Kalasnkova74

The IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) employed the F-4D & F-4E in anti-maritime ops during the Iran/Iraq war. They mainly fired Mavericks at the rudder of Iraqi tankers, causing them to lose steerage and run aground. Directly hitting the tankers IRL yielded little results since - funny enough-tanker ships are expensive and thus built to resist fire. The anti ship capability of US-spec F-4Es like the one we’re getting is of that capability. Some foreign Phantom II users like Israel , Turkey, Germany, Greece and South Korea feature local modifications for anti ship missiles. Not sure how many of those mods, if any, will make their way to DCS

You’re spot on, but I suspect the flying laptop content creation gang may instead declare the F-4E “rubbish”. We don’t live in an era that respects forethought & context

For those unaware, two (unwillingly) retired fighter pilots occasionally make DCS content showcasing BFM engagements . In the linked video, Mover has trouble at times handing the relatively analog F-14 against Gonky in an F/A-18. Note these people are trained fighter pilots and thus more experienced than your typical DCS player. If Mover had some trouble, it’s safe to say the average YouTuber used to 4th generation tech is in for more challenges flying and fighting the F-4E, especially for BFM. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same people hyping up the F-4E now online turn against the aircraft once they lose BFM bouts - either to bad tactics (4th Gen “lift vector and PULL” won’t work here) or to bad aircraft handling like adverse yaw or fighting with the yaw stability augmentation on. The manual nature of weapons delivery will probably be another nail in the social media coffin , since it’ll be dead reckoning nav & mils/airspeed/ dive angle instead of a JDAM and targeting pod. Pave Spike and Maverick will offer electronic targeting options, but it’ll be a shadow of later tech.

If I didn’t know better I’d swear yall stole these photos from a DieselThunder video. Bloody great work chaps!

I’m bracing myself for the e-backlash once the 4th Gen Flanker/Hornet/Viper babies lose their first BFM fight and declare the Phantom “useless in a dogfight”

It’s another point behind why the F-4E will be harder than modern jets. Managing comms will be tougher, building SA means taking fragmentary radio calls , Radar/RWR plus AWACS inputs and creating a mental picture (no MFD screen to do it for you). Navigation will be harder (good luck getting back on track to the target if you get jumped by interceptors and debate from your paper map line ), the AoA tone is going off, the RWR is chirping, Jesters chatting, there’s outside comms , and in all this sensory chaos you must still get the F-4 into speed & altitude parameters to deploy weapons over the target (no “death dot” CCIP). Remember- HAL 9000 isn’t there to save you from departing because of a maneuver error during a mission!

In some parts of the world, “winter” doesn’t end -climate wise- until May.

Thats the point. Systemically it’s “simple” - but simple isn’t the same as easy. Taking off, landing, and flying Vipers/M2000/ Hornets /Fulcrums/Flankers is relatively simple thanks to computers. Not so straightforward with the F-4E where AoA and rudder use matter. It also plays a part when bombing: no more punching buttons into a MFD to laze a target. While the F-4E will have Maverick and Pave Spike, you’re also dealing with manual bomb delivery with tables and mil depression in the sight. Air to air visual fights will also require analogue knowledge alien to the “yank and bank” crowd accustomed to 9G sustained turns and 1/1 thrust. Do the DCS yank and bank with an F-4E and you’ll be strafe bait.(cue Growling Sidewinder vid declaring the F-4E hopeless in a dogfight….) Even shooting the Sparrow effectively changes, because you don’t have helpful cuing and range indicators in the HUD (a gunsight ranging circle ain’t the same thing). It’s all dials, gauges and lights. Older tech does not automatically equal easier.

It is not- for two reasons. First, in American service the F-4E was used from Day 1 in the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses role. In “Palace Cobra” pilot Ed Rasimus wrote of his time flying the SEAD mission, back when Vietnam was two countries and The Bee Gees were a group of talented & anonymous British musicians. Back when the F-4G was only a document on a Pentagon planners desk, the F-4E would fly alongside F-105 Wild Weasels to drop CBU on whatever hostile sites the Bears called out. The USAF never funded enough dedicated Wild Weasel aircraft to cover its global force needs , and thus augmented the Wild Weasel units with F-4Es. The practice continued with the adoption of the F-4G to replace war-worn Thuds. This is one big reason why the standard USAF F-4E was wired for AGM-45 ; it was understood even at the planning stages that the F-4E would operate with the F-4G to prosecute the SEAD mission. Lacking the APR-38/47 suite the F-4E couldn't cut, track and locate signals. But it didn’t have to. The F-4G EWO would call out which way to turn and when to shoot, and the F-4E(s) would launch their Shrikes/ Mavericks/ etc as needed. When the F-4E was phased out of the active Air Force inventory for the F-16, the “helper” job transferred to the Viper - and is how it got the SEAD mission today. If that’s not enough Weasel credibility, consider the Israelis. In October 1973 onward, they used the F-4E as a SEAD platform. The AGM-78 Standard ARM was integrated & fired on their versions of the F-4E, and SEAD missions- executed not much differently from the trailer- was the type’s bread and butter during the Yom Kippur war. Many Kurnasses were lost in this job, including the disastrous “Model 5” strike against SA-6 batteries they couldn’t detect. Now, you’re technically correct that advanced signal processing , sorting, analysis and ARM handoff was only done one the F-4G variant with a dedicated EWO: but the F-4E was historically heavily used in the SEAD mission, and thus the trailer’s intent doesn’t remotely represent fraud. It’s splitting hairs to suggest a EWO-pilot pair represents a Wild Weasel SEAD mission, but the F-4Es flying with them - or Israeli Kurnasses working a SAM site - isn’t.

A noble sentiment, but the F-4 Phantom II did more than saber rattle in the Cold War. As thousands of paramilitary Laotians, Vietnamese, and Arab militaries discovered the hard way. Like it or not these airplanes did not deliver flowers, and killed many people in the air to air and air to ground mission regimes.

“In practice, not all combinations might be possible, as there are a lot of technical factors resulting in restrictions.” For example: AIM-9s cannot be mounted on the inboard wing pylons with certain bombs due to clearance issues.

I quote directly from Shlomo Aloni’s book, “Israeli F-4 Phantom II Aces” : ”Among Israeli fighters, the F-4 is ranked second only to the Dassault Mirage III and Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) Nesher family of deltas for the number of air to air kills it achieved. Yet it must be stressed that most of the operational sorties flown by IDF/AF delta fighters were pure air to air missions, while the versatile F-4 usually earned its living attacking ground targets, rather than chasing hostile fighters across the sky. Therefore, the achievement of IDF/AF Phantom II aircrews, officially credited with 116.5 aerial kills between September 1969 and June 1982, is all the more outstanding.” Aloni’s follow-on book “Ghosts of Atonement” also lists Kurnass sorties in the Yom Kippur war by aircraft number (where available) call sign, and mission type. Very few Kurnass missions in that war were air to air orders: the majority were SEAD , airfield or interdiction operations. The F-4E was the safest of all the IDF/AF inventory for these missions, being equipped with then-latest U.S. ECM and radar altimeters for low altitude ingress and egress. During these missions the Kurnass flights often encountered Arab coalition MiGs vectored to intercept (or flying CAP above the targets). Usually, the F-4’s won these one-on-one duels- thus the high MiG kills. A similar dynamic is why USAF F-105s shot down 27 MiGs in Southeast Asia despite flying only strike and SEAD missions. If there’s a source stating the F-4E was primarily an air to air asset for the IDF/AF, I’d be curious to see you share that info.

If you’re referring to the Yom Kippur war, Israeli Kurnass units mostly flew air to ground strike missions against Arab Coalition air bases , DEAD (the hard way) & regional interdiction targets. They shot down a lot of MiGs as a consequence of being routinely intercepted (and turning the tables) coming off target by MiG-17s and MiG-21s, but that wasn’t their primary role. At one juncture , the IDF brass threatened Kurnass pilots to bomb or face court martial because MiGs would intercept them on target run in. Naturally the Kurnass pilots jettisoned and went to fight….theyd get their kills, but their targets would live another day. To a limited extent Kurnass crews flew cargo escort for Operation Nickel Grass USAF transports & night combat air patrols due to their radar. For the most part, IAI Neshers & Mirages were the IDF/AFs primary air to air aircraft.

With thousands of F-4s flown by many nations, there’s no shortage of “legit” theaters. In addition to the forthcoming Iraq map (both Iran and Coalition/US), there’s Sinai (IDF/AF and Egypt in the 1980s, Syria (Turkish F-4s have flown sorties) , Persian Gulf (also Iran), and of course Nevada (Red Flag for U.S. and allied F-4 operators, plus Weapons School and so on).

Well done. Dont let the naysayers and deadline pushers get yall down. When you build it, we will come.

With DCS free of the nasty technical constraints of the Real World, the AIM-7 may prove useful in your units MiG-smashing

I’m alright with being an armchair general, but I’ll need an armchair lobbyist to go with the job. Just sayin, these DCS modules and PC upgrades ain’t cheap …

The F-4E project is a complex release involving a brand new module, new Jester AI, backfilled updates to HeatBlur’s existing modules, and addition of new weapons to the game. The honest release date is “when it’s done”. That won’t be two weeks. It may be two more years. Either way, I’m ready when they are.

Thing is, the F-4E is not simply the module. HB is delivering core logic and capability improvements to DCS that extend beyond this specific module- including overhauling Jester for the F-14. If any of that stuff isn’t up to snuff, HB has to step back and fix it. I suspect if it were “just” the F-4E we’d have it already, but the whole package - including general updates to other modules and packages - has to be dialed in before release. Given the expanded scope of the F-4E module vs your “typical” release, I don’t expect any release date given to be met. Thats not a knock against HB, i’m just recognizing that testing complex software upgrades = high probability of missed deadlines. When the F-4E is ready, it will come. That may be tomorrow…or next winter.

Rule #1 of establishing air superiority is to bomb the enemy’s air bases. If the bad guys can’t take off, you win by default. This lesson was disregarded in Rolling Thunder (and much later with Putin’s escalation of the Ukraine war in February 2022), forcing the U.S. to kill MiGs “the hard way” over Vietnam via aerial action. In Linebacker, the airfields were bombed consistently (as they should have been from day 1), and the North Vietnamese were forced to operate from hidden bases and across the Chinese border. The same dynamic happened in Desert Storm. With his IADS wrecked and airfields under constant Coalition bombardment, Saddam had no realistic hope of establishing air superiority and punted his Air Force to Iran accordingly. Folks look at the F-22 and F-15A/C as air superiority systems. But those are last resort options- the primary air superiority weapon of a well run air plan is the bombers & surface to surface missiles wrecking your opponents runways.

Hanoi managed just fine without air supremacy. But don’t take my word for it. Consider then-Colonel Robin Olds, who stated : ”you can’t shoot down enough MiGs to win wars”. For a more recent voice: “The Ukrainians have already shown in Kharkiv and Kherson, and previously the battle of Kyiv, you can win battles and indeed wars without air superiority,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow and military aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

To put some color on the topic, the F-16 was approved to solve two problems. Problem #1: the Warsaw Pact drastically outnumbered NATO air, and the US budget wouldn’t allow the F-15 to replace the USAF F-4E and A-7 1-for-1. Originally, the USAF Air Staff planned to just buy F-15s and park the LWF demonstrators at a museum once the trials concluded. Problem #2 : NATO needed a new, simple , multirole aircraft to replace the aging F-104 (which embodied many of the things the “reformers” wanted in a fighter aircraft). Selling Belgium, Norway , and other NATO countries the F-15 wasn’t financially viable. Plus McAir wasn’t going to approve license production of its most expensive and valuable design anyway. The F-16 neatly addressed these important concerns. The air to air mission didn’t come into the picture. Which is honestly as it should be. Thanks to Hollywood , the importance of the air to air mission is DRAMATICALLY overstated - because nobody’s paying $25 to watch Tom Cruise bomb a steel plant. “In March 1969, US Navy…Best Fighter Pilots…etc”. Well, put away the Kenny Loggins cassette. Because the statistical reality is that most Southeast Asian Navy (and USAF/Marine) pilots never saw a MiG. They’d rotate in, fly their line period, and leave. USAF pilots literally had better odds playing the lottery than meeting a VPAF MiG. Even during the Korean War - “No Guts no Glory” and all that - USAF Colonel “Boots” Blesse begged his CO to extend his tour so after 100 missions he wouldn’t rotate home with four MiG kills on his tally. He ended with 9 kills after 125 missions. Thats not even 10%, and he’s flying F-86s in an exclusively guns only air to air mission with no missiles, aircraft radar, or SAMs. With the use of dedicated air to air units & reliance on SAMs to defend airspace, the dynamic is even more lopsided. In Desert Storm the 58th TFS nailed 16 Iraqi jets with their F-15s. All well and good, but those kills happened across 1,500 sorties the 58th flew in the theatre. When a dedicated air to air unit might have a 2% chance of taking down a fighter jet on any one sortie, you start to understand why “people in the know” roll their eyes at all the ink, pixels and media devoted to airplane jiu-jitsu. A very small number of US pilots relative to the total engaged and shot down MiGs in Southeast Asia. ALL of them dropped bombs in some combat capacity. Make of that what you will. This background (and much more) is why the USAF Systems Command Configuration Committee - perhaps wisely - transitioned the YF-16 design into the air to ground focused F-16 we know and have today.

They were. But for quicker response times and better access to administration (7th AF based at South Vietnam coordinated overall air activity administration in the SEA theatre) USMC Marines were land-based.

Not trying to be snarky, but why not ? Air forces routinely use entirely different aircraft as “stand-ins” for other aircraft. Among other cases, the USN NAWDC flies F-16s as substitutes for anything from MiG-29s to Su-27s. Small potatoes by comparison to fly a later block F-14 as a substitute for an early Iranian iteration. Coming back to topic, I think the threads run its course and clearly proves that more core work on IADS logic & options is needed before an F-4G - or any other EW aircraft- makes sense in DCS.

Heres a video Link from players engaging a SAM site. It illustrates why this effort is a much bigger task than many realize. Would a competent SAM operator continue to transmit knowing there’s ARM- equipped aircraft in the vicinity? Nope! They’d shut down , and use alternative engagement techniques which don’t rely on radar. None of that real world tactical logic is modeled in game, and it would need to be for the EW framework to be complete.