Because it’s compatible with OTS F-16, F-15, and F-35 systems available to it.

The Al-31 isn’t the panacea for MiG-27 because at its design speeds the delta was insignificant. Takeoffs were greatly improved, the vast majority of the flight was very little difference. The biggest effect on range was the ability of the Al-31 to sustain better power at lower flight velocities.

Yep, what was that the third or fourth iteration of Al-31.

Well, you won’t go to news from Fox, CNN, or the AP to get news on Syria. American news brands have all been penetrated by foreign NGO influence. Al Jazeera is blatantly telling people what’s going on with a smooth overtone to give the whole politics a facade. Russia is heavily dependent on Shia influence peddling. Russia is not very keen on Turkey moves lately and if nobody has figured out Turkey’s civilian influence heavily subsidized IS.

Syria is strategically an asset to Russia and the fall of Assad is destabilizing. The US should have never left a unified Iraq the way Shia have absolutely destroyed all balance with repeated assassinations targeting non-Shia influence in the region, even outside Iraq. You’ve got unrestrained murder rampaging through the region. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States would like nothing more than to restore social order in Iraq that contains Iran’s Shia movements. The US is more or less ambiguous in its goals here. It’s pretty apparent on the surface that Obama isn’t taking sides, but isn’t doing much to freeze anything in place. So the question is, what does the U.S. gain with a strong Iran. Right now it’s driven oil prices through the floor, which is bad for Russia and the counterparts alike. I just hope Russia doesn’t get frustrated and decides to accelerate their Ukraine involvement as a counter move. The Big picture isn’t looking like roses.

Russia needs major tactical assets injected into the region. They know IS is a big picture problem, so they will be secondary. Immediately you’ll see Russia take out frustrations on small players, whom may turn against IS in a deal. Russia needs influence. Tactical assets alone cure nothing. They are going to build a coalition with the smaller players, not excluding the Kurds.

How do people think they will move to get this done? I’m thinking heavy airlift followed by a sealift. Build up a foothold for airlifters to move in spetnaz and engineers. Flood the area with regulars in the guise of humanitarian aid. You need air cover to do it. MiGs or Sukhois? Helicopters brought in on airlift. Armor will begin with light units until the sealift. You’re only beginning to see movements here.

Why was it not exportable? I would not expect it to be the most advanced model in the market.

Because it was hard to build in quantity and had proven to be very high performance compared to previous fighter engines. Su-27 probably would have performed fine with them if Al-31 hadn’t progressed fast enough.

The MiG-21bis is a heavier, more durable base airframe than the J-7 families. It has a more powerful engine than was ever placed into J-7’s, with an over-ride mode for combat that safely places it into M53 territory at the cost of needing immediate overhaul attention. J-7’s last version had a heavier caliber cannon at 30mm, but because it was for ground attack it was deemed suitable with only 60 rounds. The twin barrel 23mm in the -bis carries five times the number although it suffers in raw power. It’s higher firing rate is a big bonus in air combat. The Grifo in J-7’s was solely in exports and the Chinese developed radar has never demonstrated BVR capabilities. No -bis or J-7 versions offer any form of lookdown (or look-up for that matter) capabilities. The -bis had pretty comparable missiles available to the last version of J-7, and was demonstrated that helmet cueing for R73 was possible with modifications. Otherwise the pylons for R73 were possible on older Soviet era equipment for non-cued launches, a rather wasted approach for a much more expensive missile than Advanced Atoll 2 or R60. And BTW the J-7 canopy sometimes gets brought up as superior, but it copied the design already used in the -bis. Pretty much the whole evolution of J-7 followed MiG’s own choices leading up to -bis. Quality of F-7 was always an issue.

The title is misleading. It is probably refering how many times Northrop has performed that kind of maintenance on USAF KC-10s.

That is exactly what it meant.