Posted on 07/21/2009 5:13:09 AM PDT by pobeda1945
The Pentagon purchased two Russian-made Su-27 fighter jets from Ukraine. The United States will reportedly use the Russian jets to train effective counter-operation efforts.
The Russian jets are a serious competition for the US F-15 fighters. The jets of Russia’s renowned Sukhoi design bureau proved to be more successful than their US competitors during a number of tests. The Pentagon has been trying to obtain the Russian warplanes, and Ukraine helped the nation do it legally.
The news about the deal between the USA and the Air Force of Ukraine appeared on the US-based website Strategypage.com. The website said that Russia’s Su-27 fighters were technically similar to F-15 jets, although the Russian planes were 30 percent cheaper.
Several Su-27 jets landed at Langley US air base in the summer of 1992, upon the agreement with the US side. Russian pilots examined F-15 jets at the base and proposed a simulated combat. The US pilots did not like the idea much: they thought that it would be too risky to hold the fight above the base in front of photographers and TV cameras. They eventually accepted the offer, but agreed to hold the mock fight above the Atlantic Ocean, 200 kilometers far from the coast.
The scheme of the mock fight was very simple. A Sukhoi was supposed to fly behind a US jet, and the planes were supposed to switch places with one another.
A US plane attempted to fly away from the Russian jet, but the Russian pilot caught up with the F-15 very easily. The planes switched places, and the Su-27 flew away from the F-15 making a turn and gaining altitude. The Russian jet found itself behind the American fighter a couple of minutes later. The F-125 pilot lost the Russian aircraft out of sight and could not escape from it afterwards: the Russian pilot was keeping the F-15 covered.
The F-15 lost another battle with Russia’s Su-27 in the autumn of 2000, during the US-Japanese drills in the Pacific Ocean. Two Su-27 jets, covering the Su-24MP, conducted a sudden attack of the flagship of the US 7th fleet, Kitty Hawk. The US aircraft carrier would have been destroyed in real combat conditions.
The US Defense Department is seriously concerned about the growing sales of Su-27 and Su-30 all over the world. Russia has been shipping these jets to India, China, Malaysia, Venezuela, Indonesia and Algeria for years.
Now the US purchased two Su-27 fighter jets from Ukraine. The US military command will now be able to study the phenomenon of Russia’s Sukhoi design bureau thoroughly.
Well, it is Pravda, afterall. I think they are about as, maybe more, trustworthy than the US mainstream media.
LOL
Not buying it. This was from “Pravda”....
Its okay - we don’t need the f22.
Pay no attention...
If it was from the NYT you could dismiss it out of hand.
Funny - at least 10 years difference between the designs, and starting with the F-15 in front of the saddled Su-27, and the F-15 doesn’t lose every time?
One can always set up a scenario where the lesser technology wins. In a phone booth you are better off with a knife than a rifle.
I would trust Pravda more than I would trust Newsweek, for example.
Not much either way, but the MSM is horrible.
I think the MSM watched Pravda closely to learn how they do things.
Unless you happen to walk into Superman's phonebooth.
Then you're f***ed.
LOL.
What a hunk of horseshit.
The US buys Russian hardware for a variety of reasons.
1. Yes, to test and evaluate them.
2. To get them out of irresponsible hands. Some of these jets, particularly the SU-27, are nuclear-capable. We’ve been buying them up for nearly two decades.
However, the SU-27 is a pretty good aircraft, and the F-15 is well over 30 years old. We need to keep up because we aren’t always going to be fighting “freedom fighters”.
Such as an F-15 going up against a dozen SU-27s?
>One can always set up a scenario where the lesser technology w...
Since we were the participants are you saying that we set it up so?
I just LOL’d
My brother-in-law flew F-15s out of Langley in 1992. I’ve just sent him a copy of the article, and I’ll post his reply when I receive it.
>Not buying it. This was from “Pravda”....
“Pravda” is no longer Communist Party’s voice.
http://english.pravda.ru/about/
From the tiny smattering of actual facts in the article, it sounds like it. Much as a football team practices going for 4th and 9, or attempts a 55 yard field goal, why wouldn't our pilots train to recover from a disadvantage?
Technology aside, our pilots fly so many more hours than almost any other nation, you could probably swap equipment, run the exercise a year later, and get similar results.
You and those s***heads at Pravda have incorrectly identified an artist's image of an F-14 as an Su-27.
There's no truth in Pravda, and there's no news in Izvestia.
Correct. Pravda is now Putin's voice.
Out of curiosity, what’s with the F-14 photo?
>Out of curiosity, what’s with the F-14 photo?
Don’t know. I usually repost original fotos from the source.
For years, the F-15 has been the ultimate air superiority fighter, but the Russians have had years to study the F-15 and now have very capable aircraft to counter it...which is why we now have the F-22. (and, of course, all those drone fighters the F-22 critics tell us make the F-22 obsolete.)
Note the supposed simulation at Langley AFB was dated 1992. I don't believe anything that Pravda claims, but the F-22 has been in service since 2004 at....guess where.....Langley. The F-35 will have more multi-role capability than the F-22 and will perform just as well in the air superiority role.
The Mid-East is littered with the burned out wrecks of Russian aircraft that went up against F-15s from the U.S. and Israel.
How idiotic. They make it sound like the carrier just sat there without launching its own interceptors or receiving air defense from the Aegis cruisers in the fleet. Utter nonsense.
Since when do F-15’s protect carriers???
Just this morning the blond on Fox N’ Depends while reading her news headlines called the F-22 “outdated”.
Wonder what she thought it is “outdated” by?
Just one more reason to not watch that show or even the network - just more MSN lies, fear, uncertainty, and distortion.
This article reminds me of the scare stories that kept the B1 project alive because the Air Force had to have something to fill that niche or else fall behind the Soviets. The only part of that song and dance that was true was that the Air Force had to have that aircraft or else it would be a black mark on the record of a lot of generals and light generals. Besides, former generals who did not get their projects to production do not get high paying jobs within the aircraft industry when they retire.
I suspect the results of the result will be to affirm the we are in desperate need of the F22, an aircraft that makes the early versions of the F111 look like wonder of reliability. True, after twenty years of technology came along, they finally got the F111 to the point of usefulness, but during that twenty years it was little more than a burden to the maintenance system.
Intentionally or not, this sounds like a “save our F22” article, not an article that's spelling out the reality of the situation. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they're establishing the standards for their evaluations. For example, when the Air Force tested the A10, it wasn't capable of either surviving or killing tanks. When the tests were reviewed and then modified by the Army to reflect the real world, the A10 proved it was capable of doing exactly what it was intended to do. After those tests, the Air Force was reduced to insisting that the A10 have no all weather capability in order to keep their fast all weather aircraft from being redundant. Dollars to donuts, they rig the tests so that only the fabulous F22 will be able to match the opponent.
Regards
For all intents and purposes it did. Kitty Hawk was executing an unrep at the time and didn't launch an aircraft, an EA-6B by the way, not a fighter, for more than 30 minutes. Not the S***** Kitty battle group's finest hour.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81971&page=1
http://70.85.195.205/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15625
Utter nonsense.
Incorrect.
The USAF has operated non US fighters for years so our pilots can get some really realistic training. And anybody who thinks the F-35 will be the equal of the F-22 in the air superiority role doesn’t understand air combat.
Former F-4/F-16 Fighter/Interceptor Pilot
One potential source of its troubles is poor quality possibly due to Lockheed's farming out so many components to other vendors. If true and uncorrected, the F-35 is not going to be much better and we will switch from bashing the F-22 to bashing the F-35.
Strongly agreed.
... a couple of other factors could have come into play:
1. US fighter pilots will sometimes hold-back certain tactics in a mock dogfight with a foreign adversary. That might not have been the case here as this amounted to a straight one-on-one duel.
2. Many of our older F-15C airframes are G-limited due to previous over-stressing. It’s a little hard getting away from an opponent who can yank & bank at 9G when you at a not-to-exceed 5G limit.
I caught that, too, and rewound several times on the DRV, just to make sure.
She’s wrong on a lot of stuff, and not nearly hot enough for that seat.
But the Navy insisted that in all three incidents on Oct. 12 and 17 and again Nov. 9, in which Su-24 and Su-27 jets flew near the USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan, they had the fighters on radar from the moment they launched and the jets never presented any surprise or threat.
“We don’t think there is much reason to suspect that the Russian government has any hostile intent toward U.S. Navy ships operating in international waters. Therefore we don’t intend to react as if we did,” said Rear Adm. Steve Pietropaoli, the Navy’s top spokesman
Rear Adm. Steve Pietropaoli was in CYA mode then. The fact is that battle group, particularly the CVW, screwed the pooch.
Thanks for the link, Mad-As_He$$, I hadn’t seen that although it doesn’t surprise me.
Regards
Like it matters.
Russian news agency = controlled news agency.
Just got a response back from my brother-in-law. He flew F-15s out of Langley during that period and this is, in part, what he had to say:
“The article does look suspicious. In 1991 Desert Storm was going on and I don’t think there was a whole lot of thought on anything else. I don’t remember Flankers at Langley.
they might have flown them out to Nellis AFB in Nevada..that was the place they could really exploit the aircraft. know that the USAF was interested in getting their hands on some since the Flanker had a helmet mounted sight, new missiles, big engines and it was new technology we had to contend with. The best intel was from the former East German Air Force since they had the Fulcrum and were willing to fly DACT with the Americans.”
>Just got a response back from my brother-in-law
Thanks. Very interesting. Good to have an input from a pilot.
Indeed...Everything I've read suggests their both superb aircraft in their own unique way. I kind of think of them as analogous to the P-51 and P-47, and both will be needed for a balanced package.
The online Pravda is Russian’s WND.
Any story appearing in the WAPO is suspect, since like the NYT it is nothing more than a state news outlet; they do not report, they merely repeat.
Since the article appeared, it has been utterly refuted. Almost every point raised is a lie.
Don’t worry abot the inferior and impractical F35 - the Messiah et al will see it is never actually produced - we have homeless to feed and ACORN to support.
Also don’t worry about the F35 in some future combat with exported Flankers and PACs, they will have a jolly good time using the F35 for target practice.
Just like you point out, we'll very likely could see a repeat performance with the F-35, but all the money other countries have contributed might make them demand their F-35s or their money back. I think that's why F-22 critics support the F-35.
Contrary to what many believe, most of us do NOT deserve the government we get.
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