Temetre

F-15E couldnt deal with the CBT test

Thx, I wasnt aware when they actually did that. Hope the plane is moved to that standard then

But in the end A2A duels is like 190 downed migs and 80 downed US planes. And the US losses were mostly from the beginnig, when they made a ton of mistakes. From what Ive read, one of the important moments where the tides turned was with Operation Bolo, when a bunch of migs got lured into combat with F-4s. But that was actually with F-4Ds, so without even upgraded versions. From, what ive read, the kill percentage of Aim7s was 9/13% for USAF/USN or so? But thats including all misses, including ones that arent fault of the missile at all. Mind im not saying the Sparrow was a perfect weapon, far from it. But people saying its "no threat" just seems a bit hyperbolic if you look up how air duels actually played out. IIRC there was actually something like 50 losses to migs without a single shotdown? Crazy stuff. But the main issues seems to be training, the USAF had trained for a very different kind of combat.

Thx, so pretty similar to F-18 I think. Thats neat, way better than Mig-21BIS

I guess thats about the best answer we can give. Its just a bit messy, with estimations everywhere and stuff. Hopefully the flight model gets more polished over time if theres something wrong.

Btw, do you know if the Aim-9 has a longer delay as well? Wonder how it compares to the Mig-21BIS, that one has a pretty rough delay with heatseekers too. Yeah I probably worded it badly, thats basically what I ment.^^ Aight, so gotta be patient with that thing after getting a lock.

That helps. The claim before side that the missile has no guidance if you fire airly, and that it applied to the 7M as well. Also did a short google, I think I found a l link detailing the problem for ACM. Document is on history.navy.mil and declassified, is it okay to link here? If this is what youre talking about, then it seems to be a mix of issues with missile, radar and launch delay. Some of the suggested fixes are upgrades to digital systems to speed up the aircrafts systems.

Apparently the R-60 got some all aspect capability in DCS, apparently reported?

Tho Id note that 3x 117 is a lot more weight than 3x MK-82. 2100 vs 1500 pounds.

Best would be if it could use the ED RSBN beacon API, i think they got one now? But thats probably more of a long term goal, maybe with the Mig-21 rework.

Cuz its a very old module probably. Magnitude 3 said they wanna do a Mig overhaul (soonest after the Corsair release), and posted some pretty interesting teasers. Maybe that would include a new pilot? Personally I consider the pilot model is very low priority tho. Theres bigger issues, like cockpit scaling/detail level. And systems wise the Radar/IFF and ASP was fine for the day, but its kinda arcady compared to modern modules.

Just wanna bup it again, Aussiemantis made an A2A thread, probably better than spam the A2G thread

Thx, good idea to make a thread about it. Generally seems like everything that could carry and use Sparrows, did so, and most planes got upgraded to carry them if possible. Indicates to me that the weapon was considered quite useful. I wonder if people underestimate the launch constraint aspect? They have very limited aspect ratios and ranges. Like, if you have to get behind the enemy at 2 miles distsance, then Id think the Sparrow would have a good hit chance as well, even mid-vietnam ones. With an 'all aspect' BVR missile, they probably took all the difficult shots with it. Even in DCS, with the Aim-120: If you have F-16s or F-15s lobbing Aim-120s at each other, then competent pilots can really manage MARs and pull some serious maneuvers to dodge missiles. That would result in a low PK, but not be indicative of the missile being bad. And holding locks with semi active missiles is way more difficult. Thats not to say there arent issues and quirks with the Sparrow missile, especially early. Same for the sidewinder, eg see how 2017 theres was a report where an Aim-9xgot deterred by a SU-17s flares. Apparently the 'dirty', inconsistently burning flares confused the counter-mechanism of the missile. Idk, I find this really interesting, because recently ive also learned just how wrong my understanding of the Vietnam air war was, in some regards. Yeah, it would definitely be interesting to hear whats that about? We also had talk about the plane not allowing you to fire the missile when you arent in good enough constraints, so why would there be a 4 second delay where its just a dud? That seems very strange and a massive flaw.

R-60 isnt all aspect; with an uncooled seeker Id imagine it should probably pretty rough. The R-60M is an upgrade from the 80s with a cooled seeker head, that supposedly has limited all aspect. The stuff people say about the Sparrow being so bad seems more and more like a myth though. Sure, the missile had a rough time in Vietnam, with poor training, bad maintenance and quirks to be ironed out. But doing a double check, it got apparently a similar kill number as the Aim-9s. So if the missile is so bad, then why did it get so many kills? Desert Storm is 22 Aim7 kill and 6 Sidewinder kills, and thats despite the rules of engagement limiting BVR usage. Seems pretty efficient?

Everything from Aim9D onwards is a cooled seeker. Feels like the R-60 is way overmodelled if its similar in performance? Tbf the PK stuff is very complicated. IIRC the Aim-7s, in the end, got the most kills even in Vietnam. So clearly there must be conditions under which it works very effectively.

Hm, I looked it up on wiki. Aim-9 should also have a 9kg warhead, compared to the R-60s 3kg. Btw were talking R-60M I assume? Apparently base R-60 didnt have cooled seeker, should be rather unrealiable in anything but tail aspect? Yeh, talked about that on the discord as well (im reymt there). Theres a fuse to disable the lock tho Winders+Ters is gonna be there, weve seen it a lot in the trailers and its in the manual.

Oh, can you lock without the range measurement? Tbh its been a really long time ive used the system, I just remember it being kinda whack. edit: Ive just given the SU27 a test flight. The EO doesnt even seem to show any targets if it doesnt know range? As soon as they appear, they are shown by range.

I close my eyes because it flickers so hard in VR QQ OpenXR flickers too, if maybe in a different way. But the entire game runs stuttery if you use OpenXR, and image stability is generally a bit worse (steamVr issue?), so thats not useful.

Oh, I do agree with it being unrealistic and an RP thing. But thats also why its silly to say its cheating, because thats saying people are wrong for not following your RP rules. That they arent living your personal fantasy. Im not saying its not useful, im saying its not required to dogfight well. You dont need it to make use of your nose-authority after you bleed some speed; and I dont think even STR/rate speed relies on pulling more than 7.5g?

Its kinda funny when people use realism standards to justify not using the paddle, but then talk about "cheating" (which is a gamey thing) when people do. Its like people take offense but dont know why or how to express it. But yeah, the paddle really isnt that relevant to F-18 dogfighting.

Maybe it would help to have links/references to the manual, assuming the changed feature is already explained there? (tbf i imagine manuals lag behind a lot of the time)

Is that 32km? Thats an insane range for EOS, even with how broken and magical it is in DCS. IIRC the Mig-29G in reality had an EOS locking range of 6-8 miles or so, with way more limitations. During evaluation by the US they considered the IRST capability basically useless. So I would hope that its just way too far away for an IRST lock, and not a bug.^^

Yeah, a unified baseline radar API would be really nice. If it does all the basics well, is nicely implemented and configurable for specific features, that could help other modules a lot imo. Radars are just so complicated, even getting the basic right seems to be a big challenge for the developers. Honestly, I wish Heatblur or Razbam would license their Radar APIs to other devs or DCS in general, those two seem to have the best radar models. I know at least HB is developing general radar-framework with the F-4E, which is gonna be transfered to F-14 and Viggen in the long run.

There we have it!

Fair, guess it depends where OP stands and what he wants