Military Equipment Sperging Thread - The Tiger II is a better tank than the M1 Abrams edition

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WelperHelper99 said:
Maybe I will, BITCH. The Tomcat was the most ambitious out of the Teen series bar none.
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And yet still totally rubbish. The only thing the Tomcat was good for was making Tom Cruise's acting look good by comparison and torturing mechanics with endless breakdowns.

And that was on the good Tomcat, let us not forget what a raging dumpster fire the A was.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
And yet still totally rubbish. The only thing the Tomcat was good for was making Tom Cruise's acting look good by comparison and torturing mechanics with endless breakdowns.

And that was on the good Tomcat, let us not forget what a raging dumpster fire the A was.
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Ironically, Iran proved the Tomcat to be quite effective during the Iran-Iraq war. Despite having a weakened and numerically inferior airforce they were able to run circles around Iraq for a while.
 
Jewthulhu said:
Ironically, Iran proved the Tomcat to be quite effective during the Iran-Iraq war. Despite having a weakened and numerically inferior airforce they were able to run circles around Iraq for a while.
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The AIM-54 Phoenix helped extremely there:
1280px-AIM-54A_(left)_on_F-14_at_NAS_Pax_1984.webp
Could outrage their Iraqi opponents, and deliver a massive payload. Active radar guidance, Mach 4.3 to Mach 5 depending on the model, absolute beast.

Also the flight computer on the Tomcat was nothing short of space age, the MP944 processor:

Again the F-14 Tomcat was pure ambition. It had its ups and downs. Lets not get started on the engines. But holy shit it delivered when it was firing on all cylinders. Absolute fucking monster.

Also the Phoenix finally got replaced in its role by the AIM-174B Gunslinger
U.S._NAVY_AIM-174B_Air-to-air_missile_right_front_view_at_MCAS_Iwakuni_May_4,_2025_01.webp
Want to see them mount this bad boy on a F-35 lol.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Could outrage their Iraqi opponents, and deliver a massive payload. Active radar guidance, Mach 4.3 to Mach 5 depending on the model, absolute beast.
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This was also helped by the Iraqis not bothering to add any radar warning receivers to the MiG-23s and 21s they had available. Then again, I don't think the Soviets were that inclined to give them out to someone as fickle as Saddam.
 
The Grognard said:
This was also helped by the Iraqis not bothering to add any radar warning receivers to the MiG-23s and 21s they had available. Then again, I don't think the Soviets were that inclined to give them out to someone as fickle as Saddam.
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Maybe. That doesn't take away the fact that the Phoenix was advanced as fuck and shot down many Iraqis. You can only blame that so much on a lack of the RWR.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Want to see them mount this bad boy on a F-35 lol.
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Realistically speaking, Gunslinger is Hornet shit. Same with the LREW, it's for the Eagles and Falcons. F-35s and 22s have been getting the first AIM-260 JATMs, which have a similar footprint to AMRAAMs and fit internally. It's the luxury of the USAF to continue investing in 4.5th generation (4.75th?) fleets to schlep around these big standoff missiles, so that even multi-role stealth fighters get to fly in cleaner configurations more often than not. There's some documentation pointing at B-21 as a potential stealth platform for these outsized AAMs, though.

If there's one consistent success story to the last 10 years of procurement, it's how much the missile gap has closed. There are still some dodgy areas but the entire arsenal has become much more diverse and ambitious in a fairly short period of time.
 
VF-1S Valkyrie said:
Realistically speaking, Gunslinger is Hornet shit. Same with the LREW, it's for the Eagles and Falcons. F-35s and 22s have been getting the first AIM-260 JATMs, which have a similar footprint to AMRAAMs and fit internally. It's the luxury of the USAF to continue investing in 4.5th generation (4.75th?) fleets to schlep around these big standoff missiles, so that even multi-role stealth fighters get to fly in cleaner configurations more often than not. There's some documentation pointing at B-21 as a potential stealth platform for these outsized AAMs, though.

If there's one consistent success story to the last 10 years of procurement, it's how much the missile gap has closed. There are still some dodgy areas but the entire arsenal has become much more diverse and ambitious in a fairly short period of time.
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It's been interesting seeing how the 4th gen jets have stuck around really. They make really good trucks. 5th gen is nice, but they aren't good at carrying big loads. Gunslinger I guess is the natural evolution of having no stealth. Just shoot outside the enemy attack envelope.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Maybe. That doesn't take away the fact that the Phoenix was advanced as fuck and shot down many Iraqis. You can only blame that so much on a lack of the RWR.
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Yes, even with it's lack of reliability it did present a pretty insurmountable problem. The AESA radar also made for quite good of a ghetto AWACS in a pinch. I'm still going to attribute most of Iraq's failures coming down to it being the worst nepo-baby parade force there could be. They didn't even get look-down shoot-down radars in their MiG-29s.

WelperHelper99 said:
It's been interesting seeing how the 4th gen jets have stuck around really. They make really good trucks. 5th gen is nice, but they aren't good at carrying big loads. Gunslinger I guess is the natural evolution of having no stealth. Just shoot outside the enemy attack envelope.
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They have stuck around because nobody except the US had money to develop whole new airframes from 1991 to 2005. Either they were genuine believers in the end of history like the EEC was and thus anything that already wasn't well into development like the Gripen, Rafale and Eurofighter got axed; or getting new fighters went down the order of list to do due to much more acute issues like Russia's lost decade in the 90's and China being too far behind to play catch-up when they could wait until they have their industrial base ready.
 
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The Grognard said:
I'm still going to attribute most of Iraq's failures coming down to it being the worst nepo-baby parade force there could be.
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The Iraqi air force suffered from having Saddam's attention, so he did stack it with loyal people rather than competent people (though amusingly enough, Uday was such a fuckup even he couldn't get in).

That said, it's still impressive what Iran did with a limited number of F-14s with no parts and half of their skilled pilots gone.

The F14 also performed well during the Gulf of Sidra incident(s), but that's not really a fair comparison either.
 
The Grognard said:
It's going to be interesting to see if they're going to go with a Russian or a Chinese aircraft to replace the Tomcat with. They inevitably want something that fills the same role of long-distance missile chucker with a big radar. Something like a MiG-31, if new production starts?
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I.... I don't think Iran has the cash for anything at the moment.

At BEST they'll get ~24 Su-35s

Sleazy Car Salesman said:
And yet still totally rubbish. The only thing the Tomcat was good for was making Tom Cruise's acting look good by comparison and torturing mechanics with endless breakdowns.

And that was on the good Tomcat, let us not forget what a raging dumpster fire the A was.
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The A just got saddled with a bad engine.

The B was what the A should have been and honestly should have been put into service earlier and every single A replaced with a new build B.

Then the D should have replaced every B, either as a deep level upgrade or a new build jet.

After the A-12 was shit canned, the USN should have pushed HARD for a Super Tomcat and the Super Hornet.
The Grognard said:
This was also helped by the Iraqis not bothering to add any radar warning receivers to the MiG-23s and 21s they had available. Then again, I don't think the Soviets were that inclined to give them out to someone as fickle as Saddam.
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They absolutely had RWRs on those jets. They just weren't great.

Only indicated threats ahead, behind, and on each side. Very basic.
WelperHelper99 said:
Maybe. That doesn't take away the fact that the Phoenix was advanced as fuck and shot down many Iraqis. You can only blame that so much on a lack of the RWR.
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The Iraqis has RWR.... It just wasn't good on the Mig-21/23 as their sets were already ~10 years out of date in 1980. Allegedly the Tomcat radar would overwhelm the RWR on those two jets and cause to to indicate a threat in front and behind at the same time.
The Grognard said:
The AESA radar also made for quite good of a ghetto AWACS in a pinch
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The Tomcat radar was a mechanically scanned radar, it was enormous and had a lot of power behind it.
 
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The Grognard said:
There also was the issue of the START treaty that was in power until late 2023. It required these aircrafts to be visible from space in order to be visually confirmed. It likely was one of the few parts that were kept informally as an unofficial agreement on how many strategic bombers each side has. Though, building these will take time so I would expect them to be conducted in a much more expedited manner.
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START treaty is still in effect, it was going out of effect in 2021 but for all the issues of the trump-then-biden whitehouse diplomacy at the time a new formulation was not negotiated, and both washington and moscow agreed to extend the existing treaty till 2026, in 2023 the sections on notifications and inspections were effectively suspended from participation because both sides stopped participation of those sections, currently, the hotline, limitations on numbers, and ofc the placing of bombers visible to satalites is still in efffect and followed by both sides.

during trumps term it was clear he wanted to negotiate a new treaty which would include china, moscow would probably prefer to include britain and france to the limitations aswell, he also wanted restrictions on the types of delivery vehicles (posidon, khinzhal, zircon etc) but given trumps diplomatic 'ability', recent events like the drone attack which had US and israeli involvement, the israeli and US attacks on iran and violation of diplomatic protocols putting the IAEAs legitimacy and NPT in question which moscow and beijing are very alarmed about, its unknown if it will get extended again, replaced by a new treaty or will be allowed to time out in febuary 2026.. personaly i think we will see an ammended extension where it will be allowed to place bombers in hangers under a similar or improved protocol the B2s are and PAK DA will be under so clearly its been agreed upon before and wont be too taxing on US diplomacy to achieve.
 
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