Being a singel seater also helped matters.

Well yes, though original Su-35 had canards too.

The Irbis, Array was a new development using much lighter material, and the new backend is highly modulated with open architeture layout, helped reduce weight even further by a fully digital suite.

OTOH, Irbis antenna is bit smaller so maybe part of the weight loss is indeed performance tradeoff, deemed acceptable if they managed to get the radar weight under the threshold which allowed them to get rid of the canard setup? Seems plausible.

F/A-18 is a Navy plane so they preferred twin engines when possible, but IIRC the main reason why it had two engines is because it was a development of the YF-17 which started with two smaller turbojet engines rather than one large as the F-16. Not sure if Rafale had a suitable single engine as an option, but it was also planned as a carrier aircraft as well, so perhaps that played a role as well. In any case, it’s hard to directly compare designs going for different requirements.

I’m not saying that MiG’s choice was bad at a time since export considerations didn’t play a part at that time, and, yes, the requirements for being able to operate from unprepared airstrips additionally reduced the available space for fuel. But, in post-Cold War hindsight, the basic design has two engines for which it has too little fuel and only three hardpoints per wing which rather limits its useful weapon load except for its primary short range interception role. Compared to its US rival, the F-16, which carries the same or larger payload and has a somewhat longer range IIRC with a more compact airframe allowing for a single engine to suffice. I love the MiG-29’s looks, but it’s hard not to admire what the F-16 designers did. The MiG-29M would have been what the MiG-29A should have been in the first place (improved range and enlarged wing among many other things) if it wasn’t so tailor-suited to those rather narrow-minded requirements.

Well, single-engined option was available (Project 33) but VVS didn’t want it. Dunno why they didn’t do the obvious, medium fighter with one AL-31F. Maybe there weren’t enough of those engines available.
Problem for the Soviets was bulk & weight of their electronics. If they wanted even remotely comparable avionics performance, their fighters had to be made larger than their Western equivalents.
MiG-29M based variants offer adequate range and remove the need for “hump-back” solutions like SMT. If more range is needed, they should be able to easily design suitable CFT’s.

On a plus side, MiG-29 airframe probably doesn’t suffer from weight gain to same extent that F-16 does. Latest Block 50/52+ is two tons heavier than early F-16A (2.5 tons for Block 60). Relative weight gain for advanced MiG-29 versions is much more modest.

What I’m still rather curious about is why Egypt went with the MiG-29M? Since they already have F-16’s, some Flanker variant would have offered them better power projecting capabilities (they are purchasing those Mistrals after all). Did they get a very good deal on it or what?

al-Sisi went to crazy shopping spree when he assumed power. He bought Rafales and a FREMM off the production lines – that must have costed ungodly amount of money. And then the Mistrals, helicopters and whatnot…it’s understandable that EAF doesn’t want to depend on single supplier, but rationale probably played little part in many of their recent procurements.

Yeah, it has been awful of late. It is always stuck on loading some last piece of content which takes ages. It is especially bad on Firefox, because in current version of Firefox, if one tab doesn’t load it craps all the other tabs as well.

Talking about post-Soviet aircraft projects, ISTR that there was also Mikoyan project 801 (or was it 805) which was supposed to produce MiG-31 successor. It was described as “faster and stealthier than 1.42”. Was anything ever published about it?

Really? Do tell, when the CdG was deployed to Afganistan (1st time, actually first several deployments) which aircraft launched most of the strike missions?

Ummm…weren’t there like TWO Rafales on CdG during that deployment, and they were only equipped for A2A?

Rafale carries 3 times load to 3 times distance over Super Extendard. Moreover Rafale has long airframe and engine life advantage.

I know “Extendard” is a typo but couldn’t resist 🙂 …Aeronavale actually developed a loadout for SEM which offered nearly same endurance as Rafale. It consisted of three drop tanks and two 125kg LGB’s. Of course, Rafale could carry 250kg bombs instead, and two self defense missiles, so it was still better. But they really squeezed everything out of that old gal, they were roled plenty for A2A in fact, especially when Crusaders became increasingly derelict and later, when Rafales were very few.

And yeah, I’d have loved to see them go another 40 years 😀

And you can’t modify an Su-27UB into an Su-30 as they are structurally different, don’t make things up.

Well, very first Su-30’s were basically somewhat modified Su-27UB’s…of course especially MKI-standard planes are quite different.