Hello everyone,
I’ve been studying the F16I Sufa’s CFTs since the Tusk Force update, and I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that they must be completely incorrect. CFTs were specifically developed for the aircraft in question to generate greater range with as little drag as possible. It’s therefore completely unbelievable that the CFTs in War Thunder degrade flight characteristics many times more than all external fuel tanks combined. However, that’s not all. While the conformal fuel tanks in the game are not only extremely bad for flight characteristics, they don’t even have a particularly large amount of fuel available. There’s no reason to use the CFTs, as they are currently poorly implemented in War Thunder in every respect. I’ve already filed a bug report about this. I would be very grateful for any help.
Admittedly, sources for CFTs are few and far between, but I’ll copy here an excerpt I found on Warhistory.org. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it’s definitely a good starting point.
The Block 52/60 F-16 aircraft procured by Israel, Greece and the UAE have structural, plumbing, and wiring provisions for the Conformal Fuel Tanks (CFT). Attached to the upper surface of the F-16’s fuselage, the tank’s lower surface conform to the aircraft’s shape. This arrangement allows the CFTs to be relatively light weight, since nothing is suspended from them. With an empty weight of 900 pounds, tank set holds 450 gallons (about 3,000 pounds) of additional JP-5/8 fuel. A CFT set carries 50 percent more fuel than the centerline external fuel tank, with only 12 percent of the drag. The CFT can dramatically increase the operational radius of the aircraft for long range missions. The aircraft can fly a long range strike mission with full weapon’s load, and engage in air combat when external (370 Gal) fuel tanks have been dropped. The CFT, along with external 370 gallon jetissonable tanks or 600 gallon non-jetissonable external tanks are added with the CFT, provides the F-16 with a 60-70 percent increase in operational radius. At subsonic speeds the CFT have neglible effect on the aircraft agility, thought the drag increases in proportion to speed at supersonic speeds. The aircraft fitted with CFT retain nearly the full handling qualities, flight limits, and signature. The CFT set can be fitted or removed in less than two hours. The tanks are are built under the Peace Marble V program by IAI as a sole source to Lockheed Martin’s specification.