Mitsubishi F-2

Well all the planes I listed are next year items at the earliest.
Going head-to-head WVR with gen 5s shouldn’t be surprising since gen 4 is peak maneuverability.
Gen 5 is electronics & stealth/anti-stealth.

Very well educated predictions:

The Rafale will get Magic 2s and MICA EMs.
Typhoon AIM-9M/Li and AIM-120B/C1-4.
All the loadouts will be matured by then, and F-2 would have an essentially identical loadout just with AAM-3 and AAM-4.

I do hope AAM-5s are “bad” enough to come. Bad as in R-73 equivalent and not R-73M equivalent.

From my understanding AAM-4 is a F-2 late thing? Not sure if J/APG-1 can use them or if need J/APG-2 for AAM-4A and AAM-4B.

Which means and F-2 early is just IR + SARH only and would be pretty tame. But also, if no AAM-4, then F-2 should be out earlier than the others that come with Fox 3s out of the gate.

Basically F-2 early should show up before the Fox 3 update to make logical sense timeline wise. People grind the F-2 early, then the F-15J MSIP, then F-2 late or other F-15J variant, etc etc.

The F-2A Viper Zero was only recently passed onto the devs for consideration… perhaps you’re getting mixed up with the mentioning of Fox-3s by russian devs in a stream confirming their arrival within the next two major patches.

F-2 has been passed to devs since December 2019 with F-2 early re-passed to devs in September 2023 and F-2 late just recently passed December 2023.

The few major update parts refers to the F-16AJ devblog: [Development] F-16AJ: Cover-boy - News - War Thunder

Therefore, when choosing between forcing Japanese aviation enthusiasts to wait for the Viper Zero a few major updates, or giving Japan a 4th generation aircraft now, we chose the second option.

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Awesome, can’t wait to see how broken they make the FM.

Honestly it might be similar to the AJ/Gripen, maybe a little better, but the AJ is what I’m expecting, ironically enough.

Of course things can change between a devblog and priorities in development can shift, but timeline wise it makes sense for the F-2 early (if they’re splitting the F-2 into multiple variants) to come before the Fox 3 update as, AFAIK, F-2 early cannot use Fox 3s.

We could spend years trying to prophesise how Gaijin will do anything, just not a big fan of them releasing a broken FM live and then adjust it in the weeks and months following; see essentially the entire Air Superiority update.

That’s just typical and I don’t expect the F-2 to be any different. For example, I’m glad we have the Type 10 in the game right now. Asking for Gaijin to get the flight model perfect on release is like asking Gaijin to not add the Type 10 until they model CVT. Does it suck that things aren’t accurate/better? Yea, but even imperfect things will be miles better than waiting for perfect.

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@AlvisWisla

Seeing the new BR changes, what are your thoughts on the X/F-2A introduction as I recall you mentioned in past RR threads that it would come at the 12.7/13.0 BR range (basically after the F-15J introduction). Considering top tier is now 12.7, meaning new planes will either be 13.0 or 13.3.

Would you up your estimation to 13.0/13.3?

Looking like 13.0/13.3 as the new estimation.
I’m expecting 13.3 to be the primary AMRAAM BR as well, with lesser airframes/missile counts at 13.0.

AAM-4 if it can only carry 4 would be good at 13.0, maybe 13.3 if the AESA makes their pitbull range lower.

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If they do split the F-2 into early and late or XF-2A as the F-2 early then we’d have an F-2 without AAM-4 and just 4x AAM-3s + 4x AIM-7Ms. That could fit into 13.0 if 13.3 is reserved for AAM-4s/Fox 3s.

I’m definitely in the “any update could be the one” camp with regards to either the XF-2A or the F-2 considering we already got AAM-3 on a decent platform instead of on say the EJ Kai.

Hmmmm

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1064399731381506129/1197684690572812479/MixCollage-18-Jan-2024-05-31-PM-2942.jpg?ex=65bc29ca&is=65a9b4ca&hm=c19b8d48e82838aabbe33721b70f75a0aa398862ab2dfa458615afa11d42d7d7&

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Yea, that’s also my reasoning earlier in this thread. Unless things have changed (which they can in development of course), we should be seeing some variant of the F-2 soon.

With AESA?

We are VERY close to the first AESA fighters.
F-16 Blk 60/70, F-2 of course, and Gripen E.
Though I suspect Gaijin will pocket Gripen E for 14.0 or something similar.

Yea, even with AESA because AESA doesn’t matter gameplay wise, aside from situational awareness with TWS, when the aircraft can only use sparrows that have no datalink. You can notch the sparrows and fool them with chaff, even if the main aircraft radar doesn’t lose lock or isn’t affected by multipathing.

Yea. Given that Fox 3 will be an update of its own and bring aircraft that heavily utilized them, I feel that something like the F-2 coming before Fox 3s, especially since the early variants didn’t use them, would be something to bring to the game before the big Fox 3 update. Since for Japan, that update would be mostly focusing on the F-15J.

Don’t quote me but last I heard, ESA radars like PESA/AESA offered multi-target capability with Fox 1 missiles, so there would be some gameplay differences there in that it could use multiple Sparrows at once. You pretty much already have Pantsir in-game with PESA being capable of guiding multiple missiles at multiple targets.

i think incase of AESA, they can change the frequency of each antenna (i think)
so i doubt you can notch the radar it self since having 5 to 10 of those antenna with different frequency locking on to you. not sure if the sparrow can be chaffed though(if this is true)

what i was thinking was more like aesa would be stupidly good with radar missiles and it could aswell introduce features such as multi target detection with high precision allowing for stuff such as seeing the targets position and getting more of a “flanking” position with the info of all the targets

yeah i can see that. but i don’t think the current AirRB would give any advantage for it since the map just basically a straight tunnel where people just doing head-on.
probably very useful for SB or GroundRB where any aircraft did not get any UI indicator.