Rather than go into the details of every combination of missile and rocket motor, I decided to include a series of tests and related charts and discuss the differences in broader terms.
Starting with the rocket motors, the Mk60 was a limited production that ceased towards the end of the 1970s. Mk47 and Mk60 have slightly different characteristics, but they provide very similar performance.
Previous DCS versions portrayed the Mk47 and Mk60 differently, but this created a non-negligible amount of work and potential issues for something that, on paper, should have been as identical as possible.
Although the Mk47 powers both the AIM-54A and the AIM-54C, they are not the same motor. In the past, they did have the same performance, and the Phoenix powered by the older Mk47 mod 0 had better performance. In reality, the Phoenix-C was powered by the Mk47 mod1, which was a limited improvement aimed at compensating for the increase in weight. This update reflects this difference.
Looking at the curves, in fact, we see that the AIM-54A is fundamentally the same no matter the rocket motor used. So why is the AIM-54C different? Partially, as mentioned, because of the updated Mk47 motor, but also due to its weight. The mid-80s update of the AIM-54, in fact, is slightly heavier than the original from the early 70s. Since the Mk60 was probably almost entirely gone by the time the AIM-54C was introduced, it did not receive any updates. For this reason, the Phoenix-C Mk60 performs ever so slightly worse than the Phoenix-C Mk47 mod1.
Moving forward, although the difference between the AIM-54 A and C is just a letter word-wise, they are worlds apart inside. The A is 1960 technology, analogue, lacking internal INS, and with lower resistance against ECM and jamming. When launched in Track-While-Scan, the Phoenix greatly benefitted by having the AWG-9 illuminating the target. For modern DCS players, the AIM-54A is an ARH missile, acronym for Active Radar-Homing. However, it should not be anywhere near as reliable as the AIM-54C or the AIM-120 when used in launch-and-leave tactics. In DCS, this is unfortunately not represented. As a side note, the de facto standard guidance for radar-guided, pre-AESA missiles should be STT, acronym for Single-Target Track.
Back to the Phoenix, the AIM-54A requires an activation signal from the Tomcat. If this is not provided, the missile goes dumb. The C, instead, can activate itself independently. As mentioned, the AIM-54C is quite close to the AIM-120 and, from my understanding, the same development teams, or part of them at least, worked on both projects.
Another huge difference poorly portrayed in DCS is the guidance. When employed in Track-While-Scan, the Phoenix receives information from the Tomcat. Since the A is a primitive missile for today’s standard but nothing less than science fiction for the era, it corrects its trajectory when information is refreshed if the target manoeuvres. Ergo, every circa 2 seconds. There should be other different effects of the limited guidance, but those are not represented in the game.
To wrap this up, the new update of the AIM-54 Phoenix brings the different variants closer, a decision that, in my opinion, makes a lot of sense.
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