C. Stock Block 15 was heaters only, it was the last F-16A. Sparrows were only on a single ANG variant (either Block 15 or 30, I'm not sure), no other Viper carried them. It's still the same generation, and very similar role, that of a lightweight, short range, low cost dogfighter. And you're forgetting one extremely important feature of the Viper: the FBW system. It had a better RWR, sure, but the big deal was its novel control system. It would have been a particularly good match for our MiG-29, at least if it survived to the merge.

MiG-29 is a proper, albeit no-frills, 4th generation fighter. Far superior to the Phantom is every aspect except air to ground. It's comparable to the F-16A in many regards, not necessarily to contemporary heavy fighters like the F-15A. The US modules that we have are called generation 4+.

But that's the problem. What do those seven people do? You've got an AI aircraft that represents seven people operating a huge number of radio antennas, looking at the signals they receive and responding to that in real time. So we need to distinguish between what the aircraft theoretically can do, and what it would actually do in a real battlefield situation. They can choose to jam some frequencies but not others, interfere with comms and employ various EW techniques, at different power levels on different frequencies. The AI needs to make all those decisions in a believable way, but even this level is problematic, because those details are all classified.

The problem is, capabilities are one thing, how they are used is another. EW aircraft have a lot of gear that allows them a lot of control over their jammers. Even a Vientam era design will be equipped with knobs for every parameter imaginable, and those knobs would be tuned based on what the operator sees on the screen. What's classified, even for Vietnam era jammers, is how it all comes together. Radar modeling in DCS is pretty detailed on new modules, so it follows the jamming would have to be, too.

What random Russian people say on an internet forum is not necessarily an indication of what RL MiG drivers from Russian AF say, or what the Soviet ones used to say. Besides, since MiG-23 is long retired and MiG-27 is obscure, I suspect "the MiG" works for most people these days.

Zuyev's account seems to indicate they did like the name Fulcrum and used it sometimes. Same as with Su-27, that one also got a cool name. "Bear" for the Tu-95 also quickly got traction once the crews found out about it.

The A-10 isn't officially called the Warthog, either, and the F-16 isn't officially named the Viper (not the Block 50, anyway). MiG-29 is called Fulcrum by the Russians, too, mostly because it's a cool name and they haven't managed to come up with a better one. In the mission editor, it'd be nice to have the proper name, especially if there might be more variants in the future, but as far as the official product name goes, I'm not bothered. The name serves its purpose and perhaps there's a legal point to not calling it exactly the same as the real plane.

In other words, almost just like in the actual military, only it's easier to hide the beer. I'm all for using proper procedures and a detailed planning session, but "milsim" really shouldn't mean simulating the BS, too. Most of us get enough of that already.

Not only does this aspect have a long way to go, I'm not really seeing it getting much better, even compared to the old days. Finishing a campaign mission still boots you back to the main menu (as opposed to loading up the next one, as is the industry standard), the briefing UI is clunky at best and neither especially powerful nor immersive, there's no way to include custom post-mission debriefing text, nor a way to make any customizations to the campaign completion screen (or even replace the music). Here's a few suggestions that would help: 1. Better briefings. A "slideshow" with large format graphics and rich text below the graphic. For DC, it could use a few (handmade) slides with spaces for DC engine to insert things like target names and callsigns. 2. Custom debriefing in similar vein, with the ability to hide or show slides according to mission logic. 3. Ability to play a video clip before and/or after a mission. 4. Custom campaign intro and outro, in the same vein. Since this would be a large UI overhaul and probably include significant dev effort, you could start by opening the campaign completion screen up for people to insert something other than the generic congratulations (which sound especially silly when the campaign was purely a training one). Good, immersive UI is a big part of the game aspect. I'm not asking you to hire Mark Hamill to do a Wing Commander 3 level of immersive environment between missions (that said, old space games could be great for inspiration), but it could be a lot better than it is now.

I want to play at my convenience, not when others have the time. MP is always a commitment (unless you play with total randoms, which I don't care for), with SP I can play or not, and nobody else will care. My at times unreliable internet connection (I'm on a radio link) also doesn't bother me, nor am I affected if someone else doesn't make it, or has connection problems. Playing with others just adds a whole other level of fuss that I'm unwilling to deal with. Plus, as a VR player, I don't have performance to spare, and MP is poorly optimized in DCS.

In the end, the problem was likely that Stinkbug was too slow for it, though it's also possible funding concerns or even office politics also played a role. It would be interesting to hear just how advanced that idea was, for instance whether wiring for Sidewinder rails was ever installed in the bay. Actual tests likely never took place, but perhaps it could have had this capability added in short order if necessary.

A real idea, actually, but one that did not pan out. At one point, hunting Soviet A-50s was indeed considered as a mission for the F-117A. The "F" designation suggests that the idea of making the Nighthawk an actual stealth fighter had some traction. In the end, though, it was judged it didn't perform well enough to be useful for this. That IR sensor above the nose might be a remnant of this.

AIM-120 actually does use the new missile API, including stuff like Kalman filter and other advanced guidance stuff. As for SPO-15, even if realistic errors are introduced into RWRs on Blue jets they will have an advantage over the Soviet ones. The US learned how important RWR is in Vietnam, where they were vital for dodging SAMs. The Soviets were always the ones with the SAMs, so they never had a similar experience. Their RWRs work for avoiding being nuked by a Nike-Hercules, not for pinpoint-precise notching of other aircraft.

This is realistic. SAPHEI is not really armor piercing (hence semi armor piercing), it can deal with basic armor, but it's more of a HE and incendiary round that simply doesn't go off on the first thing it touches, like pure HEI does. It's basically a combined effects round that works best against soft skinned targets like aircraft or trucks. It can punch through something armored against small arms fire, but real plating, like on a BMP-3, will defeat the round.

Does it state otherwise? Because just because it doesn't explicitly state that it can't doesn't mean much. It'd be worth mentioning if it didn't work. So far, I've seen it mentioned either in other countries' manuals or in uncertain terms.

Maybe we should have a checkbox, then. A brand new (or at least properly maintained) Soviet MiG-29 would have the radar working OK with the SPO-15, but for most of the jet's lifetime, it seems that it was a common problem which was very often left unfixed. That said, if we're being consistent, this should just work. DCS doesn't simulate bad maintenance, deterioration due to conditions (big issue for F-4 and its missiles in Vietnam) and other such concerns that often determine real world performance much more than factory E-M diagrams do.

Exactly the realistic Vietnam experience. The F-4s that were covering the Thuds or other, bomb-laden F-4s had no recourse but to try to dogfight the MiGs that routinely jumped them. This is why USAF flights got their clock cleaned on a regular basis, and part of why USN got so much mileage out of TOPGUN. If you can't help but be forced into a dogfight in a BVR-capable fighter, you had better be good at dogfighting. More likely, the MiG-29 wasn't considered a likely target for radar missiles. It would either be bushwhacking NATO attack aircraft like the MiG-21 did in Vietnam (its primary role), or it would be escorting friendly bombers, in which case the bombers would be the ones soaking up radar-guided missiles (and hence they had the ECM equipment to defeat them). This is also why the MiG-29 got the helmet sight and R-73, it was envisioned primarily as a WVR combatant. Unlike modern AMRAAM boats, the threats that the MiG-29 was expected to face carried few BVR missiles and would likely try to launch them at their targets, rather than wasting them on escort fighters.

My point was more about the role the controller played in each doctrine. The F-4 was a multirole aircraft, and didn't always get AWACS coverage, for instance when escorting, or on a strike mission. The MiG, while it can be shoehorned into doing something other than GCI-guided DCA or CAP, really isn't very well equipped for that. Worth noting that in general, the impulse for developing the RWR system wasn't air combat, it was the SAMs. Which, notably, the Soviets were much less worried about, what with NATO being somewhat deficient in that area. There's a reason SPO-15 features a separate light (that gets absolute priority) and a whole subsystem for detecting what Nike Hercules is doing - you want to know when you're being painted by a nuclear-tipped SAM. Likewise, F-4's RWR was mostly a response to the proliferation of the SA-2, and further development took place to account for superior Soviet SAMs. Early on, RWRs on fighters simply weren't a thing, even when they were expected to face radar guided missiles in air combat. IRL, air combat depended not on locating the missile, but on watching what the launch aircraft is doing. As such, the SPO-15 was mostly concerned with ensuring the MiG didn't blunder into a Nike Herc envelope and get nuked out of the sky. It is adequate for the purpose of countering radar guided SAM threats of the era, not so much for surviving in a modern Fox 3 environment.