GGTharos

This is a bad assumption, and is counter-indicated by what's written in the weapons manual (it reads, keeping lock of the target after MPRF has no effect on Pk) . Also, the 120A is in no way some miniaturized form on the 54C. Sure the development may have come from there but the degree of commonality is both completely unknown and what is known is that these two missiles operated on different principles.

It does not matter, neither can dominate the other. Both give you the ability to get in the other's OODA loop.

If you don't know the failure modes and statistics of said failures, where's the realism? It's nothing but another annoying 'feature'.

It isn't. Make the should a could and remove no problem, and you're good. Why did the USAF not implement something like this? 'Because they didn't have the technology' is out of the question ... in fact they did a whole series of testing to determine if they should do this. So why?

The most likely answer is 'yes and you can't have it'.

Image recognition yes, it just might not mean exactly what you think it means. It can classify a thing as a target (not this is an airplane, or whatever, just target) and 'these are parts of the target' in some respect and then classify other things as 'not my target' or 'false target'. Generally without very modern countermeasures a 9X should not be getting decoyed if the decoy isn't making the target IMHO.

It is good to ask questions, but not good to accuse of errors in many cases - the R-27 range, engine, and other issues have been discussed for over a decade and the data for this are good. If you want to discuss strange rocketry, the SD-10 in DCS is a good candidate with a rocket set up with a 6s boost and 4s sustain resulting in a missile that is far faster than it ought to be. ED stated that they will be working on what remains to be worked on for the R-27 family which is guidance. I hope they will significantly enhance ECM behavior and the 'RF environment' in addition to other things (for example sparrow and AIM-120 have brought new guidance mechanics in terms of the physical motion of the missile)

F-18Cs were getting delivered with the EPE since lot 15 IIRC, so I don't see the unicorn thing.

MPRF does 3/8 and going of very distant memory it is required due to multiple doppler bands being eclipsed as well as resolving other ambiguity, but again ... don't quote me on that.

I would personally prefer QOL improvements to the radar and navigation.

Yep, so that's the closure component which allows you to easily be in the notch compared to going faster, basically the angle off 90 degrees to the radar opens up significantly.

At that speed falling into the notch is very easy.

~21, as in 20 to 22 ...this is important because above 22 you get into heavy AoA-induced drag used for aerobraking (And this is a type of approach you can use for minimum ground run but there is more to it than just AoA). Throttle probably shouldn't be cut because you're made of inertia and makes a touch-and-go harder in case you need it. Reduce yes, but cut only when you touch down. If you have to apply full brakes before 60kts, ideally 40-50 if heavy, the runway you have chosen is too short and you'll have a hot brakes problem (N/A DCS).

I don't see why they would guide with so many flares in the air.

IRL you don't go off mission like every DCS player out there. 'Cheap kills' aren't a thing - I mean if it's right in front of you and you can chuck a rock at it sure, but there won't be deviating for this. All detections that I know of that were 'missed' were due to terrain masking. Of course, I don't know everything. Also, composite blades are great and lower RCS, but it's still on the order of m^2, not fractions thereof. Everyone wants to ignore reality which is ... IRL the environment is full of things that will show up on your sensors and are not targets. Even if they technically are targets, you may be prevented from going after them for a number of reasons, be it staying on task or issues with identification or just because the wreckage may land where it's not wanted. And barring an abundance of targets confusing the picture, none of those things have anything to do with a radar determining that something is a helicopter or not. The radar is either modern enough to deal with it or it isn't.