It being in service is irrelevant here. If jet is capable and/or Devs consider it necessary (as compensation for poor performance, like the double racks on Su-27SM or R-27ER on Soviet MiG-29)
Personally, would prefer to just have ECM with explicit (game wise) purpose of tracking BVR imbalances (plus the introduction of new long range SAMs might push it a bit more too)
Edit: Although Snail can put a funny one and just add R-27P. Good luck notching anti-rad, lmao. But alas, we know their attitude towards ARMs
Which is valid, not in war thunder but makes a good point we know China and Russia are behind on Western power plants while they can produce engines that have excellent performance rebuild and maintenance windows are more frequent.
they are not anymore, that was certainly true during the soviet times and the 90’s to early 2k’s but they caught up, the Al-31FN series 5 has 5/6k hours mtbo iirc and produces as much thrust as the AL-41F1S of the Su-35S
And tbh the engine capabilities of China changes every few uears. If u think about it, J8F to J20 took less than a decade. This might not be the case for engine but just that this stuff changes so quickly.
