Lessons Learned

I am flying the 1979 Europe campaign in an F-15A from the 22nd Tactical Fighter Squadron (Stingers) out of Bitburg, West Germany.

I've said it before, dogfights with the Eagle are like beating baby harp seals.

Strike Fighters is nominally realistic so the lessons observed are comparable to the real world.

The F-15A is clearly the culmination of the lessons learned over Vietnam.  As are the improvements made to the Sidewinder and Sparrow.

Huge radar, nimble, massive thrust to weight ratio, excellent all around visibility, internal gun.

The slightly earlier F-14A displays similar properties.  Same lessons from the same war, though the Navy retained two crew members and the TF-30 engines aren't near as powerful as the F100.  But, AIM-54...

The baby harp seals in question are the MiG-23.  It would appear that the Soviets did not absorb the same lessons from Vietnam as we did.  It's a truism that the loser looks much harder at what went wrong than the winner...  The Flogger is much more akin to the Phantom than the Eagle.  I've spoken to a couple of pilots and what I am seeing in the game is what they'd expect to happen.  The MiG-23 is FAST, but it's visibility is poor and it bleeds energy like a stuck pig and it has a hard time getting it back once lost.  The missiles are on par with what we hung from an F-4 during Rolling Thunder and really no match for the much improved ordnance that even the Phantom carries in 1979.