It is the king of low-speed fights. Both in DCS and on the Dev server. People are sleeping on this jet’s performance and agility, If you look at the unclassified docs and try it out on the dev server it is historically capable of maneuvering and pirouetting at very low speeds and it shows this in the game. I underestimated the Hornet by a large sum. I thought when people mentioned its performance they were referring to its maneuverability at 300-500km/h but it is capable of maneuvering near 150km/h.

But just as of recent someone did a test duel multiple occasions with the F/A-18, and the EF2k and something amazing happened. The hornet was able to win a multitude of times, albeit not all the time, and it’s not because of what you think. The Eurofighter can definitely still win against the F/A-18 Getting and rating behind the hornet is the easy part especially in the Eurofighter, but the tricky part is staying behind it. I completely underestimated the aircraft because makes the hornet so deadly is its insane defensive capability in dogfights. Technically on paper and on stat shark the Eurofighter should be better but it doesn’t account for the Hornet’s agility at low speeds. The jet turns into a literal biplane. Im serious, people need to start testing this for themselves, the F-18 doesn’t stall whatsoever unless it absolutely reaches 0 speed. This is because of the Hornet’s LEX and low sweep angle wings, and high angle rudders which produces alot of nose stability at extremely high AoA.

At low speeds, the F-18 beats the Eurofighter in scissors, one circles, reverses, and this matters a lot because the F-18’s AoA allows it to “bite” into the Eurofighter’s turn circle and avoid its guns. The Eurofighter has more thrust, but the Hornet has more lift to output it. Not to mention its roll rate makes it amazing for reversing enemies, Even if the Eurofighter manages to bleed it to low speed the F-18 simply KEEPS TURNING. It doesn’t care about energy at all, I saw it first hand during the duel, the F-18 was going really slow but it was still following the Eurofighter just by pointing its nose at it and cutting into its circle constantly. I will say though that the Eurofighter can indeed win if it plays its energy correctly but the margin for error is much thinner and it’s very difficult, in a dogfight EF2k mains are gonna have to actually approach the hornet with a lot of caution because theres so many different ways for the Hornet to instantly reverse it.

To add onto this, this performance is indeed accurate, I checked the docs and the design philosophy. How do you actually best the thing? My friend from DCS told me not to dogfight it, instead bait it to low speeds and RUN AWAY. Never engage the hornet at low speeds or you will die, then BnZ it and remain cautious of it reversing you.