Surely the Venezuelans can not afford to give away F-16 airframes so easily?
Isn’t the type under embargo from the USA? Surely Venezuela needs to hang on to every F-16 and, more importantly, the spare parts that they contain, to keep their F-16 fleet flying?:confused:

they are a great croud pleaser at airshows at the very least :diablo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PTm-uehVOGk

I am not sure of this.. The fraction of radar-guided air kills throughout the history of aerial combat has been quite minimal so far and I don’t think it’s gonna change anytime soon. Quite on the contrary, we can observe relatively rapid rise of low observability measures to reduce the aircraft’s RCS or enhance the ECM coverage but the apparent measures to reduce the IR signature are somewhat lacking. I can’t see an F-22 shooting down a J-20 using radar guidance anytime soon.

You can’t compare the performance of 1960s radar guided missiles such as the AIM-4 Falcon with today’s technology. Bear in mind most of the air to air kills of the last 20 years have been with radar guided missiles AIM-7, R-40, AIM-120, etc.

And what is the range of the so called short range IR missiles like R-73? I believe it’s up to 30 km for R-73…

Firstly I would like to list all the wars that have seen SAM usage. Naturally, small stuff like manpads would be almost impossible to come by, so i suggest we stick to just heavy tactical systems and strategic sams.

That would be unfortunate to rule out the combat record of MANPADS, they are easily the most successful category of SAM. Coalition forces in Afghanistan are not afraid of the Taliban getting their hands on the S-300 system, they are worried that the Taliban will get their hands on the Igla or Stinger.
Most successful application of SAMs was probably the Stinger in the last few years of the Soviet-Afghan war.

Why red? The A400 is a multinational affair is it not? with all those national flags I’d imagine there would be a choice of many colours to paint such a display team – how about the colours below?:diablo:

Phantom was an overrated piece of machinery. it was not a bad aircraft, not by any means. but only gained promenance cuz of how wide spread its combat use was. It certainly got spanked by supposedly lower performing aircraft.

You don’t seem to know much about the F-4’s service or combat record of the last 50 years or so.

Tell me, in which war or conflict did the F-4 get “spanked”?

It should work in clear skies and flat desert of Middleast.

And is that the area of the world which the RuAF is foremost expected to fight? Interesting news.