Forum: General

The F-16 and F-15 are the best sustained energy turning fighter of the 4th generation. No Su-27,30,or MKI or Mig-29 can compete in this category. To not talk about supersonic turn performances were the gap is even higher. Russian current fighters are largely overrated and their reputation has more to do with the glamorous sight of the low-speed but very,very rare dogfight than with actual (Liban, Gulf, Yougoslavia) combat, where overall weapons system and others assets improving SA make the differrence. Today the principle (speed is life) still applies. Even Boyd never argued for low speed dogfighter, but for energy fighter. The F-16 and F-15 were the best and the F-22 will just continue in the same way.

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Additionally, by revamping the traditional decision-metric of cost per flight hour to a new metric of training or test missions per flight hour, greater cost savings can be realized. As an example, business as usual would involve a simple comparison of relative flight hour costs between adversary aircraft. By this metric, the SU-27 would appear to be more expensive than most other aircraft. However, if a customer looks at cost per training intercept or cost per test run, which is what they are really buying, then the SU-27 quickly becomes significantly cheaper because of its unsurpassed fuel payload (e.g., an SU-27 that can perform four supersonic training intercepts in one hour is far cheaper than typical adversary aircraft that have far less range and endurance, and can only perform a single high-speed training run before requiring refueling.

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The SU-27 represents the pinnacle of aircraft performance. With an 1800 nm range, and the ability to support test projects for extended periods, including 25 minutes of afterburner operations per sortie, our demilitarized Flankers are more cost effective than any other supersonic platform on today’s market.