ATošić wrote:
...Let me use the 1990-91 Gulf war analogy. The US M1 Abrams tank scored more hits against the Iraqi T-72s. But that was primarily because the Iraqi T-72s did not have night fighting capabilities. The US Army did not carry out much attack during daytime. They used the cover of the night to fight the Iraqi tanks. So, it was not that the M1 Abrams was a better tank. It's just that the Americans used better tactics. Just like Iraqi insurgents used better tactics to blow away M2 Abrams during the 2nd Gulf War using just IEDs.
The same analogy applies for air-to-air combat. The Americans may choose to shoot down fighter aircraft of Iraq, Libya or any Afro-Asian country with their BVR missiles but against Russia they will not be that successful, primarily because Russia always had a BVR philosophy.
About 1990-1991 war I have not enough accurate informations about what's happened exactly.
First of all, the war was mostly aerial, than ground.
They -american's hype- told us about so-called ground battle in Kuwait, and asserted about a -supposed- easy air domination above iraqi's sky. The reality -i will post the link about a troubling document about the war in iraq- seems to be more nuanced. At first there was no real battle in Kuwait, as most of iraqi army retreated before US coalition launched ground assault.
Secundly, they claimed having near immediatly the total control of the iraqi's sky. The reality, america's air campaign lasted nearly 45 days, untill this date, iraqi fighters continued to fly, in spite of US coaltion's domination. US have 10 more times more aircrafts than iraqis. Moreover, during this time, when US swaggered that their fighters downed easily about 40 iraqi aircrafts, during this time, it is important to mention that more than 150 iraqi aircrafts fled to Iran. Including
the very agile, that could easily evade any US air air missiles the .....
IL-76, and the icing on the cake the
two iraqi awacs IL-76 Adnan. I've heard about friends that did war among US coalition, US lost several dozens of F-16, more than 30, adding to the official figures given by DOD, US coalition seems to have lost more than 70 aircrafts -untill now, I did not find any Internet link relating this losses-. Obviously, US will deny, nevertheless, if we backed to the air war of Vietnam, we saw exactly the same situation. If, indeed many iraqi Mig-23-25-29 were lost, but at what price ? 800 air air missiles to shoot down 20 aircrafts ? In other side, US coaltion lost at least 40-50, including a B-52, and several F-111 ?
What I mean, about Desert Storm we know nothing, other than the lies given by DOD, and we are not ready to know something in near future. Nevertheless if a think is sure, the US casualitities seems to be far higher than they admit.
Back to our initial subject, Iam near sure that Russia does not need the very expensive and cumbersome Su-Pak T-50. Because nowadays SU-27 familly, and Mig-29 familly are enough, and could easily inflict huge losses to any US adventures. If, indeed the F-22 have supercruise -as mentionned by Garry- feature, do not forget that this US fighter is far to be the only one to have this feature, let's mention the Mig-35, Rafale, Typhoon, and SU-35.
Moreover, the F-22 has a special feature, the
vector thrust engine, yes this aircraft has
vector thrust engine, but, the Mig-35, and SU-35 too. It is usefull to mention that these sophisticated engine, if indeed, are very usefull for the aircraft in combat adding in manoevrabilty, they are nevertheless too much fragile, and hence less availlable.
About the 187 F-22 with their sophisticated avionics, and engines, you can clearly say that in the best case no more 90 are ready for combat, after few days of intensive air war, this number will dramatically drop, and US will still rely on 4th generation aircrafts -as Russia, and China- like the F-15, F-16, F-18.
All this hype about the so-called superiority of the F-22 is mere intox. Now, there is a new dramatic setting that modiffy all US calculus.
US is lack money. Dollar worth nothing, hence, they could not feed their war machine as before. Their only strong point is to outnumber, and now the danger is they could not.