Royal Navy helicopter countermeasures/defences

[TwarVG]

So I noticed that in the database, the previous and current generations of the Royal Navy's helicopters (Lynx, Wildcat and Merlin) have some discrepancies. These are small nitpicky things, but I believe them to be errors nonetheless.

The Lynx and Wildcat helicopters both seem to be automatically equipped with the ARI.23363 Yellow Veil DECM system. This is actually just an American AN/ALQ-167 ECM pod, which to my knowledge, was only ever fitted to Lynx helicopters for Gulf War 1 due to their maritime strike role against Iraqi surface forces. It was externally mounted on one of the side hardpoints and never entered regular frontline service, and therefore shouldn't be present on most variants of the Lynx, and none of the Wildcats. I'm unsure whether the Wildcat carries its own onboard ECM or not and we're not likely to find out any time soon.

As for the Merlin, there doesn't seem to be an option to carry more than 2 torpedoes, when in reality they can carry 4 on their hardpoints due to their role as the Navy's primary ASW platforms.

All 3 helicopters seem to be missing their MAWS, IR jammers, and chaff/flare dispensers. I think there's only 1 variant of the Merlin HM.1 that carries any which doesn't make much sense. That being said, there are many platforms in the game missing basic countermeasure and defensive systems like that, and only some of them carrying them on a special wartime variant but most lacking them all together. I'm not sure if that's a design feature or just down to a lack of concrete information a lot of the time, but it would be nice to see them added at some point.

Also, are there any plans to add the Tomahawk command datalink to Royal Navy ships and submarines? The lack of a datalink negates pretty much every benefit the Block IV has over the previous models except range. Thanks!

[Rory Noonan]

ORIGINAL: TwarVG

So I noticed that in the database, the previous and current generations of the Royal Navy's helicopters (Lynx, Wildcat and Merlin) have some discrepancies. These are small nitpicky things, but I believe them to be errors nonetheless.

The Lynx and Wildcat helicopters both seem to be automatically equipped with the ARI.23363 Yellow Veil DECM system. This is actually just an American AN/ALQ-167 ECM pod, which to my knowledge, was only ever fitted to Lynx helicopters for Gulf War 1 due to their maritime strike role against Iraqi surface forces. It was externally mounted on one of the side hardpoints and never entered regular frontline service, and therefore shouldn't be present on most variants of the Lynx, and none of the Wildcats. I'm unsure whether the Wildcat carries its own onboard ECM or not and we're not likely to find out any time soon.

As for the Merlin, there doesn't seem to be an option to carry more than 2 torpedoes, when in reality they can carry 4 on their hardpoints due to their role as the Navy's primary ASW platforms.

All 3 helicopters seem to be missing their MAWS, IR jammers, and chaff/flare dispensers. I think there's only 1 variant of the Merlin HM.1 that carries any which doesn't make much sense. That being said, there are many platforms in the game missing basic countermeasure and defensive systems like that, and only some of them carrying them on a special wartime variant but most lacking them all together. I'm not sure if that's a design feature or just down to a lack of concrete information a lot of the time, but it would be nice to see them added at some point.

Also, are there any plans to add the Tomahawk command datalink to Royal Navy ships and submarines? The lack of a datalink negates pretty much every benefit the Block IV has over the previous models except range. Thanks!

Hi TwarVG and welcome to the forum. Nitpicky stuff is how we make the DB better so pick away!

There's a dedicated thread for database update requests, however as you will see on reading that thread there is quite a large volume of requests of varying priorities.

To make it easier (and thus more likely to happen quickly) for us to update the database with your requests it's important to provide references for any requests (for loadouts pictures are the best).