Thanks MSphere. So strange to see the Maple leaf on a Russian helicopter.

You are right – we don’t know the real aircrafts performance in current Air combat. The only indications is evaluation tests – like MMRCA, Swiss evaluation, and international exercises like Red Flag, ATLC, Tiger meet etc.
From 1/2013 EUROFIGHTER WORLD :

Results from Red Flag Alaska 2012 :

http://lotniczapolska.pl/Europejska-koalicja-na-Alasce,25065

results 9:4 ( Blue vs Red forces ) in 8 blue vs 10 red engagement. Blue use AR, RED only SAR missile, so results seems realistic in above scenario. There was also the engagement, where RED forces simulated R-77, and PL-12 AR missiles, but our pilots didn’t go into detail ( probably much bigger losess ).
Of course old F-16C blk 30 can’t simulate a real Su-30MK2 (at least radar range deficiency, no IRST, no HMD+9X combo, ECM, performance), thus results go on Blues forces favor in almost every occasion.

There’s other factors that exercises can never hope to accomplish:

1. Strategic initiative
2. Logistics
3. Full enemy electronic warfare spectrum
4. Morale
5. Impact of other military actions in a warzone.
6. The threat of death or injury.
7. Availability of supporting assets (e.g. your E-3 has been assigned to another more important task).
8. Murphy’s Law – malfunctions, mistakes etc.

When it comes down to it, exercises are excellent training but they are sterile and lack real world factors.

Again probably not. They didn’t have full scale warfare in 1950s – 1970s now did they?

Taiwan would have to declare independence for that to happen.

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Also these wars are purely hypothetical.

Wars in Cold War were not.

Hnece we have no real indicators of whether a Rafale is better than a Eurofighter or whether a Flanker could go toe-to-toe with an F-15.

Also remember the jet’s performance influences tactics e.g. Israeli Mirage III pilots used the delta wing to slow down in ACM and execute tight turns.

Without real life experience, we can’t really judge this.

Actual current stage of air combat is that Blue force will pound the crud out of Red Force whose AAA is limited to the odd MANPADS, DshK, RPG and AK-47 trash fire.

The only exception seems to be civil wars ala Libya and Syria where lack of PGMs means that obsolete government jets have to fly low and thus get shot down by equally obsolete MANPADS (mainly SA-7).

Oh and pretty much every Blue Force aircraft will be effectively a stealth aircraft. If the opponent doesn’t have a radar system or at best has an easily jammed 1960s radar, then even a Super Guppy is a stealth aircraft.

The Serbs did kill an F-117 and an F-16 with an S-125 (SA-3) in 1999. O’Grady’s F-16 was shot down using a KUB over Bosnia, whilst Mirage 2000 and Sea Harrier were shot down by MANPADS.

So kills by SA-3s in 1991 are possible.

As for B-52G 59-2593, it crashed a few miles off Diego Garcia when 5 out of 8 engines flamed out – 3 out of 6 crew survived. Loss was technically due to electrical failure.

Several other B-52s were damaged by missiles/AAA and in one instance an AGM-88 friendly fire incident. Only one was noted as being hit by an unknown missile – in any case it retured to base.

They are all there Thobbes, among the 45 or so (maybe 50?) “coalition” aircraft shot down. But they are usually listed as SAM or “accidents”, and never admitted as being shot down air-to-air. Also, the process of actually crediting iraqi pilots with air-to-air kills was long and tortuous in many cases.

That is no proof.

The only other Iraqi claim I was aware of was that of a Tornado but it turned out that the particular airframe claimed by Iraq was shot down in a later attack.

This smells of the same stuff that was infused in the supposed Serbian shoot downs – including a B-2 Spirit.