Mutlirole capability? From the get-go, the SH was prescribed as all-purposed and designed so. The Tomcat was ATA and nothing else for 25 years.

We had a real long range heavy attack aircraft in the A-6E Intruder, so there wasn’t a need for the Tomcat to do anything else. The Tomcat was turned into an excellent strike aircraft at the end of its career. The VG configuration of the Tomcat is better for the strike role in terms of a combination of range, payload and speed.

My personal opinion is the F-18E is a good aircraft, will beat the F-14 thanks to the AIM-9X

As if you couldn’t put AIM-9X on a Tomcat! We keep reading these spurious arguments that the F-18E has such and such system or weapon that the F-14A didn’t have. You can put anything into an F-14 that has been put into an F-18.

[The F-18E] can carry more than it’s predecessor over a longer range.

So can my grandmother. That the range/payload of the F-18E has to be compared to the F-18C in order to look good is a testament to how bad it is. The range/payload of the F-18C is slightly worse than the A-7E. The real question is “Is there anything else with better range/payload that we could have put on our carriers?” Sadly, the answer is yes. A-6F, A-6G, F-14D, F-14E, A-12, NATF…

It has shorter legs than the F-14 or A-6, but, can do more jobs from a single airframe.

True for the A-6, not true for the F-14.

It’s slower than the Tomcat, but, faster than any other type it will see over the seas apart from the -29k or Indian Su-30……..neither of which it will ever fight.

How about a Chinese Flanker? The F-18E my win with better weapons and avionics, maybe. The F-18E is an overgrown, compromised version of the loser of the Lightweight Fighter Competition. Its performance is inferior to fighters built thirty years ago. We can do better than this.

For the early 21st Century, the SH is the perfect aircraft for USN needs and hundreds remain to be built regardless of the preoccupied carping we see here…

The F-18E is the cheapest solution, its far from the best solution. Perfect aircraft? Slow, draggy, and short ranged is perfect???

Are you referring to the F model perhaps?

Ooops! Yes, you are right. 😮 I’ll have to go back and edit that.

the F-105 is not a fighter-attack aircraft as good as the MiG-27 specially when the MiG-27 VG wing will give it better low altitude rides at relatively high speeds.

The F-105 was designed for low level flight at high speed, and consequently had a high wing loading. I doubt very much that either one had a significantly better ride than the other at low altitude. That said, the VG configuration of the MiG-27 is better for the high speed, low level mission than the fixed wing of the F-105. VG gives a better combination of short field performance, speed and range. The F-105 just happens to be a bigger jet, so it has better range and payload. The empty weight of the F-105 was 28,000 lbs, and the MiG-27 was 18,075 lbs. As has been written here, the MiG-27 was more like a Jaguar, and the MiG-23 was more like an F-4. The F-106A was more like a Su-15, although more contemporanious to the Su-11.

But there is someting i can say
The MiG-23BN and MiG-27 have been the most shot down variants of the MiG-23 family so i am not sure it would had made a better job in Vietnam, however in Afghanistan did a good job, but in the Bekka Valley, the MiG-23BN suffered so many losses

This doesn’t mean much. Any jet flying into intense AAA and SAMs is going to get shot down in great numbers. I doubt the MiG-27 would have survived any better or worse than the F-105. It just didn’t have the range/payload that the F-105 had. It seems the safest tactic is to fly at high altitude with good ECM and drop PGMs.

As this thread is no longer about comparing the F-105/F-106 and the Mig-23/27 in the late 1960s-early 1970s, but has instead become a shouting match over who is lying about the Gulf War, etc…

Would the mods please take control or lock this thread so we can start fresh if anyone has an on-topic comment?

I was thinking that myself…

Official US sources claim five F-16s were shot down and no F-16 shot down an enemy fighter
the F-16s were destroyed in combat and were in the battle zone, the chances they could had shot down enemy fighters was high and in fact the Iraqis claimed they vectored aircraft at the attacking forces and a MiG-23 shot down one F-16, see that they claimed one of those F-16s was destroyed by a MiG-23

Yeah, yeah. We have seen endless numbers of posts by you quoting disreputable sources.

BTW, your posts don’t become more intelligent by varying the font size. :p

F-16

Rocky

Your explanation about the F-16 lack of success is not totally acurate, there are a few questions you have to answer.

Can not the F-16 fire the AIM-7 and AIM-120?

Some may have been able to then, but only if they HAD AIM-7 or AIM-120. You wrote below that the AIM-7 was first tested on the F-16 in June 1991. That was months after the war was over. Full scale production of the AIM-120 began in April 1991 – after the war was over. I have a dim memory that a few AIM-120 were issued to F-15Cs late in the war, but ALL the missile kills were made by AIM-7 and a few AIM-9. All but a couple of the kills were made by F-15Cs. They had the air superiority mission.

See that since 1989 they could carry AIM-7 and AIM-120 in USAf service total of 271 F-16A/B airframes were to be modified to ADF configuration… The first rebuilt F-16A/B block 15 ADF aircraft was delivered in early 1989, with the program continuing into 1991. The 114th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron of the Oregon Air National Guard was the first unit to receive the new ADF aircraft. It was followed by the 194th Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the California ANG. F-16s of the Florida ANG fired live AIM-7 missiles for the first time in tests at Tyndall AFB in Florida in June of 1991.

There were no F-16ADF deployed to the Gulf War.

Did not the F-16 shot down 40 aircraft over the Bekka Valley?

The F-16 can jetisson all the air to ground and become an agile fighter
consider that the F-16s were shot down in combat and therefore they were in contact with the enemy forces including Iraqi fighter aircraft therefore the super agile star of the Bekka Valley should had done as good as it did in 1982, i mean are not the Russian AAM so bad that barely shot down only one aircraft? so it means only armed with AIM-9s the F-16s could have shot down more aircraft but the only thing we find is excuses to appologizes for the zero kills it achieved and the five F-16s shot down in GWI

FYI, all the F-16s that were shot down were hit by SAMs and ground fire.

Sure, the F-16 could have killed lots of Iraqi aircraft, but thats not what they were sent there to do. The F-15C is a far better fighter, so why would you assign an inferior fighter for the job?

“No Viper air combat victories were recorded in Desert Storm, primarily due to lack of opportunity. In what few chances arose, the USAF F-15C Eagles assigned to gaining air superiority simply elbowed everyone else out of the way, including the USN Tomcats.
In any case, the F-16 was mainly used as a bomb truck, and for defence suppression…
In all, F-16s delivered about 20,000 tons of ordnanceduring the conflict; about one fifth of the total.”

The Great Book of Modern Warplanes, edited by Mike Spick c. 2003

Your constant bashing at the west is pathetic.

Garry has always puzzled me because from what I understand (and I could be way off), he’s a New Zealander which I’d argue has a lot more in common with many Western nations that the Eastern European nations under Soviet control throughout the Cold War).

It’s like he wishes he was either Russian descent or born in Russia or something….I can’t figure it out…..

I find that the farther to the political left people are here in the US, the more they detest their country and its foreign policy. They impulsively put the blame for the worlds ills on the USA, and view its actions more cynically. Maybe thats Garry, but I don’t know his political oriention that well.

…the F-15 has been shot down and the countries that have fought against claimed victories over it.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: