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.

[KC Burke]

In my opinion most of these articles are BS.

I live under the flight area of the AF F-35 traininng base at Luke. I hear them and see them repeatedly from 7 in the morning to 10 at night. Flights of 3 and 4 5 to 20 times a day.

Been in the training center. Talked to dozens of pilots and unit commanders. They love the crap out of it. They feel the EW and stealth make them King of the Air Battle theater as far as I can tell.

[nicollo]

my dad was USAF, grandfather US Army, one uncle US Navy, other uncle USMC … the trash talk was EPIC.

Would make a great tag line!

[octex]

They need to solve the problems with the F-22!

[Phlyer]

And I guess you meant the P-47 had twice the range of a 35.

Not at all. The F-35 has much greater range than a P-47. In fact, even without refueling, the F-35 has greater range than a B-17, and a greater payload as well.

Missons are a bit shorter - in time - because it's cruising at 600kts instead of 180kts.

P-47 had a tiny bomb load in comparison (typically one 500lb bomb or a couple of smaller ones). And the accuracy - even with 'dumb' bombs - increases the effectiveness of the F-35 by another order of magnitude.

As I said in the earlier post, it's not clear to me that 100 F-35s are more combat effective than 2000 P-47s, but they are almost certainly more effective than 1500. I used a force size comparison because that's the way they would be employed, but I'd take one F-35 over 150 P-47s any day. Somewhere in there (150:1) is the price equivalence, though availability of F-35s is very good (aside from transient development issues which are being addressed) so the whole equal-cost story is very difficult to assess.

However, I'm not a blind fan of technology. There is some number - it's a big one, but there is one - where you could stack up enough simple aircraft (e.g. P-47) to overcome advanced technology. It's a big number to beat a force of F-35s.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Just recently a couple of our F22 raptors ran off an SU35 over Syria.

[Phlyer]

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

Not sure if that's true, but it doesn't really matter. I don't accept the whole argument that says it's all about how many tanks you kill.

"The Chieftain" has several YouTube videos on various armor-related topics, and he has a few on the M-4 Sherman in which he makes the case that the low-velocity 75mm gun was a good choice for that tank, even though it wasn't the best tank-killing gun.

My way to consider this is to estimate a target mix. If you have to kill:
10 foxholes with 2-3 enemy troops in each,
3 machine-gun nests,
2 RPG nests (the modern equivalent of a WWII anti-tank gun),
1 log-and-dirt bunker,
2 APCs, and
1 MBT.
All while being under more-or-less continuous indirect fire from artillery and traversing muddy terrain with lots of shell craters and barbed wire . . . what are the optimal characteristics of your 'tank?' And 'optimal' has to consider weight (to transport and traverse bridges), cost (to be able to afford enough of them to matter) and resupply.

I think a Bradley does pretty well against that target mix - as did the Sherman. But if your (meaning a generic person, not you personally) only measure of merit is killing enemy main battle tanks, then by all means, bring lots of Abrams.