GGTharos

Yep, both of those are great advice. Most pilots begin their journey learning on an FPM-free aircraft. And yes, CPU are the 'Cockpit Units' of AoA.

What the specs say is that M2.4 is only attainable at an altitude of 40000' and that's for a 40000lbs GW which requires that the CFTs not be present. With CFTs on you're limited to M1.8 by the CFT structural limits, and wouldn't reach that in level acceleration anyway if you're carrying any payload, unless it's a cold day. So maybe when you say 'check it yourself' you should actually ... check it.

You don't need the air brake most of the time either. Trim for a 21CPU approach, flare and then aerobrake at 23CPU upon touch-down. Apply brakes when less than 60kts. If you're on a short runway (or really heavy and you won't be able to aerobrake to a slow enough speed), things change - consider a shallow 23CPU approach (2 deg glideslope, maybe even 1), stick the landing exactly where you need to, then nosewheel on the ground and hit the brakes and airbrake.

Agreed. And yes, approaching at 20-22 CPUs (so just ride 21 all the way in) is the standard 'as per the manual' approach AoA

Yes, there may be more maneuvering depending on the situation. The 50's sparrow already had guidance modes corresponding to certain altitude bands and other factors, I don't see the problem with an AMRAAM introducing a particular altitude guidance bias based on an easily selectable altitude profile. And yes I'm aware about the varying coefficients, I happened to be one of the people who provided ED with evidence of their existence

The radar beam is an engineering definition of the power density based on whatever criteria. Did you know that 'the beam' in the APG-70 is considered to be 1.5 deg at long range, but once you drop into a 20nm VSD it opens up to 3.4 degrees? Magic, right? That would be because 'the beam' exists everywhere. And yes the radar has side-lobes, and the M-Link exists where they exist ... including the main-lobe, which is what would trigger the RWR - in other words, it's nothing special when it comes to the radar emission. When you launch a sparrow, a guidance signal is injected into STT (ie. it's not 'just STT' any more) - if you launch an AMRAAM, it is likely that the MDL signal is injected in that space instead. And while we we don't have the waveform specifications for the 120, we do have them for some other missiles and we can make an educated guess regarding what the AMRAAM does - to keep it simple, STT + some other injected signal in that waveform = missile launch.

You're saying an RWR couldn't pick up a signal injected into the STT waveform? Why? All the stuff you said is just hand-waving, and that's what makes no sense. The radar emits the DL the same as any other signal, it 'lives' inside whatever waveform the radar is emitting. Where you have an STT signal with nothing extra between pulses in the cycle, now you have an extra thing being added once every so often - could be between every pulse, could be every quarter of a second. It's there, the missile detects it, what makes you believe the RWR with its larger antennae wouldn't?

There's no magic here. You can constrain PN until certain conditions are met, and then allow it full deflection. You can also use different guidance algorithms for different phases of guidance, which again is not magic and has been done since the 50's.

CW antennae have been a thing of the past since the 70's with very little exception. The clue is in the signal waveform, literally. Be it an injected guidance signal or M-Link, it is injected into the waveform and it is detectable. It is far, far more likely that the earlier SPO-15 would be unable to detect the AMRAAM's seeker, and far more likely to detect the above situation.

It shouldn't be correct. The M-Link should be detectable by the targeted RWR. Lock + M-Link should trigger a launch warning for the RWR.

Yep, it's that easy. What about NASAMs? You might have trouble finding proof that any specific missile uses PN/APN as well. This stuff isn't hard to implement. It's a lot easier than some guidance capabilities that SAMs have for example, and easier than implementing loft as well.

Many reasons...one easy one is to avoid negative numbers. There exist some more complex reasons that I won't bring up because I don't even really know how to explain them. Your approach should be at 21 units, BTW, not 23 (unless you're flying a specific approach profile with specific purpose) and definitely not 25 since that is tail-strike territory.

The F-15E may be in that same category, but it wasn't designed for BFM. The F-15A/C was. There are several factors that make it more of a pig: More drag due to CFT AoA performance due to CFT drag/weight/aero AoA performance due to weight distribution (even if you remove the CFTs) Plain weight, of course

A higher beamwidth gets you a lot less power ... not that this is physically reasonable anyway, the beamwidth is driven by the antenna. As for the R-77 seeker, I believe that it depends on the exact SD-10 variant.

Poor BFM on the Mirage pilot's part.

The way this works here is that you can perform a stand-off attack against 20 different targets simultaneously in a single pass from stand-off distances, reducing your exposure to pretty much all things enemy. For the SDBs preferred targets will be buildings of various sizes, bridges, etc. Consider that you're striking an airfield: You can take out munitions and fuel depos, bunkers, the command post and possibly whatever's on the ramp in a single pass lasting (for you) some 30 seconds. There is of course the caveat of having to pre-program all targets ahead of time. So, while SEAD is doing its thing and your SOJ is doing its thing to supress the target's AD, your 3-ship unleashes 80 of those things and everyone hits the road within a couple of minutes. No overflying the target, no need for the SEAD to stick around there forever, no need for more aircraft to assign all those targets to. Sure, some targets could require larger weapons, but you can obviously mix all that's needed into that attack.

I had the same experience in similar circumstances, different map etc. I don't recall if I had done an emergency jettison or not.

Guidance laws helping missiles not fly themselves into the ground or sea have existed since the 50's, in particular there are research papers for USN warships using missiles vs sea skimming targets ( ... like other missiles ). Here it's purely ED's choice to implement or not, but I would hope they'd add such capability ... this is unfortunately subjective regarding which missile gets what without actual data but it's very, very far from being improbable.

Literally yes, but 1.03 isn't of real value. It demonstrates that the engines have oomph, sure, but all you're doing is flying inefficiently. M1.2+ without burners is more of an accomplishment, and 1.5+ replaces flat-dash intercept regimes that were AB-only territory. The short of it that you can go further faster on the same tank of gas. If you want to go far though, you'll still be travelling subsonic in most cases (ie. the cases where you're not flying a Raptor, and even then I don't know what the efficiency looks like)

The F-15E replaces the F-111. It's job is to get behind enemy lines, get into their bases and kill their dudes, potentially with nukes. It doesn't do CAS or SEAD because other aircraft and squadrons have dedicated capabilities and training for this. Basically these types of weapons are not needed for the F-15E mission so it doesn't carry them - the payloads are dedicated to carrying professional explosive landscaping tools.

The F-22 sustains 1.7-1.8, that's 'supercruise'. Sustaining 1.03 while draining your fuel like crazy compared to say 0.85-0.95 isn't exactly some sort of accomplishment IMHO, just technically supercruise.

This is a DCS thing, not a DCS Viper thing.

Fair enough, here's the context: This is a discussion about F-16's performing poorly in unrealistic dogfight scenarios - no pylons, some kind of set fuel load, pretty much always merging on the deck and of course, guns only. Complaining about someone spiking their aircraft to 12g because they can and the aircraft can isn't exactly a solid argument here - I would argue that the 12g spike isn't a winning condition/game plan/whatever.

The you probably don't want to compare aircraft performance for all-clean, no-pylon dogfights on the deck, either. Or really, any kind of modern aircraft gunzo fight.

I wouldn't be surprised if the FLCS needs more tuning. I think a bit of tweaking for its responsiveness and correctness would go a long way.