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tiag -> BVR Contest: The best BVR Aircraft nowadays? (a CMO's answer) (6/13/2021 8:37:07 AM)
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That question came many times and no one can really give a final decisive word on it. The problem already starts which aircraft parameters should be compared. The list can get very long from simple performance aspects like max ceiling or thrust, to more convoluted ones like thrust-to-weight ratio, number of long range missiles. A second major problem is that BVR combat depends a lot on tactics and on the weapons being carried. And particular weapons are definitely not the same. So I decided to give a shot to answer that question in Command Modern Operations.
I run a simulation in CMO using LUA to set up the combats automatically, control the results and interate over al possible combinations. The BVR contest ran in three steps. The first one included all acft and its BVR loadouts since 2000 in the DB of CMO. In total there were about 2294 entries (many acft were fighting with different loadouts, including SARH missiles). Each acft fought each other 5 times with a duration of 10 minutes each sortie (game time). The simulation was run at max speed, what in my PC took a few hours. If an aircraft shot down the oponent it got 1 point. If both shot down each other in a exchange missiles, then both got 1 point.
A second run was done with the best 116 under the same rules.
The top aircraft after these two runs, with its best loadout ranking, were then chosen for a final contest. Some acft were represented many times in the top rankings with different loadouts, but only the best ranked loadout of each aircraft was chosen to move to the finals.
These acft are the following (alphabetical order):
F/A-18E Super Hornet
F-15C Eagle
F-15E Strike Eagle
F-15EX Advanced Eagle
F-15I Eagle [Raam]
F-15SA Eagle
F-16CJ Blk 52+ Advanced Falcon [Peace Xenia IV]
F-16CM Blk 52 Falcon
F-16E Blk 60 Desert Falcon
F-16I Falcon [Sufa]
F-22A Raptor
F-35A Lightning II
J-10C Vigorous Dragon
J-11B Flanker B [Su-27SK Copy]
J-11BG
J-15 Flying Shark [Su-33 Copy]
J-16 Flying Shark [Su-30MKK Copy]
J-20 Mighty Dragon
J-31
JAS 39E Gripen NG
JF-17 Thunder Blk 3
MiG-29M2 Fulcrum C
MiG-35D Fulcrum F
Mirage 2000H-5
Rafale C
Su-27SM/SM3 Flanker B
Su-30MKK Flanker G
Su-30SM Flanker G
Su-33 Flanker D
Su-35S Flanker E
T-50 PAK-FA
Typhoon FGR.4
No surprises here, isn´t? All top tiers are represented as expected. These final 31 players were then put back in the BVR arena to fight each other one final time. Same scenario, duration and number of combat. Wins gave 1 point and losses subtracted 1 point (!). So, max points woult be 310 points and min points would be -310 points.
And here are the results:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/DzMkDNQ.jpg[/img]
Some interesting stuff here:
1) What I found very interesting is how close matched is the latest Rafale C, the Typhoon FGR.4 and F-35s are. Out of 310 combats, these guys have similar exchange ratios.
2) Grippen is not bad, but is the cheap cousin of the other europen fighters. But better than all Eagles and Vipers around. This is probably due to the Meteor.
3) F-15s/F-16s are in another category in comparison to the latest Rafale and the latest Typhoon. Even when carrying the long range AIM-120D, they got no chance against the Meteor and the european radar/sensors.
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