Block 70 Amraam Stations 3 & 7
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Hello,
Will the block 50 ever be fitted with the triple Amraam station in real life or is this unique to the block 70?
Thank you
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We won’t know until we know.
It might be in a future update.
Bare in mind that carrying so many Amraams on a single plane might not be operationally sound.
They cost over one million USD per missile. -
We won’t know until we know.
It might be in a future update.
Bare in mind that carrying so many Amraams on a single plane might not be operationally sound.
They cost over one million USD per missile.That’s only for the AIM-120D. The AIM-120A/B and C models are significantly cheaper.
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I’d be curious about the drag that adds. Extra weight too. Price tag is less of a concern… It’s a 70 million dollar fighter jet with a multi-million dollar pod or two or three… adding another million dollar missile or two or three per wing isn’t going to break the bank.
If it were going to be an issue, it wouldn’t be the dollar price of the missile, but the increased maintenance cost of the increased missile flying hours total, and the impact that has on the maintenance required for the missiles, inspections per hours flown, etc etc…
I’d expect there to be a leeway in those capabilities, though. Adding a few extra missiles per plane shouldn’t break your integrated logistics support unless it’s quite barebones.
So then it comes down to the impact on a given mission, which is really the whether the weight and drag offset the ability to fire more than 6 missiles. I do note that at present, it’s a tad unusual to fire even one missile. Then again, we don’t scale fighter jet performance around peacetime requirements…
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I’d be curious about the drag that adds. Extra weight too…
… and possible Mach and/or G factor limitations.
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So then it comes down to the impact on a given mission, which is really the whether the weight and drag offset the ability to fire more than 6 missiles. I do note that at present, it’s a tad unusual to fire even one missile. Then again, we don’t scale fighter jet performance around peacetime requirements…
Indeed the real live is not packed with planes like in falcon. But to be honest i dont understand how all the planes in falcon can be shoot down. By guessing the number of all kills is way higher the the originally amount + resupply.
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I found the plane numbers in Falcon realistic. What isn’t realistic is that those planes don’t exist until a few minutes before takeoff. IRL, we don’t see much air combat, because planes tend to be very quickly destroyed on the ground when the airbases are attacked. In Falcon, our only option for OCA is bombing runways and airbase infrastructure, and this can get repaired in a day or so. The only way to really put an airbase out of action is to run it out of fighters by catching them all in the air. In reality, a CBU hit on the ramp can pretty much wipe out an entire squadron. Hardened shelters exist, but not every base has them.
While I wish it was possible to spawn all of the airbase’s planes on the ramp, it would be both very performance-intensive and would change the campaign balance greatly.
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I found the plane numbers in Falcon realistic. What isn’t realistic is that those planes don’t exist until a few minutes before takeoff. IRL, we don’t see much air combat, because planes tend to be very quickly destroyed on the ground when the airbases are attacked. In Falcon, our only option for OCA is bombing runways and airbase infrastructure, and this can get repaired in a day or so. The only way to really put an airbase out of action is to run it out of fighters by catching them all in the air. In reality, a CBU hit on the ramp can pretty much wipe out an entire squadron. Hardened shelters exist, but not every base has them.
While I wish it was possible to spawn all of the airbase’s planes on the ramp, it would be both very performance-intensive and would change the campaign balance greatly.
It is possible to change the spawn time to have them on the ramp much earlier. There is a spawn timer adjustment in the config file. Now what is the max limit? Dunno. What effect will it have on attrition? Dunno. Are there enough parking spaces on the ramp to accommodate them if you were to use a really high value? Dunno. Would aircraft in bunkers be protected unless certain bomb types are used? All questions possibly a dev could answer.
If you wanna keep airfields down, take care of the engineer battalions.
With that being said, some of the reasons we don’t see it could be due to the graphics/CPU load, but it could also be due to ‘enjoyment value’ of the campaign. Airfields are probably a bit easier to attack in the sim than would be in real life. Also, no real risk involved as we just grab more and more aircraft when we fail. For PvP, you could be talking about whiping out airpower for one side in first few hours. Not saying that wouldn’t be realistic, because it could be and has been done in previous real world conflicts…and I’m not necessarily against it personally. If one were inclined to spend the time to build, the functionality/results of trying such a setup could probably be done.
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The thought process of turning our gen 4 fighters into ‘bomb trucks’ has been theorized for some time now. Same reason you see static jets on the ramp (new gen -15s for example) with 20 BVR missiles strapped to it. It’s just that though, nothing more than a theory, or advertising depending on how you want to look at it to sell airplanes the same way companies sell vehicles. When they were trying to sell gen 4 aircraft to the mil, same thing happened, just with tons on A/G stores that were never viable load configs when it came to actual combat. Not saying the stuff will never work or never happen, but it’s not an unheard of or untried marketing tool either.
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We won’t know until we know.
It might be in a future update.
Bare in mind that carrying so many Amraams on a single plane might not be operationally sound.
They cost over one million USD per missile.That’s really not much for an operational wartime environment. If you need them because you are engaging that many aircraft, they would load them even if they cost 5M each. If you load them all and don’t use them, then you didn’t waste any money, so it’s not a factor. But if you could load 2 more missiles on every aircraft, then you can employ the same amount of munitions with fewer aircraft. That means less fuel, less maintenance, less risk, etc… Cost / benefit favors loading them up as much as possible almost every time.
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If you load them all and don’t use them, then you didn’t waste any money
Of course yes. Missile’s lives are limited in flight hours.
And if firing one missile from a TER pylon means “potentially” damaging the two others missiles (just like for LAU88 TER pylons for Mavericks) it is even “worse”. Depends on what you want to do with them and on situation … associated limitations also … But “more weapons” is not necessarily better. -
Even before reaching their lifetime flight hours limit, munitions which are returned complicate the aircraft turn around and require inspection… In some wartime conditions, it has been the practice to dump returned A/G stores to reduce crew turnaround times from dealing with live munitions on the ground.
For the operational level consideration, logistics support is a key consideration.
Anyone else for a game of Logistics Command?
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Always wondered if having the money back in the day they could have put one each side near where the XL had them.