Ah but those could be said for F-5A and F-5E as well; latter has longer fuselage, different wings and LERX, more powerful engines etc etc.

It would be a great counter to F-4E AIM-7M combination; 4x similarly ranged BVR missiles, arguably better radar, better maneuverability and far better acceleration on a smaller airframe.

Because again, it faced much more modern adversaries.

Wing loading is meaningless without lift coefficient graph, TWR is meaningless without L/D graph. Why bother? F-4E manual is on the net, so is MiG-21 manual and some pages from MiG-23 manual.

Well that is the handicap of being a follower instead of the leader. Advantage is they spend far less money on the aircraft, because they don’t push their resources to build the best aircraft. They have a certain performance goals to match and exceed in their designs.

They are generally accepted “labels” throughout the aviation.

I disagree, MiG-25 was a flying brick throughout its flight envelope and had no look-down shoot down capability. F-14 and its counterpart MiG-31 are actually quite maneuverable in their respective domains; ie, an F-16 wont outclimb or outmaneuver a MiG-31 when they are sufficently high and fast; numerically speaking, at 12000 meter (39,3k feet) a MiG-31 can sustain 5,6 deg/s at M1.4 and F-16 can barely sustain 4 deg/s at same conditions, with no missiles and ~25% fuel. At 40k feet, same clean F-16 is phi-max (max aft stick) limited, its maximum G capability at M1.3 is 5Gs, climbs to ~5,5Gs at M1.4, so “5G limit” of MiG-31 is not an disadvantage, too. If MiG-31 refuses to descend or slow down, a MiG-31 can easily turn with an F-16 in a gunfight at 40k feet; and probably win.

Well its not about the fairness about a specific date and time. You are making a technical capability comparsion between US and Soviets.

You can’t base an argument on “war isn’t fair” and chose a specific time to make such comparsion; a time that would support your claims. Lets talk about 1990 then? A time when;

-All Su-27/30s were flying with R-27RE/TE + R-73s, but F-15A/Cs were still flying with AIM-7M+AIM-9Ms.
-All MiG-29s were flying with R-27R/T and R-73s, some even had internal ECM whereas F-16s had pathetic radar and they were even lacking BVR capability altogether, solely capable of using AIM-9M.
-MiG-31 had Zaslon, only PESA fighter radar back then, againist ageing F-14s with its AWG-9, and it was faster and longer ranged (supersonic) then its contemporary.
-Majority of MiG-23s were upgraded to ML/MLD levels, with true look-down shoot down radar and better R-24 missiles.

In fact, apart from legacy F-4E and Tornadoes with AIM-7s and Mirages with Super 530s, no airforce in Europe had fighters with BVR capability.

If all hell broke lose back in that day, it would be an easy “walk over” by Soviet airforce againist NATO.

Not really, the F-18C to E difference is far more extensive as the diagram shows. The SH is about as close to an F-18C as an Su-27 is to a MiG-29.

It would but unfortunately time machines don’t exist. The MiG-23 arrived 10 years after the F-4 and only 4 years before the F-14 and the F-14 wiped the floor with it during the 1980s (Iran-Iraq War and Gulf of Sidra incidents).

‘Much more modern’, as in 4 years more modern, whereas wyou wish to compare it with a 10 year older aircraft. Crazy thing is, it didn’t really do that great even against the F-4.

Not really, the others factors are broadly similar so wing loading and TWR provide good 1st order estimations.

Unfortunately that philosophy leaves you with worse aircraft the vast majority of the time though, leading to far reaching excuses as to why the combat performance of said wares was less than successful, e.g. monkey model supplied for export, stupid operators, items had past sell by date etc.

Irrelevant, you can’t fight a war with what you don’t have at a given time and I don’t really think they are that widely accepted anyway.

IIRC the MiG-31 is limited to the same 5g that the MiG-25 is. Don’t confuse g capability with deg/s or turn radius. There’s your mistake. The MiG25/31’s best course of action against any fighter is to fire from afar and then run.

Yes, and technical capability has to be time specific, otherwise I could compare a Sopwith Camel with an F-22.

Err… wrong again. The R-77 only entered service in 1994, the AIM-120 achieved its first kill in 1992, with the C version arriving in 1994. Aside from that, the US had an ARH missile in 1974.

MiG-29s – didn’t do them any good during Desert Storm.

F-14 had AIM-54C though and you hardly need a PESA radar to detect MiG-31s. And super wrong again, the AN/APG-71 came out in the 1980s.

The F-4J was the first aircraft with look-down shoot down in the early 1970s.

Apart from say the Tornado F3s with Skyflash you mean? Or the Mirage 2000s with Matra Super 530s?

Pffft…. As I’ve said, the combat performance of each others wares says otherwise.