Russia's SU-35 Is Powerful, But Can It Defeat America's F-22 Or F-35?

The National Interest ^ | 11/07/2019

[SeekAndFind]

Key point: Russian aircraft are closing the gap with the West, making the need for investments in next-generation fighters more important than ever.

Russia’s Su-35 fighter certainly has western defense outlets buzzing--and for good reason.

Moscow, despite heavy sanctions and an economy that has certainly seen better days, keeps pumping out new combat systems one after another--items like new tanks, submarines, nuclear weapons platforms and more.

While many were indeed designed and planned for ahead of the imposition of sanctions, Russia is clearly making a big effort to modernize its armed forces, especially its air force, and moving past older Soviet platforms. The Su-35 is a good example of such efforts.

So how would the Su-35 do against America’s best planes? How would it fare against an American air force that is clearly the best in the world. How would, for example, the Su-35 do in a combat situation against Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter? How would Russia’s new plane do against older aircraft like the F-15 or say F-16?

Such scenarios matter--and not just in the context of a possible NATO/Russia or Middle East situation, but now that Russia is set to deliver the Su-35 to China, such comparisons matter even more. There are many places where all of these lethal aircraft will overlap, making such comparisons even more timely.

Compiled below are three articles, written several years ago, that looks at these questions in depth, combined in one posting for your reading pleasure. With that said, let the debate begin.

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While the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is slated to become the mainstay of the Pentagon’s tactical fighter fleet, not everyone nation on Earth can afford to fly an expensive fifth-generation fighter.

[grwcfl537]

I’m ex-navy too. Over my 30 years, I found time and time again, the main difference between Navy and Air Force is that Air Force won’t fly broken aircraft. Can’t say the same thing for Navy.

[Skooz]

I’m retired Air Force and have nothing but nice to say about ALL my brothers in arms from ALL branches.

Off topic, but my dad was USAF, grandfather US Army, one uncle US Navy, other uncle USMC.

On those rare occasions all were together in the same house and got a few beers in them, the trash talk was EPIC.

[Phlyer]

This is the Air Force itself admitting the problems.

Admitting some problems? Sure. All aircraft have problems. I remember when the entire F-16 fleet was grounded because of a problem with the ejection seat. The headlines were not about the ejection seat.

The issue is not whether there are problems. Or 'questions.' But whether the system overall is a good choice. The Air Force is on record saying that nothing less would do the job (else they would have continued to buy the 'less' instead of a new aircraft). So they either work through the problems or give up and go back to P-47s.

The biggest problem with the F-35 is that it should be designated as the B-35. It's a great bomber, with twice the unrefueled range of the F-15E, and as much maneuverability on the way to the target (with bombs and fuel) as any of the fourth generation aircraft. It provides the pilot with even better situation awareness/sensor fusion than the F-22.

It's not an F-16Z with eyewatering maneuverability in airshow configuration with no weapons and ten minutes of fuel.

[Spktyr]

The Air Force F-35 variant with a gun carries only 181 or 182 rounds for it. Its *reduced* rate of fire is 3300rpm, so it has less than four seconds of fire. One to three **maybe** bursts.

Why did people think this was a suitable replacement for an A-10 in the ground support role, again?

[Spktyr]

Actually many were intended as front-line aircraft, but when it became clear they couldn’t cut it, they were reduced in role.

The F-102 had to be redesigned while in service to fix major transonic issues that they’d known about and ignored.

[Phlyer]

LOL, great point about the P-47 in Afghanistan.

Actually, my comment about the P-47 is not entirely a joke. It's not clear to me that 2000 P-47s are less combat effective than 100 F-35s even in a near-peer theater of operations - aside from all the pilots put at risk.

On the other hand, there are all those pilots put at risk.

Oh, and the F-35 has twice the range of a P-47.

[Mariner]

The F-102 redesign happened before the Air Force ordered 889 of them. Only about a dozen had been produced before that.

[Spktyr]

And the Air Force had already begun putting them into limited service before that.

[ontap]

That is the classic politically driven short sightedness I talked about earlier

That is the classic DEMOCRAT driven short TREACHERY You're welcome!!!!

[Bonemaker]

One of my sons in law is a West Pointer and whenever he gives me a ration of shit I just tell him I tried to get into the Army but scored too high on entrance test!

[Phlyer]

Looking back the Bradley did very well.

"Looking back" at the reason tanks were invented, the Bradley is a great tank. It can break the stalemate of trench warfare with enough mobility to get past the mud, enough armor to resist man-portable rapid-fire weapons (machine guns) and near-miss artillery shrapnel. It has enough firepower to take out machine gun nests and soldier-built obstacles (log/dirt emplacements).

It's not clear that it's the right solution in the face of enemies widely equipped with RPGs, but it might be when used as part of a combined arms force (as it was designed to be). A Bradley with a dismounted squad should be a lot better bet than nearly any alternative.

And it even has TOWs if it finds the occasional tank.

[DesertRhino]

Fully agree. And I guess you meant the P-47 had twice the range of a 35. And -far- better ground attack load. Same bomb load, and 3400 rounds of .50 cal compared to 182 in the F-35.

Then add in 10 five inch rockets.

[DesertRhino]

In desert storm Bradleys killed more enemy battle tanks than our tanks did.

[Mr. Blond]

Maybe in a dogfight. Not when they get shot down before they even see us.

[Tallguy]

And that’s the problem for Russia and China... can they successfully amortize the development & manufacturing costs over sufficient units to be able to AFFORD to buy their own 5th Gen aircraft in sufficient numbers? The question is will they have enough airframes that they can:

1. Develop tactics, and
2. Train air crew.

If the answer is that they can’t buy more that a few squadrons of mostly hangar queens then all they’ve done is spend a lot of money. And this is exactly the experience that we have had with the F-22, and why we chose to build the F-35 with an allied consortium.

The Russians and Chinese are ‘hoping’ that they can attract enough foreign sales after developing a flying prototype or after low-rate-of-initial-production has been reached. That’s not not a successful business model for this latest generation of combat aircraft.

Outside India, who do they think can afford these jets? Meanwhile the unit price for the F-35 has dropped to $80M in the latest contract because the customer base was built in at the beginning of the project.

[Tallguy]

“The F-102 had to be redesigned while in service to fix major transonic issues that they’d known about and ignored.”

If you’re referring to the “area rule” fix, then that was fixed after the first dozen or so units were built — as Mariner said.

That said, the F-102 really never achieved full operational capability as envisioned — until the F-106 was fielded. And that aircraft started out as just a later mark of the F-102.

[PIF]

an S-400 S-500 environment in a general war.

[PIF]

F-35’s combat ready rate is currently hovering in the area of 4% among other problems, leaving aside the huge numbers of software problems that have no money or will to fix, since a real fix would mean a complete rewrite of the software.

I think they are either working on or have just fielded a BVR version of the AIM-120 with much increased range. But, as I recall that range is still no match for the Russian BVR A to A missile.

I fully loaded and very slow F-35 does pack a lot of ordinance, but then its limited stealth features are worthless.

These are not teething problems, but design failures like the never-to-be-combat-ready CVN Ford.

[PIF]

And Sen. Obey (D, WI) killed the F-22 with his amendment forbidding export.

[PIF]

The F-22 was killed by Democrats forbidding export, while now the Russians are in talks with the Turks to license building SU-57s, so Russia can afford (as long as the government pretends to pay and the workers pretend to work) to build its own fleet.

The F-22, with the initial order of 750 for the USAF and the sale of exported versions to Japan, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand, would have dropped the per copy price way way way down.

As for hanger queens, with a 4% combat ready rate the F-35 is right in there ...