[sukhoi-30mki]

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Aircraft is among the highest forms of art.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Must read this later.

[edpc]

It's a good article with a lot of interesting information/insight. However, the first part of the title can be summed up in 3 words: Speed is life.

He reinforces that old flying adage indirectly many times in his examples.

[Azeem]

He picked the Viper over the Hog?

[riverdawg]

Very interesting interview with a guy who knows first-hand the strengths and weaknesses of key front-line aircraft. To me, his most telling statements were

1. The MiG-29 isn't nearly as capable as many in the West thought.

2. The F-22 line should be restarted.

[ryan71]

Most excellent reading. Thanks!

[Chainmail]

An excellent read.

[skinkinthegrass]

THANKS!

[Skooz]

bfl

[virgil283]

Thanks.. very good article on A/C and tactics.

"It was found that thrust vectoring was really only useful at speeds below 250 knots" -- I've wondered about this and this explains a lot...(however I say ---Fly Navy)

[Hot Tabasco]

That’s a pretty amazing life that guy led........

[GreyFriar]

dogfight ping

[real saxophonist]

Bump

[Half Vast Conspiracy]

13 of my classmates had been selected for one of the ultimate USAF screw jobs, First-Assignment Instructor Pilot, and were staying at Laughlin to instruct in T-37s and T-38s.

FAIPs. The equivalent of letting someone who just finished drivers ed…teach drivers ed. I had 2Lt FAIPs that couldn’t even demo maneuvers in the Tweet. Most were pissed that they didn’t get the fighter that they “earned”. They had no concept of how the operational USAF works. Useless.

[minnesota_bound]

Even us non pilots see the comparison to the F-111 and F-35
I guess it was just to spread out some money to the states and not to build the best fighter to defend the USA with.

---

If you had to fly any fighter into an air combat arena today, including an operational F-35A as an option, what would it be?

The F-22. It’s a better jet than the F-35. It can carry at least as much, further and faster. If it was up to me I’d cancel the F-35 and start building more Raptors. A common counter to that is the cost to restart the F-22 assembly line. How much does one pig cost? Another is that the F-35 program is too far along. Yep, let’s just keep paying for a poorly-managed, overly expensive fighter that has three versions that make any one version less than it could be. Can you say F-111? That the F-35’s avionics are better than the F-22’s; how about a Raptor upgrade? I’d also build more advanced versions of the F-15 and F-16.

[spetznaz]

Thank you for a very interesting article. The comments on the F-35 were also very interesting.