Upgrade the MiG-29s already in inventory to SMT standard. It’s cheap and effective.

Really? Give us the skinny.

Originally posted by GoldenDragon [/i]
[B]E-2 AWACs, 707s are all western aircraft too. They’re part of an entire war-fighting doctrine that includes air superiority fighters and SEAD too, along with the AWAC and ECM machines.

I’ll retract the numerical advantage I gave to the Arabs as regards the Bekaa valley.

Ok then. The Russians also understood the importance of these aircraft, with the A-50 and their numerous jammer aircraft (Tu-22PD, Yak and Su jammers etc).

I have to hand it to you, that’s a good link.

The only surprise is the Israelis’ local superiority in numbers in the Bekaa Valley.

The qualitative advantage, both of us know about and have agreed to.

Also, the battle was relevant and the article points these out:

Electronically is EXACTLY where the West has its major advantage. Bekaa Valley reinforces that.

Also the article showcases the amazing prowess of Western AAMs in even 1982!

Now, we both know what happened to the Russian airforce’s main BVR weapon, the R-27 (R-77 is still not in widespread use), in the Horn of Africa in year 2000 😀

Well, I’ve always thought that ACIG article is lacking in detail and there’s really not enough information on inidividual engagements etc. for a definitive conclusion. The pilots were Russian and Ukranian mercenaries- in 1999, that means about a decade’s worth of poor flight time etc. The archived thread on ACIG regarding the R-27 is a good discussion of the weapon and the Ehthiopia/Eritrea story.

But, the article does include the following that serves your arguments to the tee. You should have posted it in the first place, Vympel 😀

I remembered reading about the Bekaa engagements but had totally forgotten the circumstances around them; I had this article bookmarked but I had so many bookmarks I could barely ifnd it.

Since the USAF itself was cautioning excessive confidence, I’ll concede the point to you on the Bekaa Valley.

Though the article is dated. It is a good read. I took time to read the thing from top to bottom. It reinforced some beliefs I had, but changed others.

The tone of this thread has remarkably improved. My respect for you has gone up bigtime.

Okay then, in the Mideast scenario we have a more numerous Arab armed with one set of weapons, Soviet/Russian, tactics and doctrine against Israelis with with another set, Western/American.

Then if all things are equal then the more numerous force should gain victory and applying fluid warfare principals, the more numerous force should have disproportionately more kills (since the larger force can attack the flanks and rear of the smaller force and killing them without damage to themselves.)

In the Arab-Israeli case, not only did the smaller force win, it won by a wide, wide margin.

Firstly, depending on the conflict you’re talking about, the Israelis were not that outnumbered, having considerable reserves to call on and good defensive positions (not that this stopped them from getting a bloody nose in Yom Kippur, but anyway). You can’t generalize like that.

Secondly, especially with the kills you’re talking about (F-15 kill ratios), Israel had the numerical advantage (according to “Air Combat: The New Face of War”) not to mention jamming support from specially modified 707s (thus blinding GCI) and E-2 AWACS support! It’s a recipe for a slaughter. It also continues to say nothing about modern Russian aircraft in comparison to their Western brethren. These were well-rehearsed, set piece engagements over the Bekaa, planned for ages by the Israelis, with the Israelis having every advantage- the 102-0 kill ratio doesn’t come from poor defenseless Israel being assaulted by the Arab horde.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj89/hurley.html

“Other factors make the Bekaa Valley battle unique in the history of air power and limit its relevance. In addition to their qualitative advantage, the Israelis enjoyed numerical preponderance over the Bekaa Valley, outnumbering the Syrian Air Force by a ratio of about three aircraft to two.”

That’s according to the USAF.

Okay then, if the monkey versions are inferior and if the training is sub-optimal, then for all intents and purposes buying Soviet/Russian is going guarantee you inferiority to Western training and equipment.

Buying Soviet (as one of the worse allies) will- buying modern Russian however won’t.

I brought up the monkey variants very early on in the discussion. Instead of pointing to those as a way to reason away the poor record of Russian aircraft, they were part of the reason why Soviet aircraft have such a bad reputation as cannon fodder that resulted from those records.

Now have the Russians changed today? They might have but who knows?

Of course they have- the Sukhois going to other countries are better than what the VVS has. So are the tanks and the ships (India’s stealth Krivaks).

[quote]When there aren’t any hard facts from the current period, you can only deduce by historic precedence.

Only around 1000 Mig-29s since the Mig-29 induction 20 years ago. There wouldn’t have been more than several hundreds by th end of the 1980s. There were more than 5000 Mig-23 built.

For most of the 1980s, the Mig-29 was an elite weapon kept mainly in the USSR. The most important plane in the Soviet arsenal until the USSR fell was still the Mig-23.

Numerically, it was quite important. However, as the quality plane, the MiG-29 is demonstrative of what the Soviets were capable of, and considering the position of NATO air forces at the time, it doesn’t look that bad at all. It was also placed in the thick of any prospective war- 16th Air Army, East Germany. The MiG-23s made up the bulk, yes, but it was the MiG-29s with their superior pilots (the 16th Air Army was the best outfit pilot wise, according to acig)acting as the lynchpin. Furthermore, you simply can’t build F-16s and F-15s in the numbes the MiG-23 was built. This is perhaps one of the best articles at ACIG.

The Mig-29’s counterpart, the F-16A, was a basic rank and file Western aircraft that went to nearly everyone in the western camp from Holland to Turkey to Taiwan.

But what were the numbers available to NATO in the 1980s? Not much more. It wasn’t even BVR capable.

There is a massive gap when you have a Western grunt aircraft for the “vassals” and “allies” that is arguably more capable than the Soviet “elite.”

It was inferior. The F-16A/B at the time had no BVR, no HMS, no off-boresight missile, no IRST- practically no advantage. In combat with a MiG-29, a 1980s F-16A was placed on the defensive the moment it was within R-27 range, and could be slaughtered once it got into WVR- where it was supposed to shine (against MiG-21s and MiG-23s).

Based on specs I wouldn’t place Western missiles over huge specially designed carrier killers like the Sunburn. But the Switchblade Harpoonski is an indication to me that Russians had taken note of western AshMs.

For certain roles, yes, but not for the serious ship killing. More for frigate armament and such.

But I’ll grant you that there is no great western lead in AshMs and LAND-based air defense systems. The Aegis system for ships is another story. Russian has nothing that comes close.

True.

That remains to be seem. But it’s obvious that every air force in the world, including the old Chinese and Russian commie ones are moving to a western standard.

Which is a good thing; Western ‘style’ however doesn’t detract from an aircraft’s ‘russian’ character. If it’s Russian equipment, it’s still Russian.

A Western-trained pilot who is suddenly given a Mig-21 won’t do any better and most likely do worst.

I don’t mean suddenly given a new plane, I mean that if a Western pilot was trained in the Western style on a MiG-23 from the very beginning, he’d be able to do much more with it than some poorly skilled Arab.

Lei Quiang, the FC-1/J-10 test pilot, said the J-6 is the hardest fighter that one could fly and everything else would be easy after you’ve flown the Farmer.

A western-trained pilot in a J-6 would spend his time attempting to fly the nutty thing. (The J-6 actually has the best record of any Soviet/Chinese variant against US planes :D)

Of course, the MiG-19 was very popular.

There is no universal training regiment. A western trained pilot can’t be a great Mig-23 pilot just because he’s western-trained. It’s part and parcel of a package that revolved around doctrines which leads to a certain type of plane being built which leads to the tactics needed to employ that plane.

Western training has several characteristics which applies no matter what fighter you’re flying in contrast to the Soviet system; admittedly, a MiG-23 will not fare as well as an F-15 under a Western style regimen, simply because of the disparity in equipment at their disposal, but the sheer volume of flight training, the realistic combat training, the mindest that is drilled into them from all this is always going to lead to a better pilot who can maximise the abilities of his aircraft.

Again, the fact they are not even the best versions simply contributes to the fact that they’re unreliable for other nations using them.

Of course training is important. But a pilot is trained to use his particular aircraft.

A Mig-21 pilot flying a no FBW aircraft, with an eye on the fuel guage and on the alert for a nasty center of gravity shift must be trained very differently from a F-4 crew with two pair of eyes over instrumentation, longer range and a bvr radar. One is trained to deal with more with the vagaries of flying the plane and the other more on how to fight and kill with it.

Again, it’s not a specific aircraft, it’s a mindset and a style that applies to any aircraft.

When comparing dissimilar aircraft, I would assume that both were trained appropriately for their aircraft. Especially in the case of Israelis and Arabs where both were second parties to the systems they used.

Now, if Turkey fought Greece with F-16s on both sides and the score is lopsided then you can safely say that the training for one is much worse than the other. You can’t in the Arab-Israel case. It could be either the training or the aircraft and in my view, it is mostly likely both.

It was both- but with a different training style and especially more hours (in 1973 on the eve of Yom Kippur Israeli pilots still flew 40 hours extra per month than their Arab counterparts- and this was *after* the arabs had intensified training to try and prevent themselves getting whipped), the kill ratios would’ve been much less obscene.

Originally posted by SOC
Yeah if you didn’t notice one of these laying around, something is wrong with you…

[nitpick]That’s a Buk-M1.[/nitpick]

🙂

I wish I could see the Buk-M2; all that are available is the missile (aka the ‘Yezh’ on naval vessels) and models of both the tracked and truck mounted versions. Buk-M1-2 (Buk-M1 with M2 missiles) is in service in Russia/Belarus though.

Originally posted by GoldenDragon
[B]Vympel, I’m condescending only to condescending inviduals who can’t properly debate. You can’t debate and you basically spend your time declaring yourself victorious (which, in all seriousness, is stupidity at its worse.)

I think you’ll find just *one* post declaring victory, and that was near the end.

But seriously, Vympel, just discuss the topic. Don’t try to win small points with semantics.

If you want a discussion, put it in simple words in a straight forward fashion in reply to really the only point I’ve made. In the real world, clouding a proposal or theory up with side issues is the best way to get your message dismissed out of hand.

Bringing up examples to rebut your impossibly wide statements is not a side issue.

Now my point is: Russian aircraft are inferior to western products (I’ll leave out the colloquial “crap”).

This premise have been proven in straight air to air combat. The records I put forth were of the F-16 and the F-15 in the modern age (starting with F-14 – high maneuverability in WVR coupled with BVR). The F-4 with 282 kills and about 30 odd A2A defeats spans the vacuum tube era where Chinese J-6s could compile a winning record over Hainan and the modern age where I know the J-6 can’t.

The point is simple. The battle record is what we have and everything else is basically conjecture. What’s more the record shows the Russian aircraft in extremely bad light. A similar equipment would at least be close in record. 102-0, is infinity in straight mathematics.

Now tell me something that is not conjecture such as a conflict where Russian aircraft actually shot down more western ones in the modern age and we will go from there.

There aren’t any, because Russian aircraft haven’t been engaged against vastly inferior foes (both numerically and skill wise) in inferior generation equipment (MiG-21s and MiG-23s vs F-16s and F-15s? This isn’t rocket science), which is where your kill ratios come from. None of them originate from a remotely ‘fair’ fight- which is a credit to the victorious forces and the nations that produced them.

Heck, even in the vacuum tube age.

Anyways, it’s up to you wehther you want to debate this in a civilized manner or you want to continue with the previous garbage.

I’m doing this out of respect for Arthur 🙂 [/B]

If you weigh so much on what Arthur says you might take on board his comment that your position is indefensibly broad.

Arthur, that tone I reserve only for foul mouthed children like VympieArthur, that tone I reserve only for foul mouthed children like Vympie

Uh huh. I don’t like your condescending tone, especially when you have nothing to be condescending about. I also find your tactic of simply ignoring anything I say you can’t handle and repeating yourself both intellectually dishonest and damn rude, and even more so your simply accusing me of what I can accuse you of- especially considering what you’re doing is quite plain. I don’t believe in being ‘polite’ to people who take patronizing tones with me: I call them what they are. Seeing as how I do this while rebutting their nonsense, I see no problem with it.

As for your accusations that I ‘twisted’ your words

Each pilot does have to be trained in conjunction the machine he’s given. You’re going to have an American train an Arab for F-15 and then give him a Mig-23 once he gets into service?

A ridiculous reply that has nothing to do with either the quote of you I put up or the point I was originally making. Find where I said anythign like “training an Arab for an F-15 and then give him a MiG-23”, please. Or don’t you understand the difference between training *doctrine* and trainign aircraft *technique*?

I was speaking in context of the Arab pilots and even so, even the East Germans had Russian instructors at one point.

Irrelevant. You made a clear, unequivocal statement that Russian training was needed to operate the machines. This is patently false, as pointed out by myself and flex. ‘Context’ doesn’t enter int it. Russian aircraft have been put under Western style training regimens, and they’ve worked, that was the point I unequivocally made and that quote was how you bizarrely chose to respond.

If you don’t want me to swear at you, grow a pair and actually respond to what I’m saying, rather than what you want me to say.

Looks nice though. Easily resembles a Western HUD or the HUD on the Yak-130 and MiG-29UBT style HUDs.