I’ve seen in popular culture and TV series that the F-4EJ was able to use guided air to ground weaponry, and I was curious if anyone had a spreadsheet or any info about the F-4EJ’s ground weaponry. Any sources or info would be very helpful, thanks!
What media did you see?
There’s the GCS-1 IR guidance kit for 500lb and 750lb bombs.
For the EJ, that’s it. Even in the suggestion topics for this, the ASM-1, and ASM-2 anti-ship missiles there is no mention of the EJ using them, only the EJ Kai. Those suggestions have plenty of sources so I’m not doubting them.
The GCS-1 itself is pretty simple, it requires no modification of the carrier vehicle. Once dropped they go active a few seconds later to find and track a target on their own.
I think that may be it, it looked similar to a Paveway II
Like this?
Yup
Yeah that’s the GCS-1. There’s some contention on whether or not it can track ground vehicles but since it’s made to target also landing craft (not just ships), I’d say it definitely can. Worse case scenario the lock range is just shorter.
Gotcha, I remember seeing something similar in the show Gate, that’s why I was wondering, also because even the F-4E has the simplest forms of AGM-65.
Japan stripped out most of the ground attack capabilities and then never used some of the weapons that were still compatible and they had in service. Part of the whole ‘defense force’ charade that they have to abide by.
If you want AGM-65s, to my knowledge the only aircraft that 100% uses them is the P-1. A 4-engined maritime patrol plane. F-2 might but I doubt it.
The closest equivalent on a fighter (EJ Kai in this case) would be ASM-2s, with a mix of inertial guidance and terminal IIR homing. A later model added GPS guidance. These would be used after detecting a ground/naval target through radar on the EJ Kai (and pretty much didn’t see service on the F-1 as its worse radar couldn’t make good use of them).
Odd, I figured they could have an offensive weapon in the fact you could retake ground that is yours and strike the enemies locations.
Not to mention Sweden being a habitually Defence based armed force, they even use the AGM-65A seekers on AGM-65D warheads as anti-ship missiles for quite a while before they used the RBS-15.
It has a lot to do with their constitution specifically disallowing them from maintaining a military and the interpretation stemming from that
Interesting, I assume this was because of the coup Japan between WWI to WWII to attempt to not have an issue like that ever again.
No, Japan’s defense is pure dog water. You have USD$55 billion just to keep a mediocre armed forces with unnecessary expensive equipment, in a hypothetical scenario of a conflict in the southern and east Asia, Japan would be the last priority, it’s mostly simbolic than strategic.
Idk, the TKX and Type 10 are top of the line MBT’s. They have decent equipment all around. Just because their budget is small doesn’t deny them the fact they already have equipment.
After WW2, the US occupied Japan for a few years. They wrote Japan’s constitution and added the clause about not having an army.
During the Korean war, the US allowed the creation of a “Defense force” just incase the Korean war popped off into WW3.
By that measure any equipment, either used by Japan or not is decent. Using the Type 10 as example: Is double the price of production of an Leopard 2A6 and is almost the same as a Leopard 2A7.
Obviously I’m pushing a specific topic you can counter with Germany being a manufacturer and Japan being a importer. As I said it’s not the low budget (or is it?) It’s the unnecessarily expensive things they own and have to mantain.
As I said is terrible, not even in-game Japan offer that much, having the fastest research time in-game, even Israel takes more to research all the ground vehicles, and in air is equally useless, at the moment. The only thing that’s backing up Japanese tech tree is the Thai sub-tech tree.
It is that expensive since very few are made to keep the production lines going. In the event of war, production can be quickly ramped up. Germany can ‘subsidize’ this with export orders, Japan cannot.
In contrast, the US has pretty much given up on making more F-22s since they shut down the production line ages ago and restarting it would be extremely difficult + expensive.
1 Like
More than a 2A6, Less than a 2A7, and MUCH less than a 2A8 (by a marginal 18million euros)
As for the rest, that’s just subjective to the players opinion, I’ve personally enjoyed the Rank 6 vehicles a lot, and have a mostly positive KDR on all of them.
2 Likes
There was the Paveway bomb
And no, there isn’t any type of guided weapon of F-4EJ except GCS-1 which is mainly anti-ship (but mostly can be used against ground targets)
Could you please not evaluate the Japanese army through the War Thunder point of view?
3 Likes
Yeah, not only that but almost everything Japan makes is down to the most minute detail high quality, and much better than even Germanys ‘precision engineering’.
I get that Japans constitution doesn’t allow that ‘offensive capability’ but I did hear of a prototype Targeting pod for the F-4EJ before, don’t know what ever came of it. I know it wasn’t the Pave Knife or Pave Spike.
Edit: Found it;
Apparently it’s a predecessor to the JAQ-1 and has the ability to be used as an IR/Laser targeting pod and an IRST unit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/11mctcf/f4ejkai_missing_guided_ordnance/
2 Likes
Even through WT, the autoloaders in the Type 90 and Type 10 are a huge advantage.
1 Like