If the Su27/30 flying around is not such “better” as a F-15, there is no justification for a F-22.

Yes there is- it’s in the F-22s title: “Air Dominance Fighter”. Military’s don’t seek parity- the advanced Su-30MK variants and the Su-35, and soon, the new Su-37 (not the old thrust-vectoring testbed, a real new Flanker variant), have already significantly eroded the superiority of the F-15. They want the enemy to not stand a chance. That way you minimize your own casualties if a war starts, or, even better, intimidate the enemy into not even trying to contest the issue.

Of course but he’s not going outright lie about the figures. These are information that’ll be pass along to the buyer. Even if we were generous to the Flanker and cut Saab’s figures in half, the Gripen would still be FIVE times more efficient operation wise.

He’s not obligated in an interview to tell the absolute truth- to a buyer, things get … contractual, so it’s a bit more iffy. Not to mention we don’t really knwo what his benchmarck for ‘efficient operations’ is.

Correct, they were derived from Western ones and 10 more years of focused development along a basically Westernized road would see them in much the same level as the Western secondaries. As I said earlier the US, France and UK are primaries. Russia is key competitor to Western tech but runs a distance second in everything but airframe and aerodynamics.

This was a Soviet thing more than a Russian thing. Since the opening up, Russia has access to commercial Western electronics as much as any other country, and can take advantage.

Nope, it has everything to do with them though the planes will be assembled in St. Loiuis. This is a classic offset program.

I just don’t see how building the F-15K in America is going to help SK companies that much. I think T-50 is more significant, really.

The AESA radar for the F-2 was planned from work in the 1970s and 80s (which actually resulted from naval work, if I remember correctly.) In fact, until the US politics got involved the 1980s, the Japanese have planned the F-2 around getting the first active electronically scanned array into the air. This was to be their coup. Scanned arrays are possible only with miniaturized eletronics and this was what the Japanese were good at.

Ah you’re referring to AESA.

The Mig-31’s scanned array appeared publicly in 1991. According to what I read.

Yeah- as in the West first saw it in 1991. It was introduced in service when the MiG-31 was- the MiG-31 never had any other radar but Zaslon.

Depending on the circumstances. Smaller plane, smaller radar, big plane, big radar. Reach of their bvrs are about the same. The AMRAAM has a proven record, the R-77 doesn’t.

Reach of the BVRs wouldn’t be the same because the Su-35 will, assuming at least equal pilot competence, be entering the fight with more energy, and will always have the greater amoung of fuel (unless caught at a serious disadvantage out of reasons of incompetence) to maintain/improve it’s energy state. Not to mention it’s greater thrust. I honestly can’t believe they talk up “the world’s first fourth generation fighter” and yet it’s thrust-to-weight ratio doesn’t even equal unity!

And produced by a Westernized state, 1/3 the size of Sweden 🙂

With ridiculous levels of American aid 🙂

Well, if Italy, S Korea or Sweden, had poured treasury enough to bankrupt the nation, like the USSR did, into its arms development, you could could see a first rate monster-sized “air superiority” fighter from any of those nations.

Probably, but IMO the USSR didn’t collapse from exorbitant defence spending- it collapsed because Gorbachev was an idiot. 🙂 He tried to change everything at the same time and lost control- if minor reforms had been introduced over a long period of time (including reduction in the size of the military) things would’ve been better.

Again, they’d probably be bankrupted 😀

Yehah.

Resources that are well spent. Their standard of living is incredibly high too.

Personally, I don’t think they’d lose anything (well, besides fighter tech) from purchasing Yank fighters.

The fighter project is pretty noteworthy in speed of development and capability.

It first flew in 1988, but entered service in 1997. If you include development time before first flight, it doesn’t seem too fast.

Ah, but they can’t. They are locked into process of building a plane that was designed in a system that no longer exists. Chengdu are blazing far beyond them with techniques and doctrines that are for all intent and purposes westernized (again, this is a point repeated again and again in the FC-1 articles.)

FC-1 articles by who? Chengdu? 🙂 IIRC, Su-27SKs/J-11s are not produced with old Soviet tooling. When the aircraft was designed doesn’t matter- it has no effect on it’s capabilities and it’s awesome current and future potential. Now, the only disadvantage Shengyang really has, IMO, is that they’re perhaps not learning as much as Chengdu. Look at it this way- if the USA and the West in general no longer existed, but someone was license producing the F-22, would it matter that “the system” no longer existed? You’ve still got the aircraft, who cares?

He most certainly is being realistic. But not all pilots are so. Try reading stuff from pilots concerning the MKI 😀
It’s always the best plane in the world and beats the F-15 hands down 😀

Considering the articles of the USAF shock at the results of the Su-30K vs F-15 exercies (not what they expected), it’s not unreasonable to think that the much-improved Su-30MKI is the best plane (air superiority wise) in the world. IMO, until the F-22 reaches service, it’s a justified point of view when you compre the aircraft. However, I’m sure if you asked an IndAF pilot which the best AF was, he’d still say USAF.

http://www.defesanet.com.br/fx/dinheiro21jan04eng/

“Dinheiro: Is there an economic advantage of Gripen over its competitors?
McNamee: Cost of hour/flight of Gripen is extremely low. I could mention, as a reference, that Gripen costs about US$ 2,300, while this cost goes up to about US $ 8,000 for the F-16 and US $ 25,000 to Sukhoi. This means, to fly a Gripen is 10 times less expensive than a Sukhoi.”

Heh- he *is* the CEO. He’s paid to talk up his fighter.

They don’t because they spend most of their time developing and implementing commercial projects that make them money. If Taiwan had continued with their aviation projects after the FCK-1, they’d have a pretty advance industry today. The Sky Sword AAMs are even indicative of their capability.

Not really- a lot of the IDF components are either taken directly, or derived, from Western ones. Assuming 10 more years of development I still don’t see them acquiring the full spectrum capability that so far only the US, Russia, France and the UK have demonstrated (with China coming).

Korea? You watch what happens with the T/A-50 and the F-15K. This is will be like the Korean car industry. The Koreans are going appear out of nowhere and impact the aviation scene.

The T-50 is just an advanced trainer/ light fighter. They’re doing what Yakovlev’s doing. The F-15K really has nothing to do with them- it’s being produced in the US (the F-15 St Louis line was saved from closure by the F-15Ks victory).

Heck, the thing’s still in development. The Japanese had a hard time with their scanning array and they’ve been at it longer.

It’s capabilities are being improved, but it is fully operational. The Japanese have been at scanning arrays longer? I don’t know much about Japan’s efforts in that regard, but the MiG-31 had the world’s first operational PESA in a fighter, over 20 years ago.

If the Su-35 and the Gripen are both delivered tomorrow, my money’s on the Gripen being able to acquire and lock on the giant Flanker more reliably 🙂

If it employed any signficiant RCS reduction measures, I might agree, depending, but it really doesn’t- combined with it’s small pulse doppler compared to a big PESA, I don’t think it stands much of a chance.

There is a reason China went to Israel for its AWACs.

Phalcon is supposedly very good.

The Gripen is hardly not a “real air superiority fighter” 😀

Jack-of-all trades- when I think air superiority, I think a fighter with dominant capabiltiies, top of the food chain sort of stuff- that’s the realm of Eagle, Flanker & Raptor. *Perhaps* Typhoon, but I have misgivings about it.

Well then, let’s see a non-western country the size of Sweden design, build and operate hundreds of fighters like the Gripen.

I’m not saying they could, all I’m saying is that Sweden’s limited size/resources limit the utility of its fighters. It has a good little niche market going, but Saab’s never going to expand signficantly out of that niche.

Anytime a small nation of 25 million builds a plane and hangs a homegrown ARH BVR on it, it’s like “WOW!” 😀

The achievement is noteworthy, but the actual fighter- not so much 🙂

The fact is if you look at the Chinese press (especially the FC-1 ones), China’s main concern is catching up to Western standards and Western ways of doing things. And a big reason is because China was being left behind by the Westernized Asian states on its periphery.

Shenyang is considered at a major disadvantage to Chengdu because it is locked into the J-11 program. I’ve posted articles on this before.

The should let Shengyang play with the Su-27SK design then, if they aren’t already. Su-27SKM availability might make this redundant, unless they’re looking to do something more similar to Russia’s second-stage Su-27 upgrade (new radar etc).

The lead test pilot for the FC-1 and J-10 (and trainer for PAF J-7 pilots) when asked about the best air forces and aircraft in the world, simply answered Israel and the US respectively. This is a veteran of a communist air force full of Flankers. You’d think his natural bias would be to aircraft his country owns.

He’s simply being realistic. The dominant super-power will always have the best aircraft/airforce, there just isn’t an alternative. They have the most comprehensive set of abilities in land, air, and sea war by default.

Well, some of this has changed, but the aircraft have mostly moved around within the CIS, so the end result number is still basically a constant:

Russia itself has approximately 400 Su-27s- with 236 in the zone west of the Urals and a further 30 under control of Naval Aviation.

Ukraine had approximately 70 (according to Arthur, sold some, don’t know to who), Uzbekistan has 31, Kazakhstan had 16 (Russia transferred some, so this number is now higher, but as I said the end result is still the same) and Belarus had 24 (may have sold some?)

So the absolute maximum number is close to 540 aircraft, give or take several dozen or more.

(this doesn’t include Su-30s & Su-33s)

Pavel Taran! What bort is this?

(ah, never mind, just found a nice big picture: Bort 03 it is!)

Awesome. IMO, that looks like a 17. Considering that the Tu-160 force, including the loss of the Mikhail Gromov, amounts to a total of 17 aircraft maximum, it’s plausible. However, if it is a 17, why would they apply the number out of sequence? Surely the last Tu-160 at Kazan is not yet complete- and to my knowledge the Ukranian aircraft are still being refurbished.

they are both probably the same price when you take into account Mig-29’s expensive maintenance

The MiG-29M1/M2 undoubtedly take advantage of the new maintenance systems that were developed for the MiG-29SMT, cutting back costs per hour.