Interesting, wonder if that is the REAL pakfa…..

Anyway that picture has a shape, is more/less like this

Edit: Actually i think it may be a UAV

Edit2: Haha..okay i took a bit closer look of the video, it does not seem as an UAV…you can see the enegine arragment and the wings are not i have posted below, but are in the f-23 style, only with sharped wingtips…a weird draw, again lets see if it is the pakfa

Oh come on now, this is really grasping at straws isn’t it. If you ask me it looks more like smudge on the page in the resolution were viewing it at, it really is not worth trying to garner any information out of that one image.

Statements like yours are the reasons I stay away from this forum these days.

When was the last time the US Airforce took on a modern, well-trained foe?:dev2:

The point is though that they could and do all the time in excercises, the Russians aren’t as well trained and equiped just deal with it instead of getting all uppity about it.

I thought that most of the A400M problems were mainly program management and engine issues…now it seems that the plane may be significantly overweight by up to 12 tons.

Seems the A-400 is becoming and ever more complex joke. A complete turkey of an aircraft.

The Israeli’s didn’t have to breach such threats in Syria. They took the path of least resistance to an undefended target. It was the likes of Debka that claimed that Syria had brand new and functioning Russian air defence systems. The Syrians took the gamble and didn’t draw attention to the building by providing it with air defence protection. They kept the site as sterile as possible – gambled – and lost.

TJ

Kind of a moot point anyway the Sryian case is because they never scrambled fighters as far as we know either so the two, SAMs vs fighter cannot be compared.

The F-16E has an even more heavily loaded wing than the F-104A. 358 kg empty weight/sq metre of wing area for the F-16E, & 332 kg/m2 for the F-104A. I’ve not been able to find any other fighter that exceeds it.

Wing loadings/area are not as straightforward as you make out when the body of the aircraft also plays a role in manuvering ability.

SAMs(especially something like the S-400) aren’t necessarily as cheap as you might think. In order to have complete overlapping coverage with SAMs alone would be pretty expensive, especially if you’re expecting VLO targets.

Fighters can also be used for A2G, so that offers quite a bit more flexibility for the $$$.

Terrain is another real kicker for SAM systems, it would be highly foolish to put all your eggs into the SAM basket.