Posted on 01/23/2023 9:16:16 AM PST by ganeemead
Close look at the control environment of the SU-34
The soviets were scared to death of the F-111. When doing SALT negotiations they wanted Reagan to scrap the program...no deal.
This must be the comic relief for the day, right?
When the Sovietskis designed the MiG-23, rather than do their own math, they copied the swing-wing angles from the F-111.
And when the MiG-23 prototype suffered shock-stall at transonic speeds, instead of doing their homework they just copied the engine inlet ramps from the F-4 Phantom II. Look at the photos side-by-side and the family resemblance is unmistakable.
Cool plane, but bigger than I thought. But they really won’t have much of a place in this war. Russians can’t fly at effective medium altitudes because of the thousands of missiles we irresponsibly gave them. They can’t go high because of Uke S300s.
On the other hand, Ukes can’t fly over the battlefield either. First their Air Force is gone. But even if we gave them a fleet of F-16s, almost the entire Ukraine is covered by Russian S400s.
So this war boils down to WWI trenches and artillery and Russia staying on their infrastructure and interdicting campaign with missiles.
Realistically, nobody can rule the skies there. Even we couldn’t establish air dominance there without taking a healthy amount of losses, and attacking deep into Russia, which would lead to nuclear war.
Neither Russia nor China were shy about imitation technology. Some Hasagawa model kits were also probably used by their respective design bureaus.
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