F22 is easy to miss entirely and awkward to look up once you have, which is a common combination in War Thunder.

Short answer

In practical terms: know what it does, know where it appears, and the rest is context.

  • Ask what it is for before asking how to get it.
  • Do not confuse it with the similarly named thing — that mix-up drives most bad advice.
  • Give a method one honest attempt before deciding it does not work.

War Thunder models more of the vehicle than it tells you about, and the grind punishes guessing. The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts. It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game itself.

Common misunderstandings

Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing. Its practical value is narrow and real, rather than broad and theoretical. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts.

It became noticeably more relevant after a change the patch notes barely mentioned. Its role has changed across updates, so older discussion describes something slightly different. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first.

Whether it is worth going out of your way for

Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice. The in-game description is technically accurate and practically useless. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why.

  • Check which version of War Thunder any discussion of it is describing.
  • Ignore the myth attached to it; it has never held up.
  • Keep a save or backup from before you start — it costs nothing and occasionally saves an evening.
  • Read the in-game description once, then ignore it.
  • Do not build a plan around it before you have seen it work.

What it is often confused with

Community shorthand around it has drifted far enough from the original meaning to cause arguments. Early impressions of it are usually wrong in the same specific way. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down.

It is the kind of thing veterans forget they ever had to learn. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. It rewards understanding rather than grinding, which is unusual for War Thunder.

Why people keep asking about it

If you only remember one thing about it, remember where it appears. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. There is a persistent myth attached to it that has never been true in any version.

Most guides mention it in passing and none of them stop to define it. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. Knowing this does not make you better at War Thunder, but it does make the rest of it legible.

What it is

The name is descriptive if you already know what it does, and opaque if you do not. War Thunder is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead.

Where people go wrong

  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
  • Ignoring the platform-specific note and then wondering why the steps do not line up.
  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.

War Thunder FAQ

Can I miss it?

Where it is missable, that is noted above. Most players meet it without going looking for it.

How long does this take?

Minutes if it goes cleanly, an evening if you hit the edge case in the caveats list. Neither is unusual.

Has it changed recently?

Its role has shifted across updates more than once. Anything you read without a version attached may describe an older form of it.

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

If you only take one thing from this: the answer near the top is the part that matters, the rest is context.