Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Someone here posted "the rest of the story" about that incident and for the life of me I can't find it. Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

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I believe it is discussed in Su-27 Flanker by Yefim Gordon, although that book is expensive and hard to come by.

I have read that some mock dogfight was carried on between Flankers and Eagles. Russian sources stress that WVR Flanker outmaneuvred Eagle easily while flying and military power. Eagle had to use afterburner frequently. Flankers were piloted by Soviet test pilots this time.

This can be read with Iljin'is book "Fightes" in chapter about Su-27. This book is in russian only. I can not tell wheter this is bravo-sierra or not... Confused

I wasn't looking for the embelished version by Gordon but somebody here who WAS THERE explained it. The version you find in books grew with every telling until you practically have Red Flag being performed at Langley with real Russian Flankers and you have a few moments of UNPLANNED goofing off turning into the annihilation of the 1st TFW. (Yeah I'm exaggerating, but not much.)

I wasn't there but AFAIK it was an official visit (no mock dogfights, no DACT) was planned. However, curiosity was high and during a mixed formation flight the Russian pilot wanted to see what the Eagle can do, so he dropped behind the Eagle and locked it on. Reportedly the F-15 driver wasn't able to shake him off or break its lock for about 1 minute.
Again, this is hearsay, so don't quote me on it.

This is something I found I while back. Seems to match...

Russians flew 2seat Su-27UB in Langley, which is slower, has more drag and some extra weight than regular single seater. So if they smoked F-15, single seater will do better, lot better. And the UB pilot has rearward vision comparable to Phantom (rear cockpit blocks most of view).

In close in - Flanker will eat the Eagle. In mid range- I dont think so.

I think most of this article mentioned is pure demagogy - you dont need those classified cadgets to compare climb or turn performance - if you can not shake Flanker off by no means, it means that he has similar or better flight performance. And please keep in mind that 2seater is some 200 mph slower, takes 7G and climbs some 20% slower than regular single-seat Flanker , whitch is in service. Those UB-s vere never ment to be combat aircraft - just regular training...

Russians are still claiming in their books, that F-15 was not able to shake Flanker off, which used only mil power to sit in its tail.

Elite 1K Joined: Aug 19, 2004 - 09:19 AM Posts: 1092

I don't really find this surprising. The F-15 doesn't even have leading edge flaps. It bleeds speed badly in a slow speed fight (i.e. maximum performance turns at negative Ps). I've also heard from a former F-15C driver that F-16s could hang with him in MIL power while he was using the burners. Mind you, this is not the same thing as entering a dogfight head to head and then going 1 circle or 2 circle. Another thing... I'm not so sure an Su-27 could shake an eagle off its tail either. If anyone's ever done multiplayer dogfights in a flight sim like Falcon 4, you'll know how hard it is to shake a good human pilot from your six. Unless you have sufficient separation from the guy on your six, you're in trouble. You need significantly better sustained turning performance and level acceleration to get a comparable pilot/aircraft off your six. The only time you could easily get someone off your six is if you have significantly better instantaneous turn rate, sustained turn rate, and tighter turning radius throughout the entire flight envelope. Not to mention you should also have significanlty better level acceleration to gain separation before using your superior turn rate/radius to force an overshoot or actually get your nose all the way around so you're head to head with the opposition again.

But again... the F-15 is not really a good dogfighter compared to an F-16 or F/A-18.

F-15 is a pretty much a late 60s design and it was ment to be a compromise between MiG-25-like performance and dogfight agility. So it will do neither. It was ment to be more agile than Foxbat, but at the expence of speed and altitude.

First Eagle sketches were pretty much similar to Foxbat

Su-27 was specifically designed to counter Eagle threat and it was ment to be more agile than Eagle, at the cost of max speed (mach 2.3 vs mach 2.5+).

Su-27 is far more better desing than Eagle, but it is totally ruined with carbage electronics, bad cocpit interface and ill-trained airmen. And with unefficient engines (smokes like Double Ugly) and lousy reliability. Su-27 is not in service in new NATO countries (it is still not widespread as MiG-29) and most of its weaknesses are still not revealed. I thing that has similar problems like Fulcrum had in Germany and India - nonexistent engine lifetime, troubles with spares and lousy reliability. It is same technology and quality like other russian jets built this time.

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I thing that has similar problems like Fulcrum had in Germany and India - nonexistent engine lifetime,

Actually Flanker's engines (Lyuka-Saturn AL-31) have approximately a TBO double than the Fulcrum's (Klimov RD-33) - roughly 600 hours instead of 300.

The Flanker managed to easily shoot down 2 MiG-29s during the Ethiopian- Eritrean conflict so it could have smoked the Eagle at Langely aswell.

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Su-27 is far more better desing than Eagle, but it is totally ruined with carbage electronics, bad cocpit interface and ill-trained airmen. And with unefficient engines (smokes like Double Ugly) and lousy reliability. Su-27 is not in service in new NATO countries (it is still not widespread as MiG-29) and most of its weaknesses are still not revealed. I thing that has similar problems like Fulcrum had in Germany and India - nonexistent engine lifetime, troubles with spares and lousy reliability. It is same technology and quality like other russian jets built this time.

Russians are upgrading their Su-27s to the Su-27SM variant which should feature more advanced avionics, better realability, etc... but at a very small rate of only 7 aircraft a year.

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The Flanker managed to easily shoot down 2 MiG-29s during the Ethiopian- Eritrean conflict

Actually the Flankers shot down 5 MiG-29s in that conflict. As for "easily", I don't think so, they used R-73, which means there was some kind of a merge, dogfight...that's never easy!

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Actually the Flankers shot down 5 MiG-29s in that conflict. As for "easily", I don't think so, they used R-73, which means there was some kind of a merge, dogfight...that's never easy!

True, my bad, Ethiopian Flankers (some reportedly flown by Russian pilots) shot down 7? Eritrean MiG-29s (3x MiG-29As - confirmed, 2x MiG-29 -confirmed, 1x MiG-29A - unconfirmed, 1x MiG-29UB - unconfirmed) and heavily damaged another MiG-29A.
Like I said, the Flanker has a good chance against an Eagle in a dogfight. As for BVR, an upgraded Flanker might have a chance.

Why Eritrea lost the air war was mostly because of better airmen that Ethiopia had in this war, probably russian.

If you read some articles about air combat, it is easy to notice than in most cases Eritrean pilots just turned tail and escaped when meeting with enemy.

Fulcrum and Flanker share basically same weapons and and avionics system and Flanker will achieve Fulcrum's dogfight performance only when 60% of fuel is expended. Otherwise, there are strong limits on g-force and AoA.

Larger number R-27 missiles actually did not gave to Flanker any advantage, because those missiles were almost useless and in real life Flanker does not carriy them at all hardpoints (normal combat load are 4*R-73 and 2-4* R-27. With all this draggy non-reccessed missile load Flanker barely exceeds mach 1,05 at low level.

What Flanker really had was bigger radar dish than MiG-29 (it means somewhat longer detection range).

I think that real service capability of early Flanker is greatly over-estimated. And Flanker has still limited use all over the world, its weaknesses are simply not known.

Remember that in early 90s russians had similar claims about MiG-29 - it was ofter presented as a unbeatable superplane and real marvel of Russian aerospace technology. As Indian and German experience was revealed to other nations, things were turning badly not to russian favor.

Russians claimed engine life "at least" 750 hours, but in Indian airforce 90% of engines did not even reach the 400 hours and all fleet was grounded.

Suhhoi engines are allmost same technology and quality - what makes us to think that they are better. I think that fuel efficiency is the same league with J-79 engines (smoke like hell in full military power).

Avionics are almost same as found in 29 - which in turn was proven to be unrealiable (Serbian and German experience) and laser rangefinder was very dangerous (Germans had it to be turned off) to ground crew's eyes.

I think that Flanker has better overall design, but Eagle has better internals, better support and better airmen. And Eaglne has IRL much better sortie generation rate and readines due to its better reliability and longer service intervals.

What weakness both planes have in common-they have no real all-weather low altitude capability what Eagle has. Only thing they have is radio altimeter, there are no FLIR, no gound mapping radar mode, no anti-ground-collision devices at all.

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Remember that in early 90s russians had similar claims about MiG-29 - it was ofter presented as a unbeatable superplane and real marvel of Russian aerospace technology. As Indian and German experience was revealed to other nations, things were turning badly not to russian favor.

All Russian weapons are presented as unbeatable untill they see combat. India is the only one keeping the MiG-29 production alive, many countries supplied by Russian arms are switching from MiGs to Sukhois because no one knows how good is the Sukhoi in combat and tend to buy what the Russian propaganda says.

But it also greatly depends on the pilots. Even though Russian pilots don't see much training because of lack of fuel, spare parts, insufficent funds etc, the Russians still have some really good pilots who know how to put their aircraft to its full capability.

By the way, anyone know how effective is the R-27AE? cause this missile could provide the Flanker with a much better BVR capability.

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

F-15 vs Flanker at Langley.