I am in no way an expert in the F104, but I was interested in the armaments and found a few articles which have me confused.
The F104 J was a Japanese export version of the F104 G built specifically as an interceptor with no ground attack capabilities, yet the F104 G has countermeasures in War Thunder and the Japanese INTERCEPTOR does not? I have looked through a few F104 flight manuals as well, but non mention countermeasures so I don’t even know if the F104 G has access to countermeasures. I even found pictures of the Italian F104 ASA which doesnt show countermeasure pods so who knows if any of them had access to countermeasures. Either way, the J should defiantly have countermeasures at BR 10.7
Italian ASA (there is a photo of the prototype) and G (some had them during Gulf War) had countermeasures. Though imo Japanese can get them in the game, even if they weren’t installed irl.
Spoiler
PS if you find a photo without countermeasures, it doesn’t mean they weren’t be possible to install on a plane, they are optional and pretty rare especially on planes which haven’t taken part in military operations.
Thanks for all the clarifications. Especially the photo noting they could be installed inside of speed brakes. Honestly I had a hard time finding details on the F104J, but because it was based on the F104G I just assumed there would be more continuity. I still think at 10.7 it should have countermeasures even if mentions of them are hard to find as shown above. The F5C defiantly did not have countermeasures yet Gaijin added them for unknown reasons.
Honestly Gaijin needs to do with countermeasures what Wargaming did with ASW. Every ship that can face subs gets ASW regardless of whether it is historical or visually accurate
