Mitsubishi F-2

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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Over on the research server someone did a rough calculation of turn performance from a video. While this isn’t a completely reliable measurement it does give a broad range for turn performance ranging from ~26°/s @ 450km/h (absolute worst case, no ME and constant max AoA) to as high as ~36°/s @ 450km/h. Using a more realistic average, this is comparable to the performance of the Rafale in game. (If I got any of this wrong please correct me, I didn’t do the calculations)

Combine that with a G limit of 10G (12G with overload) at any weapon load, that would translate into a 15-18G structural limit in game, which will be rather powerful.

Really the main things holding it back will be the lack of HMD, restricted 4/4 missile load and T/W on the low end of top tier, but as long as Gaijin doesn’t do something really weird with the flight model (like just copying the F-16) it will still be a capable 14.0 in its own way.

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637

A bit optimistic, but makes sense given what we know. I say optimistic because the entire rest of the WT community just assumes fat F-16 and not that I can blame them if they’re just looking at a surface level. My assumption is that it should be quite literally the zero of top tier but I think that would get EFT/Rafale pilots angry.

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638

Conjecture.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love the Eurocanards but some people assert that they are better than F-22 in a dogfight because of some footage of the Rafale having one in its gunsights in DACT, the reality is we don’t know the actual conditions regarding what happened, such as if the Rafale started behind the F-22 when the engagement started.

Yes, EFT and Rafale have very good flight performance, but don’t discount some of the other fighters such as the F-2, late J-10 variants, etc.

F-2 is much more than a bigger F-16C with AESA.

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640

I thought the APG-68 did get installed for its first flight? But either way having an AESA radar at a ‘low’ BR (Kfir C10 says hello) won’t be much of a problem when its limited to Sparrows.

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ME mode for reference for everyone:

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I did some T/W calculations way back and this is what I came up with.

All weight in kilograms and thrust in kilonewtons. Fuel load at 50% max capacity.

F-16A-B10

Empty: 7,570
Fuel: 3,140
Armaments: 506.8 (6x AIM-9L/M)
Total: 11,216.8
Thrust: 105.7
T/W: 0.96

F-16C-B50

Empty: 8,950
Fuel: 3,200
Armaments: 887.2 (6x AIM-120A)
Total: 13,037.2
Thrust: 131
T/W: 1.025

F-2A

Empty: 9,527
Fuel: 4,637
Armaments Full: 1252 (4x AAM-3 + 4x AAM-4)
Total Full: 15,416
Thrust: 131
T/W: 0.867

Armaments Alt: 1070 (2x AAM-3 + 4x AAM-4)
Total Alt: 14,964
T/W Alt: 0.893

Armaments Alt 2: 546 (6x AAM-3, I think it’s possible?)
Total Alt 2: 14,710
T/W Alt 2: 0.908

F-2A (same fuel as F-16C-B50)

Empty: 9,527
Fuel: 3,200
Armaments Full: 1252 (4x AAM-3 + 4x AAM-4)
Total Full: 13,979
Thrust: 131
T/W: 0.956

Armaments Alt: 1070 (2x AAM-3 + 4x AAM-4)
Total Alt: 13,797
T/W Alt: 0.968

Armaments Alt 2: 546 (6x AAM-3, I think it’s possible?)
Total Alt 2: 13,273
T/W Alt 2: 1.006

At first glance it looks bleak for the F-2 but remember the F-16A runs circles around the F-16C even with worse T/W. The extra wing area, ME mode, higher G load, all should add to better turning, in theory.

Also something to note, maybe F-2 can get away with less fuel since it’s the same engine as the Block 50. I just did 50% for both just to get a baseline.

EDIT: I added another section with same fuel as F-16C-B50 just to get a airframe to airframe comparison. Something to note, the F-2 has better T/W than the Block 10 while carrying a bit more fuel and slightly heavier AAM-3s.

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642

A Viper Zero you could say…

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643

I mean, F-2 was literally a further domestic development + refinement of a program that began as the “agile falcon,” which should give you a hint to its flight characteristics.

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That’s a huge difference in fuel capacity, from 6280 and 6400kg max to 9274kg of fuel. In some gamemodes you could just forego a drop tank altogether.

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Yeah, it’s really interesting from what I’ve seen about it.

It’s similar to MLC, except with much heavier use of flaps compared to the elevators, employing the lift of the main wing in an almost canard-like way. Basically instead of pushing the tail down to pitch up, the wing creates excessive lift to pull itself up, while the elevators move to guide the tail through the maneuver.
This would also create less AoA comparatively to a similar turn when using MLC, which means the aircraft would also create less drag and could perform sharper turns before hitting critical AoA.

So if implemented right, F-2 might even hold it’s own in sustained fights with F-16s

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You’d think but at the end of the day, it is a replacement to the F-1 so the primary focus is attacking ships.

I generally just run max fuel in the F-16AJ which is enough for me burn the necessary fuel to be light in battle without worrying about extra drag from pylons. I do have to manage fuel a bit if the battle progresses slowly so I have time to RTB, if necessary.

But yea the F-2 might be using the same engines, but with higher drag, I assume more fuel burn to compensate, but not so much more to matter.

All hinges on those few words. At this point I’ve consigned myself to it being an F-16AJ which is strong in its own right, but anything else is a bonus. After all, the only issue I have with the F-16AJ right now is that it only has 9Ls so can’t sneak up on MAW or flare spamming aircraft.

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647

To be fair a lot of changes from the Agile Falcon to the F-2 actually benefit it a lot. The reinforced trapezoidal wing, larger leading and trailing edge flaps, larger elevators and larger and more pronounced leading edge extensions might not have been purely designed to make the aircraft more agile, but they very much will.

It’s an aircraft designed to perform its best when in its intended role, loaded with heavy ASMs, while still performing to its 10G (and 12G override) limits with great controllability. This all just so happened to take the Agile Falcon idea, and push it to its absolute best, intentional or not.

I really feel like an aircraft with a high structural limit at heavy loads, enlarged control surfaces for pitch and roll movement and a significant increase in lift through the wing and LEX will probably be agile in game too.
I only have doubts about ME mode, since I’m not sure if Gaijin would introduce a completely different control mode to the game for just the F-2, so it might not perform as well in sustained fights as it could.

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648

I don’t think Gaijin will introduce a new mode but they might just fudge numbers to give the equivalent performance. Then again they didn’t do that with Type 10 so who knows.

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649

We have things like automatically extending leading edge slats, it wouldn’t be impossible to also include flaps dropping on turns. Maybe make it only below a certain speed.

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At least with the F-2 it still has MLC mode too, so it’s not as bad if that’s the only mode since it’s still accurate. Though I’d love to see ME mode added, it would make the F-2 a lot more interesting compared to other aircraft.

Decoupled Yaw could also be interesting, though arguably not as useful as ME.

Yeah, right now we can select a preset flap position (combat, takeoff, landing) and they lower as far as the speed allows.
I feel like ME would require some more fine tuning than that. They also probably shouldn’t just be bound to speed alone, but maybe AoA too and obviously pitch input since the flaps in ME are the main pitch control surfaces. But I also don’t think it’d be impossible still.

Who knows, maybe that’s the part so complicated that F-2 “might be delayed”

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Update trailer has dropped and no F-2 to be seen.
Not a good sign that such a desired plane wasnt shown in the trailer. I really hope the leak saying it could be delayed isnt correct and it just wasnt ready in time for the trailer.

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I’m rapidly approaching the Gaijin office in Karlsruhe. I was stopped by the police three times already for speeding and had to explain to them that the content of my trunk is, in fact, salt. I am coming for the snail. There is no escape.

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I dont wanna go full doomer yet but I dont know how much longer the cope will sustain me.
Im on my knees praying its on the dev stream or at least mentioned.
Surely the snail cant be this evil… right?

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When Japan was ONLY nation without A2G armament they rejected adding GCS-1 and ASM-2 because “it can’t attack tanks”
Of course they don’t have any prove about it as any one

But after this story they easily add F-5A(G) with Penguin which has even worse seeker but can lock tanks
Think about it

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I mean, tbf, Japan hasn’t had vehicles featured in a teaser in quite some time outside of the ocassional ship appearance. Seeing as the main hype of this update will be the Hornet and Su-30 the F-2 is probably gonna be treated as an afterthought as is usual for Japanese stuff these days…

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