Sukhoi

[PDH]

Our old Cold War nemesis still flies some beautiful airplanes. I would like to see the the Blues try some of these manuevers.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1648937520599829626


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7908977996459602882&pr=goog-s

Hope this isn't a repost....

 

[Foxcow]

The links aren't working.

 

[epic!]

it says the videos arent available

 

[Huggyu2]

Have you ever seen the Blue/T-Birds crash and kill many folks on the ground?... on a regular basis? There's a reason for that.
Also, don't mistake a great airshow performance for great combat capability. The Extra 300SHP won't win a fight with an A-10.

But, I must admit, when all goes as planned, those Russkies do look pretty damn good.

 

[AirBadger]

Why are Russian fighter designs so focused on close-in dog fight manueverability? Don't most western designs (most notably the F-22) have the ability to kill from many miles away? I thought the whole goal is to avoid dog fighting for as long as possible.

 

[Gorilla]

Why are Russian fighter designs so focused on close-in dog fight manueverability? Don't most western designs (most notably the F-22) have the ability to kill from many miles away? I thought the whole goal is to avoid dog fighting for as long as possible.

The majority of the gulf war kills were high-speed hit and run AIM-7 (long ranged) shots. There was only one fight which went more than a turn, and that was won by an F-15C over a MiG-29.

Unlike Vietnam where they mistakenly said "missiles are here today", modern missiles are definitely lethal. The first to shoot is probably going to be the winner. Fighters should be maneuverable, but not at the expense of an outstanding avionics suite.

 

[mzaharis]

Why are Russian fighter designs so focused on close-in dog fight manueverability? Don't most western designs (most notably the F-22) have the ability to kill from many miles away? I thought the whole goal is to avoid dog fighting for as long as possible.

There was a great saying from an article on the F-22 from one of the test pilots (slightly cleaned up to avoid offending PC sensibilities):

"If I'm trying to kill a man with a knife in a phone booth, and I have a high-powered rifle, the last thing I want to do is get into the phone booth with him."

 

[Jafar]

If you're impressed with the agility of Russian fighters you've never seen an F-22A demo. The raptor flies circles around those airplanes. It appeared to defy the laws of physics when I saw it.

 

[Huggyu2]

All military fighter demos look the same... or so I thought until 2 weeks ago at Oshkosh. The F-22 came through, and did some pretty different maneuvers. I highly recommend seeing it perform. But, like everyone mentions above, the F-22 is more suited to killing everyone BVR.