[ADDED] Supercruise effect on practical weapon launch range

[Blast33]

Super-cruise has also an effect on weapon employment.
When a F-22 flies at Mach 1.7 it can drop a bomb earlier than a F-15E at 520 kts.

Former F-22 Raptor pilot Jim "JB" Brown President & CEO National Test Pilot School describes a rule of thumb at a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lltMfkj1yPU @ 58 minutes in the video



Improved Missile range x1.5
Improved bomb range x2

At present (DB 497) this is not implemented.
A JDAM is being dropped at the same range for a supercruising F-22 as a normal 520 kts F-15E. Same for AMRAAM employment

Is it possible to program this, because it also influences the survivablilty of these platforms in high threat environments in the air-to-air and A-G realms.

[Dimitris]

So that's a bit complicated.

Speedy launch IRL gives you two kinetic benefits:

1) The weapon is actually able to reach its nominal max speed (nominal max speed assumes a M1.5 launch; if you launch at lower speed then the max speed-at-alt will suffer accordingly - and it's not a linear correlation). Obviously this difference at burnout-speed directly translates to a substantial difference in coast range.
This is not currently modelled in Command; all weapons are able to reach their max speed-at-alt regardless of platform speed at launch.

2) Because of the higher at-launch speed, acceleration (boost) to max speed-at-alt yields an overall higher distance covered the boost phase (and thus higher overall range). Now in a typical max-range shot this is a negligible difference because the vast majority of the flight will be the coast portion (which is unaffected because #1 is not modelled), but in a snapshot or medium-range shot this can be observed.
This factor _is_ currently modelled in Command, but can be difficult to observe unless you very precisely measure speeds and distances at short- and medium-range shots (and it's usually overshadowed by the absence of #1).

#1 is something that is definitely on our minds, and is related to a few other things on our stack (energy-based kinematics for A2G weapons, proper gliding aerodynamics, manual-loft delivery option for non-cruise A2G weapons etc.) but they'll have to wait until certain other big items are in place.

[Blast33]

Thank you for your reply Dimitris, I understand.

It is always good to keep this in the back of your head
Looking forward for your other ideas, especially the lofting!

[Dimitris]

Factor #1 was added in the v1.09 update, as described on the announcement blogpost: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=6017