DCS: F-4E Phantom II Announced – Here come the spookies!

First thought: “I knew it! I F. knew it!”
I’ve been saying that Heatblur was making the F-4 since forever! Well, a couple of years ago actually, but it’s still quite a long time indeed.

Tonight, Hearblur dropped the trailer of the F-4E, and with it, a number of interesting info.

“The Family”

As the description of the video states:

The legendary Phantom family is coming to DCS

This opens up an infinite amount of speculation, most of which should be addressed soon, as Cobra as announced a FAQ that should be released shortly (EDIT: FAQ Released).

Real-World Variants

The F-4 has such a long history that speculating which versions we will get is quite pointless. However, out of the many, a few stand out:

• The F-4E was the easiest bet, since it is incredibly common, features the internal gun previously omitted and carries all sorts of Air-to-Ground weapons: from AGM-65 Maverick to dumb bombs, GBU, cluster bombs and many others.
• Naval variants differ from the USAAF canonical F-4E, and the late F-4S features the support for the Pulse Doppler radar.
• A version that would be very exciting, but its usefulness in DCS is a question mark is the RF-4: in simulative groups, the reconnaissance version can definitely have a role. However, those a niche within the niche.
• The F-4G shined as a Wild Weasel in Desert Storm, and brings something new to the table, but its usage in DCS may be somewhat limited by the game’s implementation of the ECM/ECCM: what is the point of being able to carry five different jammers and ECM pods if the in-game implementation is bare bone at best? We know something is moving, we can only wait.
• The F-4 had a great deal of success even in the old continent: Germany, UK, Greece, Turkey fielded F-4 Phantoms. In fact, as silly as it sounds, I have the feeling we might get a German F-4F ICE with AIM-120 and all sorts of improvements too, if the relation between HB and TrueGrit goes beyond the Eurofighter.

Virtual Backseaters Volume II: F-4E Phantom II WSO

If you happen to visit the page dedicated to the first volume of this series now and then, you may have noticed that the number of pages in the latest internal draft went up by a lot recently. The reason is that I’m including more topics applicable to the F-14 Tomcat but of secondary importance, but also directly to the F-4E Phantom II.

As a matter of fact, many parts already public can be used out of the box with the F-4. For instance, the more in-depth study of the intercept geometry, skipping the FOX-3 employment, so from the setup for the FOX-1 shot and follow-up.

The following are a couple of frames taken from the video: