Stackup

Except these missiles will be needed for future modules like the navy F-4, the A-7E from FlyingIron, and assuming they get to it, the F-8J from Mag3. It's not just the F-14A that needs them. Heatblur has already made plenty of new weapons for their aircraft including the remodel of the AGM-45 and AIM-7E they made for ED to go with the F-4E along with all the other new weapons that came with it. Personally, I disagree that the J and P should be used instead of adding an H model. They're fine for the IRIAF Tomcat, but the US Navy didn't use those missiles and we should get at least one earlier one they did use. I'd also include the AIM-7E-4 to this list as an earlier Sparrow variant that should be added for the F-14.

Which will already be covered by both the A-6 and A-7 since both of those can buddy refuel and will come well before any full fidelity S-3. Still requires ED to make player refueling an official thing which they are supposed to do for the KC-130J from ASC.

I wondered that too. Maybe they're going to make them functional? Hard to believe they'd forget what items are already in game, but mistakes can happen.

Surprised nobody is talking about the new F-14A pictures Heatblur put out because they relate here quite closely. So we saw the mock up of the F-14 B/U in the 2025 and beyond video. Great, sounds good. I would still rather have the promised F-14A early first(luckily that's clearly still what's happening), because they've had that on the roadmap for years now and the B/U was never confirmed except for allusions that it might be a separate paid addition if they ever got the info to do it properly, not part of the main F-14 package like the early A. Now we have more news on the early A including screenshots of the cockpit panels and TCS pod options. The older style gun vents have not replaced the NACA ducts yet, but I hope they get added along with earlier missile options like the AIM-9H and AIM-7E4.

Regardless of whether or not we should have the 4 missiles, ED specifically say they are modelling a Swiss F-5E-3. Which means if the Swiss did do this on the F-5E-3's they had, we should get it, regardless of what the US did when they bought it back for their aggressor program. The jet we have doesn't fully match either plane despite what ED wants us to think with their, "Well the jet we're modeling didn't have that" talking point. Which brings us back to the fact that all F-5E's were factory capable of all export options, including as I understand it, the 4x Sidewinders that was approved by the US even though it never saw operational use and the refueling probe among other items. Other aircraft like BlackShark3 and the F-16 have unrealistic/test loadout options that don't match what ED says they're modeling so this is very clearly a randomly applied standard based on percieved value the addition would bring to the market vs time spent adding it. The uproar over 4x HARMs for the F-16 got that feature re-added so who knows.

I can't comment on the X-plane stuff, but where's your evidence they have stopped working on the A-7 and have abandoned DCS? Oh, that's right, there isn't any evidence of this besides "Waah, they won't talk to us about something we haven't paid money for yet". I understand wanting more information and for people to actually stick to deadlines they give themselves, but ask yourself this. How many DCS developers actively interact with the community at all? How many of those developers primarily use alternative platforms like Discord as opposed to the forums here? How many projects have been announced that keep getting next to no information released? It hasn't even been a full year since the last update, there's no reason to say anything is "vaporware" or abandoned yet except certain other modules that are no longer being updated.

One thing I will note to the people saying they have to restart DCS entirely every time they make a change, I have found that it is only necessary to restart DCS when you make a change to the description.lua file as it is only read once on first use while DCS is running. Texture, roughmet, normal, etc. changes will usually update after a mission using the livery is loaded and then returned to the ME. This is way shorter than a full restart although still not ideal in any way, but when you're someone like me who couldn't ever figure out the model viewer in the first place you do what you can. Painting the newer assets like the B-52 and S-3 was painful, but not any harder than any other plane was for me to do. Of course, people have figured out the majority of the description.lua for both of those planes while there isn't any way to get the F-5's currently so we can't even do that.

Uh, what? I genuinely don't understand what you're saying here... Did you mean that you're "Starting to think the AI A-6 has been moved to release only with the full fidelity module" ? Heatblur has continued to say the AI version will release first without needing the full module, and went so far as to say it was coming "in one of the next updates" in their September 2024 update. Of course, like the early F-14A they also said they wanted released before the end of 2024 in that same post, it isn't here yet so obviously something has caused them to delay. Again. They finally showed us the J-35 AI model in game which means clearly they are working on their AI units, they just haven't yet figured out how to quit "crying wolf" as it were. Or in this case, "crying release".

So, it's "coming in one of the next updates" and yet didn't make an appearance in 2025 and Beyond? It would be nice if Heatblur would actually make an updated statement on this.

null2025 and Beyond

Why should he? The B/U is not the same thing as the D.

You aren't the only one, gib ALR-45! They keep seeming to find ways to push previosuly announced projects like the full fidelity A-6 further onto the back burner which saddens me to no end...

Nope, not yet

Technically the last update was March 12, 2024, although it was only on the Discord.