Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartan198
And with the rapidly-deteriorating relationship between the US and Russia, they're more than likely going to be willing to sell to our enemies and possibly even do the flying for them. We will eventually find ourselves in a conventional war where air superiority is key. And an aircraft like the Sukhoi that can snap its nose back in mid-air to take a potshot at a trailing fighter is going to be a severe threat to our "adequate" F15s and F18s that can't even hope to match that kind of maneuverability.
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Another point worth mentioning...while Russian pilots may be training to perform this maneuver, can you
seriously even begin to imagine Venezuelan or Iranian pilots being that good?
I remember how it used to be that everyone was afraid of the MiG-29 because of an exercise conducted between the USAF and Luftwaffe where an ex-East German MiG-29 managed to shoot down an F-16C in close combat. There were some analysts who wondered if the same thing would happen during ops against the Serbian AF during Operation Allied Force in 1999 (since the Serbs had working MiG-29s to deploy back then). As it turned out, of course, USAF and Dutch F-16s shot down several of the Serbs' MiGs. Why? Because German and Russian pilots are a million times better than Serb pilots, and because the Serb MiGs had been plagued by a lack of spare parts since the Soviet Union fell.