Well, according to the treaty, only France, the UK, China, Russia, and us can have nukes. We aren’t invading the UK anytime soon, nor China, nor Russia, not even France. So of course, by the treaty’s logic, our enemies would all be “non-nuclear” 😀

Any plans for an invasion of Israel ? I mean surely they are also not allowed to have nukes.

The policy to Iran is seriously wrong imho. Iran is probably the country in the whole area with the popualtion having the most postive view of america.

Delta configurations are not good for a fighter. The aspect ratio is too small and it effects badly on sustained turn, climbing turn etc. The induced drag is too high.

Regarding F-22 versus SU-27/Mig-29, in close combat F-22 has no chance with 60 degrees max AoA.
SU-27, with its tremendous pitch rate (60 deg/sec), and 120 degrees AoA, will point and shoot with R-73, first.

Now why would some point the aircraft, if he has highly manouverable all-aspect, helemt mounted sight guided, IR missiles ??

Future close range combat will mean speed, as speeds gets you out of the envope of those missiles quickly. Being slow means certain death.

Goood news the 777-200FR as a huge potential imho. MD-11Fs are hard to get and most DC-10F are in need of an replacement. The market for a dedicated long range freighter below the 747F and the A380F is pretty much uncovered.

I guess they were high-ranks, but this alone says little. If you got no money for maintenance and training and hordes of US aircraft of all kinds against you, then the rank does not mean much.

Did I say something different ?

However is it also not natural that relative junior pilots loose in dogfights with highly experienced pilots that from a kind of agressor squadrons.

Most german pilots had a huge experience on the F-4, had been through the FWIC, had been on exchange postings flying F-15,F-16 or F-18s and spent most of their time training for air to air combat.

F-15 did train with the MiGs too, but we never heard of F-15s being trunced by the MiGs.

No more German F-4F demos until 2012 when they are retired?

Not sure. I know they did train for a display, however I have not yet seen any confirmation for a performance.

Perhaps Wunstorf in June.

No more demos this year 🙁

great pics. (keep saying to myself, there will be 3 different F-4 operators in the Nehterlands this year, there will be …) Really hard to control my envy

The figures I heard reported was that the F-16 got on the tail of the Mig-29 60% of the time but that it didn’t win any dogfights as due to the high off boresight R-73, which was very new then, plus the HMS the Mig-29 had electronically killed the F-16 every time with several missiles.

You also need to keep in mind these dogfights took place with the Mig-29s using derated engines and centreline fuel tanks to enable them to last the fights. Also it was completely one on one, which is fairly unrealistic except for manouver and weapon performance comparisons. A Mig-29 pilot would be vectored to his target and told when to fire his missiles. It might be capable of close combat manouvering but it is basically a short range interceptor able to clean up fighters after the enemy strike package has been dealt with with BVR missiles.

And how many MIGs have been killed by head on launched AIM-9 L/Ms that tended to aquire the target earlier then the R-73 was capable of ?

How many fell to AIM-7s fired fell before the A-10 could achieve a lock-on and how many do you think fell to simulated AIM-120s fired by old Phantoms ?