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.
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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.
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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?
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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/
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Even through WT, the autoloaders in the Type 90 and Type 10 are a huge advantage.
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Even no looking at constitution Japan hasn’t integrated any Paveway or other laser weapon on F-4EJ
It is not the pod for targeting, the same with J/AAQ-2. It is just navigation pod
Similar to the LANA pod on the A-7?
In game LANA can be used for aiming weapon but J/APQ-1 can’t do it mostly
Gotcha
Honestly not even that… There was one guy that kept rejecting any sources suggesting it could on the basis that they didn’t state “GCS-1 is able to track all ground vehicles in the game War Thunder”, but only such abstract things like directly showing the IR signature range the GCS-1 tracks to include ground targets.
But even then since we got the Penguin that’s the last bit of argument for GCS-1 deniers gone anyways, considering there is more evidence GCS-1 could track ground targets than the Penguin.
There is really no such thing as “offensive” or “defensive” weapons. In fact I can just as easily turn this around and say dumb bombs are offensive with less regard to local infrastructure in a defensive role, rather than guided ordnance that can be specifically guided towards only the enemy forces.
It’s a political argument, not a strict rule. Basically serves no purpose other than to strike a debate that doesn’t have a predetermined outcome.
It’s left intentionally vague so that nothing is explicitly banned, while still slowing down and sometimes preventing decistions. Essentially the policy of post-war USA, where they wanted to hinder the Japanese military post-WWII, but still wanted allied forces in the region.
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For the EJ Kai the only things would be GCS-1 and ASM-2 tho im not sure if ASM-2B can be used on the EJ Kai due to lack of GPS antenna maybe with third party coordinates idk.
In game technically both can be used even more so now with other IR air to ground weapons gaijins has added
Only with GCS-1 i can see some issues with targeting where you simply drop them and they target what they see with IR.
With ASM-2 it will work similar to the penguin. Set a designated location where an enemy is and fire then once the missile gets close it will lock in with IR.
Of course ASM-2 would have bit better performance…maybe range and higher warhead.