The F100-PW-229 engine powers the F-15E Strike Eagle, which is a later variant of the original F-15A air superiority fighter, and uses that technology to enable a multi-role, air-to-ground fighter. To support this mission, the F-15E has systems and ordnance-carrying capability that result in a much heavier platform.
Introduction from the official Pratt & Whitney website
https://www.prattwhitney.com/en/newsroom/news/2021/02/24/f100-pw-229
YES I agree. The reasons are multiple.
Firstly, the initial production run of the F-15E DID have the 220 engine in real life, but it was quickly updated 6 years prior to the introduction of the F-15I to have those better 229 engines. It just was too heavy with the ordinance it carried with the 220 engine. It is not a fair representation of the aircraft in the game to allow it to have the 220 engines for this reason, given that the F-15I was added with the 229 engines in the same update.
It is also unbalanced. These aircraft are incredibly dependent on the strength of their engines to be able to carry the heavy ordinance they will in game. Weaker engines will mean lower survivability in every scenario.
Also something to consider, the US tech tree is the most bloated tree in all of war thunder. Nerfing the engines was done as mentioned in the dev stream to give US players a reason to grind the other Eagles. Essentially, it will make it so that it is harder to get an aircraft that is good at everything in the US tree, which is the tree which it is already the hardest to do that in. There are simply too many aircraft.
The nerfing of the Strike Eagle is unfair and it needs to be changed