Kalasnkova74

Do you know the PRF of an SA-10 “Flap Lid” radar? Because this sort of thing won’t work with guesstimates. Perhaps a degree of accuracy is available with early Cold War stuff , but launching ARMs and employing jamming against anything newer than an SA-2 is going to be difficult with public domain info. We’re back to square one with DCS simulating inaccurate SAM and IADS behavior. Real life Wild Weasel EWOs listened to tapes of the raw PRF of every Soviet Bloc air defense system in training. They were expected to commit that data to memory before leaving the schoolhouse. The US obtains some of it via discreet surveillance from platforms like the RC-135. ED has no chance obtaining that data legally.

Hafta respectfully disagree with you here. First, not all info is public domain (for obvious reasons). Next, simulating a good EW environment goes well beyond just knowing the system capabilities. The human element needs to be included too. SAM and IADS operators are people who want to survive and win too, and they play multiple tricks to meet those goals just like fighter pilots do. For every Captain Snodgrass pulling circuit breakers to max perform their jet, you’ve got a Col Zoltan Dani on the ground switching their radar on and off to deny tracking and moving their site in record time to defeat ARM tracking. DCS needs a game option where a person on the ground is manipulating controls on an IADS to defend a given airspace, while someone in an F-4G/ EA-6A / EA-6B/ Tornado ECR/ EA-18G etc is jamming and scanning to outwit them. It’s a very cops and robbers dynamic, and really can’t be implemented with the game in its current form. For what it’s worth, I’d love to play a crafty IADS commander like Serbian Colonel Dani. Playing Wild Weasel in DCS from both sides of the fence would be a rewarding insight into how SAM operators work, and add a layer of difficulty since flying players are fighting another human who wants to win.

Where I think an AI F-4G fits is a campaign scenario where the player flies wing on a Wild Weasel sortie. Since Southeast Asia , Wild Weasel aircraft typically flew with “conventional” aircraft which helped blow up the sites once the Weasels found them. Back in the 60s single seat F-105s would fly with F-100 Wild Weasels , and later F-4Es would fly as strike escorts with F-105G Weasels. It’s completely plausible for the US F-4Es we’re getting to fly with either AI F-105 or F-4G Wild Weasels in that role.

That fact occurred to McDonnell Douglas’ accountants , which is why they refused to approve the project. Tough to sell F/A-18s on the export market when an engine swap on their Phantoms gets better performance for less money.

There’s a point to be made for DCS expanding into the ECM regime. Electronic attack is an important capability, and a more realistic panel of intelligent SAM and AAA shooters plus ECM would only enhance the game for many people. But it would be a lot of work, and only once complete would including modules of aircraft like the F-4G, EA-6B, EA-18, Tornado ECR and others make sense.

The F-4 lands using a combination of AoA and power. It’s an artifact of its naval origins. If you’re on speed (for a given fuel weight) & at correct Angle of Attack you’ll see the runway just fine.

It’s not enough just to have the F-4G. DCS needs much higher fidelity SAM and IADS threats to fight against. So HB couldn’t just make an F-4G and call it good- they’d have to work with ED to basically build an entirely new library of threats to electronically fight. “Starbaby” has a lot of videos describing the cat and mouse game between IADS operators and the Weasels. Good SAM operators would do tricks like fire a missile blind and then illuminate the target at the last moment to deny RWR alerts, or launching from one site using terminal radar guidance from a different one to dodge ARMs. That’s why the APR-47 in the F-4G was so complex: you needed that kit to effectively fight SAM shooters who want to survive and win too. It’s also why the F-16/HARM combination doesn’t replace what was lost when the F-4G was retired, but that’s a topic for another day. Brass tacks, for the F-4G to make sense DCS needs to realistically simulate modern IADS, and enable players to act as cunning SAM shooters in MP. I think electronic warfare would be a damn fun expansion to the DCS experience - anyone game for a Tornado ECR?- but just dropping the F-4G and calling it done won’t work.

For reasons you’ve stated and others, it’s not up for debate whether a module is superior to a mod. Rather, the current choice for fans of early model & carrier based F-4 Phantom IIs are the VSN mod or nothing. It will be years before HB releases a US Navy Phantom II module. Would people here really prefer no option at all over a standalone mod, warts and all?

Would you prefer no early Phantom II variant at all? Because that’s the realistic alternative. Not only were the early variants not exported to many countries (just Iran & Spain), but it’s much more temperamental to fly and the missiles are far harder to effectively employ. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but if you’re a studio looking to make a profit on time & development investment the first variants don’t have a business case. It’ll be years before HB makes a full Naval variant module, since in detail it’s a very different Phantom to the Air Force variants (and they’d be remiss to leave out the UK carrier based variants, adding Dev time). So the choice will be VSN or nothing for the foreseeable future if you’re a Naval Phantom fan.

I’ll point out HB does not feature the only DCS F-4 Phantom II module. Yes, the VSN Phantom II mods have flaws, but that team’s done a great job with it so far and have patched many of the issues it had at the start. With Heatblurs F-4E covering the Phantom IIs later iteration with slats, early PGMs, and so on VSN is free to gradually improve the F-4B/F-4C to deliver the historical Phantom experience. Having the F-4B/F-4C mod -which I hope one day will equal the A-4 in detail and popularity- will deliver the historical F-4 experience alongside the later F-4E. With both modules in play, everyone should be able to fly a Phantom II they want.

I’ll point out again that we’re actually getting the best of both worlds with the Phantom. HB is doing the F-4E, and VSNs released a standalone mod for the “old school” F-4B/F-110/ USAF F-4C. So those who want to launch off a flattop in an F-4 aren’t totally in the cold, and VSN has plenty of development runway to make the F-4B better. As operated by VF-51 , the F-4B Naval variant served all the way through Operation Linebacker into 1973.

Even Tracor Systems got into the act with this F-4D.

The problem with realistically modeling Missile p/k in DCS based on real life data is that the real life data is ironically unreliable. The AIM-4 is an excellent case study of this. It was built to be used with a Hughes guidance system. Cutting edge stuff for the early 1950s. The idea was an interceptor (F-101B/F-102/F-106) would be vectored into a head on attack against incoming Soviet nuclear bombers flying over the north pole. At supersonic closure speeds it’s impossible for a human to arm and effectively employ a weapon, so the Hughes guidance computer would calculate the head on interception data and launch the AIM-4 based on the highest probability of a direct hit. This is why the missile wasn’t built with a proximity fuse; a Tu-95 Bear is a big tough plane, and if you want to take it down you NEED to hit it to get the kill. A damaged bomber that gets 50% of its nuclear payload to the target = millions dead and mission failed. So USAF Air Defense Command uses the Falcon and is fairly happy with it. Meanwhile the USAF is essentially ordered by Robert McNamara to buy the Navy’s F-4B Phantom II, which becomes probably the best decision McNamara ever made in the SecDef chair. With the Navy’s Phantom II comes the Navy’s missiles, in this case the AIM-9B Sidewinder. This didn’t sit well with the USAF leadership when discussions started on a follow up version. The Navy owned the Sidewinder program, which triggered an intra service feud over the Sidewinders future. The political row ended with USAF generals basically telling the Navy to ‘take their Sidewinder and shove it’. They set about bastardizing the bomber interceptor AIM-4 to work with the Phantom II. The Phantom II didn’t have the necessary avionics, so all the launch steps and parameters had to be implemented manually (including triggering the seeker cooling). It’s a heat seeker, the Sidewinders a heat seeker, plug N play right? (or so thought the Generals). Which was like bringing a scoped hunting rifle to a sword duel. The AIM-4 was never built to be used against fighters, a fact Col Robin Olds famously verified over the skies of Vietnam. That decision by USAF Systems Command to lobotomize the AIM-4 ruined the Falcons reputation for all time. It had an abysmal combat PK: but if DCS modeled an F-101B (for one example) with the AIM-4 they couldn’t use that Vietnam data as a guide to model the missiles performance on the Voodoo because it’s an entirely different avionics setup. Lengthy example, but hopefully it gets the point across. Just because an AIM-4/AIM-7/etc scored a 10% PK in Vietnam doesn’t mean that’s what it should score all the time.

These are simulations of combat aircraft. The F-4s were not sent to combat to deliver flowers.

Press F for Korin. Man lived my DCS nightmare in real life by unintentionally jettisoning his missiles with his external fuel tank before the fight.

Hopefully HB is engineering a cartridge start option too. Often in Southeast Asia this would be used to expedite startup of 20+ birds flying a mission from Korat or Udorn:

True, but this takes us back to the infinite debate on accuracy vs gameplay enjoyment. Doubt anyone would be happy paying $70 for a DCS module only to have their radar suddenly go “lead nose” in an MP server. The fact such things happened to real world combat pilots won’t stop a vitriolic bug report loaded with exclamation points from landing in the developers inbox.

In Ed Cobleigh’s “War for the Hell of It”, he mentioned that flying AAR from the “pit” was not only no big deal but in fact preferred vs the front seat. According to “Fast Eddie” he got a better view of the boomer’s indicator marks on the probe from the backseat, so he had better situational awareness on being in position than flying from the front. He did a tour before the USAF had dedicated WSOs, so pilots could fly front or backseat depending on seniority or mission needs.

A Southeast Asia map is a bigger ask then I think most realize.The “Vietnam War” was not just fought in Vietnam. An SEA map will include the entirety of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin , Hainan Island and parts of southern China. That’s a LOT of square footage people.

Agreed, although considering Israel used an Iraqi defector’s MiG-21F-13 as leverage to buy the F-4E Kurnass we clearly didn’t have to work hard for export orders.

My two cents; the F-4E and F-4J/S will move forward under Heatblur, while VSN will forge ahead with the standalone mod of the 1960s variants. Each development team will have lots of runway to move their projects forward.

I don’t think a “1-1” Vietnam era campaign is in the cards. But we can get close. A server with MiG-19S’ , MiG-17s, F-4s (RBs and VSNs) and others duking it out is close enough for me.

In summary, this was because the brand new SA-6 was not detectable by Western defensive avionics engineered for earlier systems. As such , I’d expect the F-4E’s module’s RWR to detect the Gainful’s guidance system. Page 48 of a USAF paper submitted on the October 1973 conflict outlines this further : “On 6 October 1973, the S.A-6 was being employed for the first time anywhere in the world, and it was not affected by the ECM, chaff, or flares then employed by the IAF'. The Israeli ECM equipment was designed for the S.A-2 and S.A-3 and not for the wider frequency band over which the SA-6 radar operated. Even if the ECM were effective, the SA - 6 could have been launched under optical control. Chaff, which the IAF used extensively, also had to be tuned to the proper frequencies,IOW . cut to the proper lengths.The Israeli flares were intended to divert the SA-7; they could not affect the command plus semi-active radar homing guidance of the SA-6.” Full document:

We’re certainly fighting in Syria.

Well, why stop at three pages? We’ve come this far, let’s make it 4! So blah blah blah “Razbam is bad” blah blah “ED might be sequencing the releases anyway in direct contravention of facts disclosed , so the F-4E could be delayed by the F-15E’s delays” etc , insert TOS violating ad hominem of one’s choice here….. /s