Possibly. I used dev to test this and while the plane can exist at 50,000 feet, it doesn’t meet performance specifications there or at 60,000 feet.
Something that was odd was the altitude would go up by increments of 3. Floating point precision errors in war thunder above a certain altitude it seems.
Which is significantly more than the 3 it can carry per side in-game.
Now, this is allegedly a “tac-ferry” load, in which the F-15E is carrying additional completed munitions to an airfield for later use, and not intended for immediate use, but it got me thinking, is there anything stopping the F-15E from using said munitions?
The F-15E, for all the options in munitions it can carry is actually kind of hilariously limited in the capacity/capabilities of its loadouts.
It cant carry AMRAAM’s on the fuselage and also carry a LANTIRN pod (not sure why, game just wont let you)
It cant use half of its CM’s if it has a LANTIRN pod (incredibly annoying, also not historical from what Ive heard)
Its limited to 12x 500lbs and/or 7x 2000lbs dumb bombs (tremendously inefficient for bombing bases)
No access to napalm (tremendously limits its base killing efficiency)
No ability to add munitions on the CFT’s 45° hardpoints with most munitions carried om the fuselage hardpoints (hardpoints just sit there, empty and unused)
Incredibly limited wing hardpoints for air to ground munitions (you can carry single bombs, 3 packs of mavs, or bags, nothing else)
Ironically enough, its actually SUBSTANTIALLY worse than the F-15C at multirole loads for sim air. The F-15C being able to kill 5 bases without compromising its AAM load at all, though you’re better off going for a 3 base + extra fuel load to retain additional endurance post drop and so as to not waste ordinance/time when other teammates also bomb. The F-15E on the other hand can only kill up to 2 bases, and requires the sacrifice of half of your AAM’s to do so (or 1 base with no loss of AAM’s, but also no fuel tanks, which limits your post drop capabilities substantially as well).
Its kind of odd. The F-15E Strike Eagle is the best air to air F-15 in the US tree, and otherwise is almost purely a static target specialist which is unable to efficiently bomb and unable to efficiently multirole. The F-15C Eagle is worse in air to air than its “strike” counterpart, but better at multirole in the sim environment seen in-game… truly a headscratcher imo.
These could all be historical limitations, im honestly not entirely sure, but they generally dont “feel” right. The F-15E ingame may have more “precision” but it often doesnt feel like its got all that much “strike”.
Also got this pic which to my understanding, is a prototype F-15E carrying what looks to me like ~20-22 1000lbs mk83 bombs? Cant even carry any Mk83’s on the plane in-game :/
Shouldnt you still be able to load said pylons with dumb bombs or laser ones tho in that case?
Still seems a tad odd the F-15E’s underwing and centerline pylons are MORE limited than it and other F-15’s tho, along with it being really odd it cant carry mk83’s.
Doesn’t matter, it is known that the F-15E, BRU-61, SDB-I (, -II & AGM-187A) are UAI certified stores (see below link), so mounting them only requires a software change as long as the relevant adapters can otherwise be mounted on the station / adapter in question.
It’s similar with the JDAM / L-JDAM / JDAM-ER / P-JDAM family of addon kits, with them being UAI certified, it’s good to go.
Pending of course release & jettison tests, but to some degree, the entire point of UAI to allow everything else to be simplified under a common standard, so in an emergency can be rapidly fielded due to existing interoperability.