Ainen
I really should change my personal text
- Joined
- 25 August 2011
- Messages
- 2,115
- Reaction score
- 3,599
Ugh, they are and they aren't. They can work good enough in normal conditions - but drones tend to prefer less than normal conditions, in which lock on ranges drop, engagement cycle extends, and failuers happen. It's better than for mig/sus with 1980s radars(you can figure it out just from mean intercept per flight they gave in interviews), but it's still a drop in a bucket compared to hundreds and hundreds of drones every night.The donated AIM-9L/Ms may be old but they are perfectly adequate for shooting Shaheed and Geran-2 drones.
Furthermore, note the rest of the list. As long as GCI guided AN/APG-68 equipped fighter onto a small annoying target - fighter effectively goes blind on rest of the world to keep track of it, no TWS. Even this isn't a guarantee, lock can be thrown of for many reasons.
A month or so ago there was an interesting interivew(about Iran strikes actually), where non-ESA fighters have to be commanded by AESA assets, just because they have the picture of the air situation.