Actually the quality of Russian equipment was massively overestimated during the Cold War.

And your points don’t hold if you’ve been following the thread, because even in several instances directly involving the Soviets, they still did badly. Korea, Vietnam, Rimon, Pakistan-Afghan border….

What?

Let’s turn it upside down..

An USAF F-15 pilot claims an AIM-7 shootdown of an Iraqi Su-24MK, providing the whole story about how it happened.. Iraqi MoD admits a loss of an Su-24MK in that area, but with remark that the loss was due fratricide (SAM battery).. In my humble opinion, that kill would be listed as “confirmed”. Who the hell listens to Iraqis, anyway?

It would be nice if you devoted so much attention to detail to each one of those 82 Israeli kills… I think good ~30 of them would be outright dismissed if the same logic was applied.
My 0.02 only

What is the point of having this discussion if we are biased anyway? It doesn’t stay true to the topic title even.

Historical evaluation of Russian hardware in combat is the question? Definitely positive I would say!

If we take into account the following points, it becomes more evident.

-Soviet/Russian doctrine was based on quantity, not individual overwhelming quality.
-Soviet supported states and countries did not receive the latest nor the most well equipped models.
-Soviet doctrine was not in favour of individual pilot/commander/soldier performance. Training was completely different in scope and objective.
-Soviets very rarely had the opportunity to get their hands on examples of western made equipment, the opposite happened with alarming frequency. Therefore they had little insight into the ‘opponent’s’ strengths and weaknesses.
-On every occasion the equivalent equipment on the Soviet side was cheaper in absolute terms, yet effective enough for purpose.

Some people have ‘cold war’ goggles on. Anything US made is amazing and everything USSR made is bad.

I would definitely say that the average US trained pilot had a lot more training (in both quality and quantity) than the average Warsaw Pact pilot.

A duel between an F-4 and a MiG-21 would be very different if both planes were flying missions planned by equally trained people and piloted by equally trained pilots even with the differences in equipment and doctrine.

Again with this! The US had IRST systems in the 1950’s. They stopped using them due to radar improvements. The U.S.S.R used the systems the same way originally: as a way to aid radar lock on. Yes, the development of the OLS-29/27 was a step forward in IRST technology.

Which brings us to High off-boresight aam and HMS. As they say “success has many fathers”, so too does technological advances. The U.S. trialed the high off-borsight missile in the early 70’s as well as the HMS.
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-95.html
USAF had the Aim-82 (cancelled and merged with aim-95)

Aceval/Aimval led to the simulation and trialing of high off-boresight aam’s and the HMS. The results led to the cancellation of the Aim-95, they found that in “many v. many” fights, even the HOBS missiles and HMS did not significantly improve win/loss rate. So, the USAF pushed for the development of the AMRAAM to extend engagement ranges and avoid the merge. ACEVAL/AIMVAL showed that even having the more powerful and maneuverable fighter was not a guarantee of an acceptable kill ratio- even a 2-1 win/loss rate would have been failure for the F-15 which could not be procured in numbers approaching the Soviet inventory. The Soviets went the other way and fielded these systems, giving them an advantage in the merge, just as the AMRAAM would have given the F-15 an advantage in intermediate range engagements. Different doctrines. Thankfully we never had to find out who’s was correct.

BTW, exactly how is the F-35’s ALIS related to anything coming out of the Warsaw pact or anywhere?

You see, it is very difficult for some people to understand that weapons (and hence aircraft) are designed off a doctrine.

Is this the document you’re looking for?

https://de.scribd.com/doc/298950019/FIGHTER-DESIGN-From-Soviet-Perspective

I can’t imagine there was any real danger of it being classified – surely most of the information contained in it was common knowledge anyway?

He is drawing from available sources and material mostly but his deductions could have affected US procurement authorities. His work is sensible and sound but as Mercurius mentioned it can easily be misunderstood.
That could have made it classifiable material.

When have Communists ever told the truth? .

You mean like the reliable US when they claimed WMD in Iraq? The war in Afganistan? The intervention in Libya?

Man that single line says more about your political and cultural lineage than anything else could!

It’s been up against aircraft and systems supplied by a peer force constantly. In Vietnam many of the enemy pilots were Soviet. Take the Bekaa Valley Air War, US supplied force vs Soviet supplied force, result, walk over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19

Let’s take the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict 1999. Did the R-27R (1983) perform anywhere near as well as the AIM-7M (1982) did 8 years earlier in Desert Storm? Nope, didn’t even perform as well as the AIM-7D did in Vietnam during the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-27_(air-to-air_missile)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-7_Sparrow

Do we know which version of the R-27 the two sides used? There are a few.

Well then, the plot thickens. Painting over the RAM then would seem to not diminish it’s absorbing properties.

Hmmm.

I don’t know what is on papers and leaflets, but the T-50 has yet to fly with its RAM (or equivalent) publicly, although unveiled first by about a year.

Not sure what that means, but ………