Yes I agree with the analogy of the North American F-86 Sabre being a great WVR fighter. But saying this, it was surpassed somewhat by the MiG-17 Fresco, which learnt and adopted the lessons of the MiG-15. I’ve always thought it a great pity that North American Aviation never strived to squeeze similar adaption of it’s F-86 design into a pseudo-like MiG-17, before leaping into their F-100 Super Sabre. I’m of the belief that the F-86 still had plenty of good life in it – especially when considers the hard earned (and ignorant) lessons that had to be re-learnt over the skies of Vietnam!

For me it would have to be the Vought F-8 Crusader. Unfortunately its obscurity outweighed this known trait! I would have loved to have seen the WVR capability of the Vought’s proposed V-1000 derivative of the Crusader (a low-cost, light-weight (having much of its carrier-compatibility accessory’s removed) variant!

Then there is the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon! I credit this design (and the Light Weight Fighter / Air Combat Fighter program it derived from) in not just bring back the realities of WVR into the realms of modern aerial warfare; the USAF’s appreciation of the importance of quantity over quality, hence the designs affordability in numbers it could not achieve or afford in the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle (the then crown jewel of the USAF). It would be the F-16 and its unmatched manoeuvrability to which all fighters were judged by, up until the advent of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker!

The Sukhoi Flanker series of heavy weight air superiority fighter. One can not overlook the foresight of TsAGI in collaboration with the Sukhoi Design Bureau’s ability to not just see what a threat their perceived enemy the United States F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 was and had become to the Soviet militaries philosophy. In fact the ever evolving Flanker series would not just match the likes of the F-15/F-16 in raw power-to-weight ratio, and manoeuvrability. It introduced (along with the MiG-29 Fulcrum, a quantitative leap in a complementary weapons/sensor package in the form of helmet-mounted sighting and queuing/a mixture of Vympel R-73 (AA-11 Archer), Vympel R-27 (AA-10 ‘Alamo’) air-to-air missiles/pulse-Doppler radar with track-while-scan and look-down / shoot-down capability and the OLS-27 infrared search and track (IRST).
Add to this the proliferation of sales of this large and powerful fighter, along with the incorporation of even more powerful engines, thrust vectoring and canards in later models of theFlanker series, and in my opinion, it is now the Flanker series by which all other fighter designs are measured and judged!!

Regards
Pioneer

Nice story.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UNdXuL4va8

Recently ate FLANKERs for lunch in the Chinese “Red Flag”.

Funny because the J-17 has 0.95 of T/W Ratio how could the J-17 beat the Sukhois? I think it had a ECM POD attached on the J-17 in order to score. I belive it’s a hoax that in real combat the J-17 will win im positively sure that the J-17 will be scored by the SU-30 or Flankers due to thrust Vectoring and its advanced computers. Pakistan doesn’t have the best technology neither best aircraft. Well it can depend on the pilot.