Seaeagle

Maybe not, but according to some sources, the rounds were apparently ~30 years old, so maybe that had something to do with the high failure rate.

Yeah - I guess the atmosphere is always going to be rather tense in this sort of situation, but when you know about all the issues they had to deal with, it kind of put things into perspective.

Correct. In the late 90íes MIG offered the SMT as "SMT-1" and SMT-2" with the N019MP and Zhuk-ME respectively as the only difference. I don't know if the N019MP is still an option in this day and age, but given that SMT is really an upgrade package for the "baseline" MiG-29, it might be still be available as a cheaper solution(than Zhuk-ME). The "glass cockpit" was always part of the upgrade even with the 9-17 prototype. It certainly looks a lot better than the 9.19 anyway.

Well isn't it obvious why I find it funny? . The footage presents the interception of those drones as a great success and comes across almost as a sort of promotional video for the Danish defence("Forsvaret - fordi noget er værd at kæmpe for"), which is in stark contrast to the actual circumstances surrounding that incident - i.e that, during the attack, the ship's airdefence system was down and inoperable for half an hour(!) due to multiple system's falures with the crew having to resort to using the deck guns instead....which also largely failed because the proximity fuzing didn't work for half the fired rounds causing them to detonate shortly after leaving the barrels. It has been the main news story on Danish media for the past week and turned into a huge scandal that ultimately caused the sacking of the chief of defence.

Except that; - the 9.12A that we are getting is the Warsaw Pact export variant, which wasn't supplied to applicaple nations until the very end of the 80'ies and as such actually better suited for an early 90'ies scenario. - The Warsaw Pact nations were all in Eastern Europe, while nations in the Middle East(such as Iraq, Iran and Syria) that operrate MiG-29s got the lower spec 9.12B variant or/and got them later. Probably not the biggest realism omissions for your suggested scenario, but a "REAL 80's setup"......not quite.:)

LOL..

It is. The Su-27 and MiG-29 do not have a WoW lock for the landing gear and its not because the aircraft are old and crude, - it was a deliberate design decision. Besides, in the real aircraft, the gear handle is locked in the up and down position and you need to pull the handle out to release the lock before you can move it up or down. So you cannot raise the landing gear on the ground simply by accidently striking the handle with your hand.

Yes and I interpret that as in the original configuration, which in turn means the following country options: - Poland. - East Germany - Czechoslovakia - Romania - Bulgaria Poland got an initial batch as a Warsaw Pact memeber(and later bought both the former East German ones after having been operated and modified by Luftwaffe as well as the Czech ones, while Slovakia kept theirs). Like you said, the Romanian ones were withdrawn from service years ago. AFAIK the Bulgarian are the only ones still in the original 9.12A config. Yugoslavia was never part of the Warsaw Pact and therefore got the 9.12B variant. Hungaria was a Warsaw Pact member, but didn't get their MiG-29s in that capacity, but only later as part of a debt settlement with Russia and therefore also got the 9.12B variant. Moldova inherited a number of MiG-29s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but those were the 9.13 variant - I don't think they kept any of them(they were in bad shape anyway), but sold them all to the US except for a couple of airframes they gave to Romania as a gift.

There were two export variants of the 9.12 - 9.12A for Warsaw pact allies and 9.12B for other nations. The former is practically identical to the Soviet 9.12, while the 9.12B " commercial" variant is somewhat "downgraded" on a few areas. They did(both export variants) - and the picture shows this. The "full spec" version looks like this: Someone wrote "izd 9.13" caption on the photo, but I have seen this panel in a Soviet 9.12 as well.

I think that would depend on the altitude. Or(and more likely) how it affects the stability of the aircraft as such. Anyway, if you read the German Luftwaffe manual, overall airspeed limits and airspeed limitations for safe ejection of tanks are specified. Maximum allowed airspeed with CL tank is stated as Mach 1.5 Jettison speed limits: Min speed: 240 KIAS, max: Mach 0.85 Maximum allowed airspeed with wing drop tanks: Mach 0.9 Jettison speed limits: Min speed: 300 KIAS, max: Mach 0.9

Yeah I suspected I was confusing the two. On another note, looking at the "missile corporation" site, there are now 3 new versions of the missile on offer;' - RVV-MD with 60 deg off boresight designation angle - RVV-MDL - same as above, but with a laser fuze instead of radar, - RVV-MD2 with increased launch range and a different seeker with radio correction channel - i.e. LOAL capability! Продукция (ktrv.ru)

The 4,5 x 4,5 degrees is the immedeate FOV(cone) - when the seeker is looking in a particular direction, this is the area in which the seeker can pick up a target. 75 degrees is the gimbal limit of the seeker - i.e. the maximum deflection angle of the cone 45 degrees is the maximum off boresight angle at which you can designate a target, There is a difference between this and the above in order to ensure that the seeker doesn't "gimbal out" before the missile has time to align itself with the target after launch. BTW I believe that the seeker options in the chart are Ukrainian - IIRC the original seeker of the R-73 is called "36T" or something like that(or is that the seeker for the R-27T?...cannot remember).

CVN-76 and 77 are quite different from the previous vessels of the class and among other things use a 3-wire arrestor system - so apart from 3D modification work, a change to the code concerning this would also be required. ED said they want to include all five vessels of the Roosevelt subclass, which quite frankly should be more than enough variation for the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers - especially when you consider all the other things concerning the naval warfare aspect of the sim in dire need of attention. There are also many other ship types, which would add a lot more to the sim than yet more versions of the Nimitz class - e.g. for the US fleet I would much rather have more versions of the Arleigh Burke class(at least flight I) not to mention a supply ship like the Henry J Kaiser class.

I suspect what they meant was that they weren't able to get an agreement with MIG and don't want to risk getting into trouble without it, but if someone else with the right connections manages to get a license, then ED would be ok with them developing a MiG-29 module for DCS. I am pretty sure they never suggested this as a possibility because such a third party would be out of reach of Russian legislation.

I don't think they did - just that the community interpreted it that way.

Yean it can be quite treacherous - its like 80% the same and then you have those words that are the same, but mean something completely different - in some cases the exact opposite, which can lead to some awkward or amusing misunderstandings.

Well yes the 3D modelling is the largest part by far, but for a map object I would also expect a much lower fidelity than for an active object - if for no other reason due to performance considerations. I have a pair of very old submarine models(Akula and Typhoon class - not my own work), which are around 10K faces each. They are not the pinnacle of fidelity in this day and age, but they are quite accurate and the geometry is smooth even at close up, so something like that would do the job fine. Well missions involving attacking submarines at pier side don't really require those to be active objects - only if you want them to be on the move, which(hunting surfaced subs) in turn probably isn't the most realistic scenario Fully agree. Well I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this one . IMHO submarines that can attack surface combatants with complete impunity is not better than nothing. In my opinion "abstract" detection means as well as some ASW armament(ASW mortars and torpedos) for surface ships would be the minimal requirement for implementation of active submarines.

Well isn't the Danish version more like; "Der er ikke noget der hedder dårligt vejr, kun dårlig beklædning" I guess we could have used the Norwegian version by applying a little artistic freedom; "Der findes ikke dårligt vejr, kun dårlige klær'(klæder)", which would have sounded better and less annoying

Of course, but its wouldn't just be one or two such bases, but every one of them in the case of submarines, while the main naval base for surface ships at Severomorsk will look either quite deserted or totally off(if "populated" only with the types currently existing in DCS). Now if it had been some simplistic map for a sim focusing on commercial airliners, you could probably get away with it, but for an extremely high detailed map, for which exactly the military importance in general and the naval installations of the area in particular is what makes it interesting for a combat flight simulator, I would say that it is a big problem. Yes 80'ies and 90'ies, but then that also has a lot to do with the origins of the sim - i.e. that the vast majority of assets(air, sea and land) available in DCS belong to that era, which in turn also means that its the most feasible in terms of expanding with appropriate extra naval assets. Yes I agree - thats why I suggested SSBNs just as static map objects, because I think that with the current submarine "routine"(or rather lack thereof) it would be a waste of ressouces to implement them as active objects. But then In the case of SSGNs and SSNs the problem is that if they can dive below the surface and launch torpedos and SSMs against surface ships, while those have no means of locating them(no sonar) and defend themselves(no appropriate armament), then we would just have swapped an omission in the naval warfare aspect with an unrealistic/dysfunctional one. So I don't know.....maybe it would be better to include all appropriate submarine types as static obects(for the sake of map realism) for the time being and... ...then concentrate efforts on additional active surface vessels with a focus on the 80'ies/90'ies - i.e. as a more moderate expansion to the existing units. Indeed.

Exactly. This is really the only concern I have with this map - the Kola peninsula is all about the Northern Fleet(both Soviet era and prensent Russia) and everything else there(such as airbases and other installations) is just there to support it. The problem being that the current selection of Soviet/Russian ships(and naval aircraft for that matter) in DCS is far too limited to depict this.....not much point in having the myriad of naval and airbases correctly positioned on the map if they are all empty and deserted. Agree - one solution could be to add them(SSBNs) as stationary map objects at their appropriate locaions, while perhaps making a few active types for which there is some combat potential like the Oscar class SSGNs as you suggested as well as SSNs like the Akula-, Sierra- and Victor classes. Yup plus the Udaloy class antisubmarine destroyer - and preferably those over any newer post soviet types, since they have been in service for 3 decades and thus would provide a much wider mission potential. In addition to combat units, it would also be good with some support ships for a more realistic scenario.

Yes and no. TWS is generally more vunerable to ECM, but the real radar has some optional settings for dealing with ECM in TWS instead of just automatically reverting to search mode - this is not simulated in FC3 though. It also seems odd if its the TWS-2 mode that is mostly afffected by ECM, since this mode only exists on the MiG-29S and is part of the radar upgrade that was applied to this, for which improved jam resistance was one of the advertised features. The upgrade involved a new more powerful data processor with serveral times more processing power and the TWS-2 mode itself was a newer design(specifically for the employment of the R-77/RVV-AE).

On the contrary its exactly the same situation - the usual batch of 8(sometimes 12) test aircraft for testing and evaluation prior to serial production and acceptance to service. Since the 9.15 and 9.31 shared most features including the system's complex, they were considered by MIG as a combined develpment effort - the rationale being that testing of the further naval modifications to the airframe of the 9.31 could be achieved with just two airframes. So it was really a case of six( 9.15) + two (9.31) = 8. Also only the first of each type were considered actual prototypes(i.e. initially lacking various elements of the intended equipment and systems), while the remaining were fully configured test aircraft. It was a similar situation with the Su-27K(Su-33), where the first two(T10K-1 and -2) were prototypes, while a follow-on batch of 7(T10K-3 to T10K-9) were test aircraft built and configured as intended for final serial production. More recently the same approach was taken with the new Su-57. It was also not uncomon to send some test aircraft to frontline units for testing in operational conditions - I guess that in the case of the Su-25T and Ka-50, it just so happened that there was an actual ongoing conflict in Chechnya at the time and since the nature of the two types in question matched the requirements for that, they decided to use them to some limited extend. But IMO the significance of this is exagerated and doesn't change the fact that, just like many other prospective types of the time, they didn't make it into production/service in the end.......either because post-Soviet Russia no longer had the requirements for them or simply because the economic realities at the time made it impossible. But my point about the operational status(or lack thereof) being the same was only in connection with the percieved legitimacy of one type versus another for DCS. ED can obviously only do an aircraft to the extend they can obtain the necessary documentaton for the purpose and I am not suggesting that this would be the case for all such aircraft just because they are old and they were able to do it for the Su-25T and Ka-50. No I think you are right about that. I seriously doubt it would be any different. I don't think so - one is unachieavable because its a new classified aircraft in operational service and the other because, altough being obsolete by this day and age, is apparently still considered "secret". No problem Well its just a simplification I guess - its true that very recent types that have just entered service aren't going to be possible for obvious reasons, but I agree that being old/out of service doesn't automatically mean that documentation will be available - there are lots of examples of this.....and not just Russian ones.

This discussion between Silver_Dragon and I, started by him saying that a possible MiG-29K representation for DCS would necessarily need to be the new 9.41, because the old 9.31 never went into production/service, to which I merely replied that neither did the Su-25T and Ka-50 - i.e. that prototype/test status alone shouldn't be anymore of a disqualifying factor for the 9.31 than it was for those. But I never suggested that a 9.31 would be "easier to do" than the 9.41, or that documentation wuould be easier to come by just because its older. It sounds more like you think that a 9.41 should be easier to do becausei it "went into production" and "has been flown by relatively many".......yeah good luck with that .

Did I ever say otherwise?

Who's comparing them? - you are the one constantly bringing up the new 9.41 version whenever someone talks about the old 9.31.