Defeating the F-14 in BVR.
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So to summarize what was written and my experience so far.
There is no tactic that will make the F-16 somewhat evenly matched in this scenario.
The best I could come up with is to open the fight with a lofted amraam and then turning cold right away, hoping the missile will find the 14 by itself and force it defensive.
Repeat this getting a bit closer and lower each time.
The problem with this however is even then, that you still can’t guide your 120 till pitbull, if you wanna survive the 154 coming at you.With this dynamic a human F-14 plot has the chance to in each iteration defeat the 120 quicker than you and eventually you would have a new 154 coming at you that you have to defend now without having the chance to fire at the 14 anymore.
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Well, the F-14 is a BVR interceptor. It’s faster than the Viper, and the AIM-54 (154 is the JSOW) has better performance than the Slammer on top of that. Your best bet is to hide behind mountains and use ambush tactics, or to run the Tomcat out of missiles (of course, that doesn’t get you the kill, since it’s faster).
It’s more or less the same situation as with the MiG-31 and R-33. You can’t really duel it in BVR, because it’s holding all the cards. IRL, you may be able to use ECM to level the playing field somewhat, but there’s not enough data to say for sure. The earlier Tomcat radars were particularly susceptible to jamming and notching, but F-14D fixed that (though there’s not a whole lot public data on that one). Either way, in BMS I don’t think it’s simulated.
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I would say the only real problem here is the AIM-54 really and considering I am having to adhere to design limits 800 / M2.0 or 600Ks with tanks then I sincerely hope the F-14B pilot is sticking to the clean manual limits of 780kts/M1.9.
Anyway at 40 miles and 2000ft the F-14 at M1 still launches an AIM-54C at me (at 30kft high speed) and running it out of energy here was not assured……and from that I saw chaff and jamming must work to some extent because it stopped guiding quite a few times. At this height I had the option to launch but well out of NEZ. (MehCat had 4 x 54C & 2 x 9M - I had 4 x 120s and 2 x 9Ms and 2 x 370s)
The AI in the Tomcat is really good as AIs go and does seem to vary his approach on the runs I did he also seems to defeat any Rammers not fired well into NEZ. I ended up merging a lot and the AI is very good here as well if you screw up. I was able to support some of my shots to Pitbull but even with a massive alt and speed advantage 90% of the time ( AI stayed low when I was high) I had another phoenix coming at me.
Vs a Human player you might be able to lose him at low level and pick up the massive Tomcat well before he sees you then sneak in.
I tried this scenario a few times with just 2 x 9Ms & 2 x 9Ps and not that much difference considering I was having to get close anyway…his IR missile defence was more effective than I was expecting…so it’s pretty good. There were a few times where he flew off maybe out of fuel ? #dontknow