April 2, 2010 at 9:32 am
I was curious about comparing 29K now in service with Russian and Indian navies, to its western contemporaries, mainly Supper Bug and Rafale. While in terms of the airframe, range , payload etc, K can hold its own.. its seams to me its biggest set back is in its nose. Zhuk-ME lacks behind RBE2 , and not to mention APG79. In terms of EW, K can not match up to SPECTRA or super bug (lets not bring growlers to discussion as its diferent class of aircraft).
Now this got me thinking, Israelies have some brilliant kit that Uncle Sam will not allow them to tinker with on F16/15 like EL-2052. Not to mention that they are already using very capable EW suites on the aircraft above. So my hypotetical question is, how much more capable would K be if Israel/Rafael was given a chance to tinker with it. Could you equip EL2052 to K and still be able to use RVV-AE and other Russian weapons, in addition to ones from Israel?