La Combattante IIa, Harpoon?

[Northstar98]

Hi everyone,

This is probably in the wrong place, but I wanted to bring up something regarding our new La Combattante IIa (finally, a ship from western Europe!).

At the moment the La Combattante IIa in DCS is outfitted with Harpoon (though is still erroneously calling them AGM-84S EDIT: Not any more, it's finally been renamed to RGM-84D), but is firing them from launchers for the MM38 Exocet (the ribbed, box launchers).

AFAIK Harpoon should be launched from the Mk 140/141 launcher (which has cylindrical tubes), as seen on our current Ticonderoga class.

Another thing reinforcing this is that the ship is depicted as a 90s German Type-148 Tiger-class (owing to the radar fit and decoy launchers), these ships fired the MM38 Exocet Block 1 AFAIK, not any version of the Harpoon. Similarly, the majority of the current liveries depict ships fitted with MM38 Exocets and not Harpoons. The only ships fitted with Harpoons out of our current liveries are the Plotarchis Vlachavas (P74 Vlachavas) and Plotarchis Maridakis (P75 Maridakis), only these ships have 2x2 Mk 140/141 launchers, not the Exocet launchers we see in-game.

For comparison:

Hellenic La Combattante IIa P72 Votsis firing an MM38 Exocet (presumably a Block 1). Note that the launchers are identical to those seen on our La Combattante IIa in DCS.

Compared with:

Hellenic La Combattante IIa P75 Maridakis with 2x2 Mk 140/141 launchers, for RGM-84 Harpoon (most likely RGM-84D).

Spoiler

This is probably for the wishlist, but what ED could do is keep the current Type 148 Tiger-class and give it Exocet, then copy and paste the model, and replace the 2x2 Exocet box launchers with the 2x2 Mk 141 launchers for Harpoons, with minor changes to the mast we'd have ships that would represent the P74 Vlachavas and the P75 Maridakis.

The only thing here that bothers me is that this still leaves variants missing which would be suitable for our maps, such as the Iranian Kaman-class and the Georgian Dioskuria.

The Kaman-class is a variant of the La Combattante II, it features different radars (WM28 FCR and Decca 1226 surface-search radar, the WM28 is mounted in a radome similar to the Mk 92 CAS, which also houses an 'Alligator' OECM system. There's also a Thomson CSF DR-2000S ESM system. It retains the Panda optical system as with our La Combattante IIa/Type-148 Tiger (though on ours it's non-functional).

Originally (c. 1978) the ships were armed with the OTO Melara 76mm/62 Compact, a Bofors 40 mm and 2x2 Mk 141 launchers for RGM-84A Harpoon Block IP.

In 1988 the Harpoon launchers seemed to have been removed and replaced with 2x2 launchers for Standard(?), with an illuminator/FCR(?) mounted on the stern in place of the Bofors 40mm. I'm fairly sure in this case, Standard is being used exclusively in its secondary semi-active, anti-ship mode.

In 1996 the ships were upgraded with 2x2 launchers for the Iranian Noor 2 (reverse engineered C-802 missile), and the stern mounted FCR was deleted, leaving a blank space.

The Dioskuria features a completely different weapons fit, with both the OTO Melara 76 mm/62 and Bofors 40 mm L/70 replaced by GDM-As, which use 2 35 mm KD series (KDA?) autocannons, very similar to those found on the Flakpanzer Gepard. The ship retains the Exocet box launchers, but apparently there weren't/aren't any Exocets in Georgian inventory. Additionally, there are 2 externally mounted, 533mm torpedo tubes mounted on the stern, one on each side of the aft GDM-A, presumably fitted with a 53-57/58/61 pattern running torpedo.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Northstar98
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