TLTeo

When doing an assisted startup, Jester does not turn on any avionics - no radar, no INS alignment, no radio, and no RWR. There seems to be no difference between the A and B.

I get where you're coming from but "based on various factors" really just...is arbitrary. If someone wants to script that in a mission (assuming it's possible?) then all the more power to them, but it's not like that's some amazing feature that is going to make DCS more realistic. And besides, AIM-9Bs already exist in plenty of modules and have no issues. I see no reason why ED would choose to change that in the future.

Let me clarify - it's not that you can't implement any failure, it's just that summing it up with some arbitrary % number is not going to be any more realistic than not bothering at all. You won't be simulating reality regardless. Besides, modern missiles fail too. Lots of AIM-7Ms during Desert Storm had issues, the one AIM-9X the USN fired failed to track for whatever reason, both AIM-54s fired by the USN were not armed properly (and I'm sure there's stories of a2g stores having similar issues, both in the past and present)...yet you don't see anybody asking for those to have some % chance to fail that is nothing but uneducated guesswork. Why should early weapons be treated differently?

There already are old Sidewinders in DCS. None of them models reliability because it's impossible. Take the issues in Vietnam for example - the problems came from things like humidity, available supply, number of carrier takeoffs and landings each missile had. That last one is out in DCS because everything is always brand new, both jets and weapons. How do you model accurately the effect of humidity and supplies on weapon reliability? Does it change over time? Is it a constant? Are weapons better on the NTTR map than they are in the Marianas? How would either of those differ from the reliability issues in Vietnam? How does that change in Georgia and Russia, over which no Phantom has ever flown? Are we also going to simulate whether your ground crew forgets to remove the safety pins from weapon rails? If so, are we going to simulate how well trained and likely to make a mistake they are? Or are we just going to try to capture all of this with some completely arbitrary % to fail that is as unrealistic as not bothering at all? And why would we even apply this just to older weapons? Might as well ask to simulate whether a virtual pilot wakes up with a headache after a bad night of sleep and therefore doesn't handle physical exercise as well.

The Israeli were not the only ones to use the multiple racks, plus the Viper and A-10 carry them despite those issues, so I would think it will be an option in DCS.

IFE have stated that the CD is different enough that they would have to re-do most systems from scratch. Honestly I doubt a trainer aircraft, no matter how well done, will attract enough buyers to be worth doing twice, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. I'm also in the crowd that doesn't necessarily care about how modern a given DCS module is.

There's an actual Phantom driver in this very thread talking about going up against Czech Mig-23MLs too...

They flew Cs, not Es though

Also bombs are mostly subsonic, missiles near the end of their flights can get close to the transonic region and experience waaaaaay more drag.

The G-meter on the dash goes up to 10 but I'd imagine it's rated to ~7.5 like most aircraft of that era.

When the Typhoon came around Italy desperately needed air defense fighters (because F-104s in the 2000s, lol) so I imagine they took their time to add the a2g capability.

To clarify - I didn't mean that people in this thread said that the MLD was as good as a Viper, just that it's a comment commonly thrown around by its fanboys mostly based on a specific quote from iirc an Israeli evaluation likely taken completely out of context. Re the BVR comparison - I'm not sure the 23 will be significantly better tbh. It may have some (limited, because MTI) look down/shoot down capability, but the worload will be significantly higher without a RIO (even with Jester really), and I would be surprised if the R24/23 were really that much better than the AIM-7F/E (I vaguely remember some charts on the forum somewhere showing that the 27 was a decent-ish improvement over the 24, but I may be mistaken). The late AIM-9Ps aren't that awful either. I guess we will have to wait and see.

Only the Saudi ones iirc, but that kinda proves my point. If you're introducing a new front line fighter in the late 80s that can maybe barely out turn a Phantom, something went wrong. I get that it's supposed to be an interceptor first and all that, but I always found that to be pretty narrow minded. Back to the Phantom - I wonder how the comparison with the Mig-23 will actually work out in game (whenever that's released too of course). There's plenty of people who buy the whole "the ML and especially MLD series were basically early Vipers" which just makes zero sense to me. They would have been better, but Vipers? Really?

Sure but it's not like the Tornado was the only option - they could have put more money aside for the Typhoon, upgraded the Lightning/Jag/Harrier/Sea Harrier...

Yeah, some AIs are notoriously messed up. It would be worth re-doing the test with the F-5/Mig-15 set at Normal (and maybe a Tomcat or Sabre set at high or very high?) to check how the results change.

Speaking of the comparison with the Tornado, I never really understood why they made the ADV rather than just put that same radar on an updated Phantom, give it better avionics, AMRAAMs et al a-la the German ones. Seems like you would get almost the same capability (less range and worse cockpit visibility, possibly better high altitude performance?) for way less cost. From what I heard, the Italian Air Force wasn't exactly thrilled with the ADVs they loaned despite having operated the IDS for ~15 years at that point. The early 90s-early 00s period when they were flying those and Starfighters for air to air has been nicknamed "the crossing of the desert"

I think we're just arguing over semantics. You're calling any stability augmentation system "FBW" (which by extension means that most 3rd gen aircraft would fall under that label) , I'm saying those are very different technologies and shouldn't be dumped in the same box. Let's just agree to disagree I suppose.

I always love how people call the Crusader "the last of the gunfighters", except only three of its 19 kills were with guns, and 15 were Sidewinders.

Yes, that is what I said. FBW allows for relaxed stabilty designs, but that doesn't mean that anything with FBW is a relaxed stability designs (looking at you, Airbus airliners). If A then B doesn't mean that if B then A. You are confusing stability augmentation systems with a full FBW system. Those two are not the same. Going by your definition the F-5, Mig-21, Tomcat and Viggen (to name a few aircraft in DCS) would also be FBW aircraft which they absolutely are not. Even some variants of the G-91 had stability augmentation systems, and that was designed in the 50s...

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iraqi_aerial_victories_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war there are at least two confirmed F-4E kills by F1s. The corresponding page for the Iranian side lists almost exclusively Tomcat victories but also report several Phantom pilots with multiple kills, and it's not impossible that some of those may be Mirages.

Interesting charts. The hard wing jets really were not agile, these numbers are not too far off those of a relatively lightweight F-104 (with the caveat that charts for that aircraft aren't straight EM diagrams so you need to interpret and/or extrapolate a lot). The improvement with the slats is really impressive too. It actually makes me hope we will get a hard wing variant of some type, at some point, because it looks like the experience of flying that vs a slatted jet would be very very different.

The naval aircraft had a pulse doppler radar with a bigger dish, no guided weapons, different (somewhat better) model Sidewinders (until the L/M rolled around), some had some semblance of early HMD (although obviously the HOBS capability of early Sidewinders leave much to be desired). I'm not sure how the air to ground capability compares (e.g. whether they had bombing computers of any type). So basically, they should be somewhat better at air to air (even factoring in the lack of gun and/or sucky gunpod) but somewhat worse at air to ground.

You are greatly under estimating how simple the DCS AI is. Try having an AI F-5E or Mirage drop LGBs on a target with no JTAC anywhere in sight - the bombs will track perfectly as if something was designating. I think it's highly unlikely (at best) the AI's behavior will change with the HTS if it doesn't even need a TGP to guide LGBs. Which takes me back to my original point - having a dedicated SEAD AI Phantom is not going to behave significantly differently from an -E firing Shrikes.

The C-101CC with the full EFM was released in 2019, the initial -EB release with a SFM is from 2015 iirc.