Kalasnkova74

As with most subjects, context matters. Most Cold War Mach 2 fighters were deathtraps regardless of manufacture. Many Mach 1 fighters were similarly unsafe. One didn’t graduate F-100 Super Sabre training so much as survived it. The students who didn’t pass washed out in fireballs. The MiG-23 was so hard to handle Egypt lost over a dozen of them in the first week from accidents.

Based on the accounts of Wild Weasels who employed the Shrike, the weapon was essentially a psychological deterrent first and a site marking system second. They hoped but didn’t expect it to kill a radar. “Shrike was dumb. You could do better with a peashooter. It was only fifty percent reliable, fifty percent accurate, and when you do the probabilities on that you realize it takes a lot of them to hit the target. …We really had to line it up with the target in an almost perfect trajectory…You used Shrike as a marker most of the time.” -Kim Pepperell, from the book “Iron Hand” by Anthony Thornbourough & Frank Mormillo. Further, USAF Wild Weasels typically escorted a strike package of other aircraft , so they’d fly interference by operating between IADS sites and the strike force. If one of the IADS locked on with a SAM, the Weasels would fire a Shrike to mark the general location and the hunter-killer flight would do the rest with CBU / bombs. What does that mean for DCS? Well, employing the Shrike as a one-shot single ship kill weapon against an IADS radar sadly isn’t realistic no matter how well the player flies, especially in MP. Using it that way is , as many of us have discovered the hard way, a recipe for enduring frustration. It’s a supporting weapon used to find camouflaged sites so Someone Else could bomb them. Worse, the psychological “kill” of a SAM site battalion commander turning off his radar to avoid a Shrike visit isn’t part of DCS as a default yet, so the suppression benefit is lost also. Bottom line- if you’re flying with a team or as a flight , the Shrike makes sense as a SEAD target locating tool. Otherwise , skip it.

That may be true of the later ARMs like the HARM, but in real life the initial AGM-45 was unable to reliably track sidelobes. Source: https://ia801900.us.archive.org/26/items/history-of-the-electro-optical-guided-missiles/S-75 family.pdf

In fact, what you’re seeing is not an ED weapon modeling issue. As I understand the AGM-45 wasn’t originally built to track radar sidelobes (the later HARM does). So this behavior, while inconvenient, is accurate. In the field, this situation is why the guy in back earned their pay; they could do EW magic and know which signal was a quality one to use for weapons employment and advise the “bus driver” up front when to shoot and when not to. Since Jester never went to EW WSO school & we just have the ALR-46, solving this problem means mission planning where the site is in advance, noting where the radar’s pointing and attacking the site from that direction. Just like the real world nutcases Weasels.

Of course damage/malfunction is one reason, but another is to keep the slats from cycling in and out at certain parameters.

Once the Combat Tree feature arrives in the DMAS block under development, the tables will turn quickly. That system pings the IFF of hostile aircraft to track them passively: if it’s implemented for everything in DCS (not just MiG-17s and 21s) , it’ll be a major advantage for the F-4E in the Cold War servers. I can see people desperately searching for “IFF keybinds” once that version drops.

I think the issue is simple. Players just aren’t used to the F-4Es pulse radar. They’re coming from modern fighters with intuitive control setups and look down/shoot down modes. God mode on the screen, as it were. Then they hop in the F-4E and go “WTF” when they can’t easily search targets, can’t effectively sort, or effectively employ the APQ-120/AIM-7 at AMRAAM range. The hope is Jester can somehow bridge this capability gap out of the box. That said, Combat Tree will change this to an extent in the next block coming out.

If you’re in this forum, you already understand the appeal of a Vietnam War map. My question-within the bounds of economics and player system, is a comprehensive Vietnam War map viable? We’re looking at a combat zone stretching from central Thailand in the West, up just beyond the Chinese border in the North, south to the end of Vietnam and Cambodia, and east to include the ocean around Hainan Island. That’s a LOT of area. Fully detailed , that’s going to be a VERY large map file. Time to crack open the piggy bank for another 1TB external drive. ED could break it up to avoid a huge map file , but the playerbase won’t like that either. A “Vietnam Only” map means you can play Southern Vietnam scenarios, but full fidelity simulation of Laos or North Vietnam campaigns is off the table. Thailand and Laos covers the Barrel Roll and some SAR ops, but obviously Vietnamese air campaigns are not viable. This is one map where leaving parts off compromises the utility of the whole project. However, I’m not sure people are OK with buying a map AND needing a dedicated HD because of the size. Seems like a no-win scenario for me. What say you all?

I’ve gotten ‘er up to 1.8 with the pylons in a dive to 25k ft. She’ll probably do 2.0, but I backed off after seeing the intake duct temp light come on.

I agree with the others. The flight model changes are a welcome upgrade. Before ,on landing an alert hand on the throttles was needed -or you’d just plop on the ground. Now the Phantom II is much smoother, more predictable and less likely to fall like an anvil over the fence. The trim feels much better, the aircraft is easier to control on bomb passes, and overall the flight model feels much more refined and forgiving. Well done HB!

Further, when attacking /suppressing ground based air defenses, the Israelis used loft as a standoff method. Not terribly accurate, but it did well at making AAA gunners run for their bunkers during an airfield or other attack run. By the time the gunners got back to their posts, the strike was over and the Kurnass flights were egressing.

Not in the F-4s case. Combat Tree enabled reliable passive ID of hostile targets beyond the APQ-120s detection range. Knowing who is or isn’t a bandit is a bonus.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Not in the near future. The F-4E spawned multiple “boutique” variants , and each one has its own quirks and capabilities. The F-4F ICE, the F-4E AUP, the F-4E 2020 Terminator, the F-4E Kurnass 2000….each is just different enough to merit its own dedicated module. It would take a development studio years to knock out one of them. HB is in the best position to make a Gucci Phantom, but their plate is full for the foreseeable future.

The flip side is the OPFOR behavior. Current IADS behavior is too simplistic to make an F-4G (or any SEAD specific aircraft) worth the effort, public info availability on the -G notwithstanding. This is of course in EDs court and not HBs. Real world IADS operators did tricky stuff like launch from one site while guiding from another, spoofing RWRs with fake lock on signals only to switch to another target or frequency, launching blind and activating the guidance radar only in the last phases of SAM flight, and so on.

Also worth noting here, the F-4s angular engine placement means power changes also change nose angle. This was of course an intentional design decision going back to its naval roots. No big deal (at least to me) in casual flight, but it’s perceptible in formation and AAR.