If monitoring movements of experienced IS troops across huge swaths of desert is so simple, what stopped the Russians from noticing anything?
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Russia had all of its assets deployed to liberating Aleppo. Syria is a big country. It is a fact that the US has some swaths of airspace in Syria that it illegally claims as its own. They swoop in when the Syrian military shows up but turn a blind eye to isis.

F-22 Raptors Swoop In To Protect US Special Ops Forces In …
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/…/f-22-raptors-swoop-in-to-protect-us-special-ops-forc…

i wonder if the Raptor went 2D TVC just because of the baffles.

I’d really caution against the validity of these rumours — I mean they make complete sense of course, especially considering the kind of results that F-22s and F-35s were able to achieve against 4th generation fighters in their early exercises as well — the amount of detail they carry and the original source in the threads are a bit dubious imho.

The J 11’s were su 27 kit planes. Did any of them get thrust vectoring ?

10 years ago today, the 1st fight of the F-35

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/6544/the-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-flew-for-the-first-time-10-years-ago-today

When exactly? In the 60’s and 70’s they had no money for it (and thus went for the smaller Kiev class in the end), in the 80’s they finally started building one and never finished it as they went bankrupt.

It’s certainly questionable if such a complex project would have been successful given the lack of experience and the issues some of their ships had, e.g. with propulsion systems.

When ? When they were beating the US in the space race.

Meaning what exactly? 50 years ago, UK decided to replace their “proper” carriers with the new Invincible class operating Harriers which were pretty similar in concept and mission to the Kiev class. Now they will have a bigger class operating VSTOL F-35B, while the Soviets were planning towards catapult equipped carriers (the Ulyanovsk class).

Meaning it is implied that the USSR did not have the technical savvy/capability to build catapult supercarriers when in fact they did. They just elected not to go that route.

Enough with the Russian cool-aid already..

Russia is a NC superpower. NONE is gonna invade Russia any time soon(like the first 1000 years).

On a different topic.. how will you guys see the Trump, Mattis and Co handle Middle-East and Russia?

Trump just appointed Rex Tillerson as Sec of state. Tillerson and Putin have been collaborating for 10 years+. In 2013, President Vladimir Putin presented Tillerson with the Order of Friendship, one of the highest honors a foreigner may be awarded from Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQ0UZsavNs

And Dana Rohrabacher is ambassador to Russia. So I think Russia and the US are set up pretty good to have a proper relationship. One built on mutual respect, intense diplomacy and pragmatism.