An example of US army helicopters loss statistic in Iraq – averaged to about 20 _catastrophic_ losses every year. I dont have other statistic on hand, but i remember USA MoD report where for every catastrophic loss there is almost 2 another losses which result in helicopter write-off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coalition_aircraft_crashes_in_Iraq#2006

Well for all u F-4 fans out there, there is still hope that we could see the Phantom kicking terrorist butt. Don’t forget Russia re-activated a few MiG-27s for operations over Chechnya with welded steel plates for increased :

I’m quite sure Russia havent done this. In early 90x all single engined aircrafts was banned from RuAF at the orders of Air Chief. Noone in they right mind would bother with Mig-27 when you have a stock of rusting Su-24 and Su-25.

Folks,

The YJ-83 is the offical name for what the West refers to as the C-801/802. It is also manufactured in a TV guided version. That is the version that most likely struck the Israeli patrol boat — ie no radar illumination or warning for the warship.

Jack E. Hammond

Chinese YJ-83

To add up, Israel’s ship was defended by Barak and SeaWolf. Its most modern EW corvette in Israel fleet with best trained crew – yet couldnt defend itself against something as trivial as ancient chinese missile. Now, the questions:

1. Anybody still believe what ASM are soooooo easy to intercept? As we can see even 40-years old design with 30-years old guidance can hit modern vessel…
2. Anybody still doubt what Iran can make much troubles for oil tankers in Persian Gulf?

Hehe, in fact, coalition losses in Iraq are very comparable to Soviet ones in Afganistan…
Heh, USA might be even lossing more than Soviets in Afganistan – if you count it carefully.
In the course of the 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan the Soviet Union lost 333 helicopters to accidents and enemy action – about 33 helicopters for every year of the war.
Now, take a guess how many helicopters coaltion lose in Iraq to all causes…

On the contrary the developments on R-77 has almost been static with what I know the only improvement being given to it is a lofted trajectory to improve its range.
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There is constant ongoing work on R-77, including seeker. You dont see that public cuz seeker itself dont posses any special designation and RuAF itself only recently started to buy R-77 and as such no “final” numbered variant is public. For export costumers, as always, “older” tech is available (its cheaper and proven) – but even with that tech there are still improvments in seeker components over the years. In current russian arms producing its usuall thing what a particular named model means different thing each year. For example, Mig-29SMT from 1998 is not the same thing as Mig-29SMT from 2005. Some could be said about Su-27SM, MI-28H, etc. Moreover, even when something in serial production “minor” components like seeker could be changed without changing designation.
Thats said, probably bad funding times still affected R-77 development and most likely (not sure) its behind AIM-120C5 in seeker perfomance.

Of cause none takes advertisement claims as 100 %, be it from the Americans or from the Russians, because those are ‘good’-values limited to test-conditions.

I will not take my time to prove something what anyone can find in 5 min. Besides, you said it all.

To tell the truth, many incidents what are attributed to “human errors” are, in fact, constructive deficiences. Lets make an example: say, an aircrat “F1000” have a very strict landing speed range: no less than 350 and no more than 370. Any more or less – crash. Now, if said “F1000” often crash due to pilot errors as they are either landing too fast or too slow – we could attribute all such crashes to “human errors”, lack of training, birds, etc. Formally, this is true. But in reality, wrong construction of such aircraft have much more to do with such crashes than pilot’s errors. Thats said, althought about 80% all crashes are formally due to human errors, by close looking we can find what many of such incidents are bound to happens sooner or later with particular construction.
In case of F-16 statistic we can conclude what either average F-16 pilot is badly trained, or F-16 have some deficiences what increase the probabilities of some incidents. Choose what you wish.