I do not think the Russians suggested the Iraqis to dogfight with a MiG-25, the MiG-25 was like the Me-262 only good for quick attacks, i am inclined to think that is a fable, no good MiG-25 pilot will dogfight with a MiG-25, only a very fool pilot will do it.

Sometimes you can’t choose.

Would you not expect a Boeing 777 to perform better than a Boeing 727?

Well, the B727 is faster than the B777 and has lower landing speed, speaking for the exceptional design of the 727. But it his other disadvantages, especially is it designed for a different mission and can hardly be compared on a mission basis.

But I think the F-15 will keep some advantages, which are now considered less important.

So only by 1989 the F-16 gained the AIM-7 and by 1992 the F-16 gained the AIM-120, so basicly the F-16 was inferior to both the MiG-23MLD and MiG-29 the Soviets operated in 1988.

Of course you need to praise the MLD a bit, but your claim is a little bit to sporty in my eyes.
The F-16A’s empty weight is given with 6600kg. Lets add one ton to that, consider 3/4 internal fuel, 4 Sidewinders, a pilot and gun ammo.
That is:
6600kg Empty
1000kg (additional undefined equipment, to make my calc conservative)
100kg pilot
320kg Sidewinders
60kg gun ammo
2330kg fuel
———
10410kg, wing loading is 373kg/m²
Thrust(static)/weight: ~1.04

MiG-23MLD under similar conditions:
10200kg Empty
100kg pilot
320kg 4x IR-AAM
60kg gun ammo
2780kg fuel
———
13460 kg, wing loading (45°) is 377kg/m²
Thrust(static)/weight: ~0.95

From this view things look good for the Flogger. However, it must be considered that the F-16 gets more lift out of its wing, has lower drag at G-load and automatic slats/flaps. Additional we can count the radar (with dogfight modus), the HOTAS-system, the carefree handling, the exceptional view and the the higher g-tolerance of pilot and airframe. Some of these characteristics are even better than for the MiG-29A.

It would be very interesting to know if it is less expensive to buy some old B747-200 and use them in times of need, outsourcing maintenance and basically park them in the desert when not needed. The pilots can be recruited from airlines as part time pilots (retired jet pilot would also suffer).
Or if it is less expensive to charter cargo aircraft. Actually, for longer missions far off the homeland (Iraq, Afghanistan) the purchase of aircraft would surely be less expensive, especially as the cost of ownership is not that high for old cargo aircraft.

The F-16 has some few aspects i think makes it less powerful than the F-15:

A)It is lighter and had no BVR capability until the 1990s, the F-15E had the range and the weapons, also it is an exaggeration the F-16 carried only bombs, it also carried AAMs.

If you load an F-16 with heavy weapons loads something very important happens, that is its thrust to weight ratio is lowered, the Russians say the Israelies flew heavily laden F-16As with less agility than the advertized by the then General Dynamics
The Russians claimed that in fact that made the F-16 less capable than what it is usually claimed and was one of the factors the even the MiG-23MF could fought it because it was heavily laden and lacked BVR AAMs in 1982 besides the MiG-23 can fly low and fast for longer periods of time than the F-16 allowing it to evade the F-16.

up to what i have read the F-16 has lost several more aircraft to “SAMs” and “friendly fire” also several MiG-23BNs shot down by the F-16s shared the kills with AAA units.

It also has had more accidents than the F-15, so the F-16 is less reliable than the f-15

Where it scores high is in sales and productability however it is cheaper than the F-15 making it less profitable than the F-15 per unit, after the 1990s the F-16 evolved into one of the best fighters armed with AIM-120 first and later the Python V and IV.

The F-16 also has claim by Serbian, Soviet, Iraqi and Syrian authors or statements that claimed F-16s were lost and killed by their armed forces.

The F-16 is a compromise design. Its stated performance is only achievable without external loads or 4 AIM-9 at best. Engines are rated lower for peacetime. From the simple flight performance perspective it may easily lose in top speed, acceleration and climb rate against the MiG-23 in some flight regimes, especially above M1.2 due to the high A/B thrust increase of the MiG-23 (the F-16 lacks also adjustable inlets). But the shear performance is one factor, soft factors like situational awareness, g-tolerance of the pilot, view, ease of control and confidence in envelope protection (no stalling or spinning), intuitive controls (HOTAS) and multi-mode digitally controlled radar have bigger influence in such situations, especially when the pilots are trained with their tools. I guess most of the time Israel’s pilots could get a lock-on and fire a missile (all-aspect IR) even before the Syrians were able to strike back in any way. Only few Syrian aircraft had BVR weapons (only MiG-23MF and better), and their usage in this high-ECM environment with mostly low level engagements and basically no ground support by Syrian radar was surely tricky.

In combat as seen in 1982 I think the performance was no real factor. The Israelis had most of the time control of the situation, had hte much better missiles (with AIM-9L on the pylons, the Syrians would have performed better) and the better pilots. The aircrafts are not so much a factor, and the Israelis said that. I think it is mostly violated pride (on the Russian side) or overconfidence (on the western side) that leads to this battles of who performed how well.

C-5 takeoff, landing and fuel consumption performance stinks due to the crappy TF-39 engines. Unfortunately, TF-39 was a sacred cow within the USAF engineering establishment at Wright Patterson. Despite TF-39’s shortcomings, USAF refused to consider infinitely better CF6 when they bought the “B”s. Now, 25 years later, the old b@stards who championed the TF-39 are retired and the CF6 is finally being retrofitted in the RERP program.

While I just read that people in USAF think to exclude the A’s from modification due to rising costs of the program. The Galaxy has a thrust/weight-ratio comparable to an A340-300 when fully loaded (doesn’t make you famous for performance when compared to an A340). Good field performance can be expected for short-haul lifts with medium capacity. When the requirement was made, this was obvious and nobody wanted an aircraft that can do short start with full load.
TF-39 may have sucked hard, but it was the first operational high-bypass turbo-fan (ratio of 8, pretty close to GE90) and marked the start of the commercial adaption (the CF-6, with lower bypass). Funnily, by that the USAF financed GE’s entering in the commercial jet engine market, where it is the most succesful company at the moment. The TF-39 was one of the very few things that went somehow according to plan in the Galaxy program, while everything else was a catastrophe.

I’ve heard people claim that the C-5 is actually a better short field plane than the C-17, both from a distance needed for takeoff/landing with equal loads perspective and from a runway surface perspective. (Apparently the C-17 doesn’t do so well on true rough runways or sandy surfaces while the C-5 is ok. This is one of the rationales for developing the C-17B program to address these issues so we don’t have to rely on aging C-5s to perform certain missions.)

The Galaxy has not really great field performance. Of course, 50 tons in a Galaxy are easier for the aircraft than in a C-17 (smaller aircraft).