Ground attack loadouts discussion

[Aussie_Mantis]

10 hours ago, Bozon said:

The “all aspect” title is handed to missiles quite liberally. Getting a tone for a split second from front aspect says very little of the actual kill probability.

At least in the Israeli air force the aim-9 and Shafrir of the 80s up to early 90s (L?M? & Shafrir 3) were still considered as reliable only in 90 degrees aspect. The older missile were considered “1840” - 1800 meters and 40 degrees aspect.

There was also little faith in the Sparrows. Up to early 90s only the F-15 and Phantom carried then in the IAF (no Aim-120 at all). F-16s were heaters only. As one pilot described them to me, the Aim-7s purpose was to force the opponent to “break 90” at a few miles so you could enter WVR with an advantage. That was the advantage of the F-15 vs. F-16 in mock dogfights, and allowed the Phantoms a little bit of a fighting chance vs. the others.

Missiles seekers in DCS are performing a bit on the optimistic side of the spread in the real things. That is not criticism, it is like that when they are modeled on official data. Also remember that when referring to missiles in controlled experiments, those are brand new, polished and carefully prepared, and launched in very controlled conditions, with as little interference in the background as possible - in combat these would be missiles taken out of a long storage, hastily mounted in field conditions, and launched in some erratic conditions with clouds and sun glares in the background.

Israeli F-16s couldn't carry AIM-7s anyway- I doubt the F-16s would have continued not carrying sparrows if they had that ability.

4 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

You'll have to separate at least three categories of issue with the Sparrow:

1) Handling and OPS troubles (e.g. groundcrew mistakes  and those issues coming off of the operations, e.g. keeping the Sparrows on board for ages, including multiple traps and cat-shots for the Navy or high humidity effing with the electrical connectors and electronics for everybody)

2) Firing outside of envelope or switchology issues (not enough training) => that one also messed up a couple of Sidewinder shots

3) Actual missile suckery

 

12 hours ago, Temetre said:

Everything from Aim9D onwards is a cooled seeker. Feels like the R-60 is way overmodelled if its similar in performance?

Tbf the PK stuff is very complicated. IIRC the Aim-7s, in the end, got the most kills even in Vietnam. So clearly there must be conditions under which it works very effectively.

 

Brems makes a good point. Most of the failures of Sparrow in Vietnam were from maintenance/handling plus US Aircrew Training issues. The Israelis, oddly enough, managed a ~70% kill rate with their Sparrows against MiG-21s in the Arab-Israeli wars throughout both AIM-7E and AIM-7F variations, dogfight-fuzed or not. 

The 4 second figure previously quoted seems a bit weird. I think they're bringing up the original non-Dogfight Sparrows, since those have a 4 second delay between initial launch/booster ignition and guidance start. AIM-7E-2 and AIM-7F rectify this.

 

I am going to create a separate thread for this, this is ground attack loadouts discussion.

 

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/327875-f-4e-air-to-air-weaponscapabilities-discussion/

Edited June 11, 2023 by Aussie_Mantis

[Bozon]

6 minutes ago, Aussie_Mantis said:

Israeli F-15s couldn't carry AIM-7s anyway- I doubt the F-16s would have continued not carrying sparrows if they had that ability.

Israeli F-15 did carry AIM-7. They were used in the 1982 Lebanon war with less than stellar success - from rumors I heard that the AIM-7 was very susceptible to even primitive jammers carried by the Syrian Migs.

F-16s could not carry AIM-7, except the Egyptian variants, at least as far as I know. The US F-16s were fitted to carry the Aim-120 and skipped the Aim-7. However, the US initially refused to sell the AIM-120 to most foreign countries and so for many years F-16s in foreign air-forces had only heaters.

[Aussie_Mantis]

2 hours ago, Bozon said:

Israeli F-15 did carry AIM-7. They were used in the 1982 Lebanon war with less than stellar success - from rumors I heard that the AIM-7 was very susceptible to even primitive jammers carried by the Syrian Migs.

F-16s could not carry AIM-7, except the Egyptian variants, at least as far as I know. The US F-16s were fitted to carry the Aim-120 and skipped the Aim-7. However, the US initially refused to sell the AIM-120 to most foreign countries and so for many years F-16s in foreign air-forces had only heaters.

said F-15 by accident, my mistake. I meant F-16.

ALso, your statement is incorrect. F-16ADFs in ANG service had sparrows, as did the block 20s sent to Taiwan, and later on, the export blocks that were sent to Iraq.

 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Aussie_Mantis

[Temetre]

Just wanna bup it again, Aussiemantis made an A2A thread, probably better than spam the A2G thread  

[Bremspropeller]

Somewhat touching the missile+bombs on the inboards discussion (201 sqn jets):

TER with three 117s on the LH inbaord with a single AIM-9 on the RH inboard.

Same thing (opposite sides) and with the AIM-9 rails still in place on the RH inboard:

Here's a 119 sqn jet with MK 8x on the LH inboard pylon.:

Looks like the IDF at least at times went for asymmetric loadouts to answer the question of interference.

Can anybody support or deny that assumption?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Bremspropeller

[Temetre]

Tho Id note that 3x 117 is a lot more weight than 3x MK-82. 2100 vs 1500 pounds.

[Aussie_Mantis]

13 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

 

Looks like the IDF at least at times went for asymmetric loadouts to answer the question of interference.

Can anybody support or deny that assumption?

 

Oh, you think that's asymmetric? Look at this, Thug.

 

Yeah, do the GBU shaker

Edited June 12, 2023 by Aussie_Mantis