
Photos of a Sukhoi Su-27 dogfighting with a USAF F-16 around Area 51 - Inconel
https://theaviationist.com/2017/01/06/these-crazy-photos-show-a-russian-su-27-flanker-dogfighting-with-a-u-s-air-force-f-16-inside-area-51/
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wereHamster
How come the US Air Force has Sukhoi aircrafts? Did they buy them from Russia?
I can't imagine Russia selling their top aircrafts to an enemy.

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sv123
And does Russia have any F-16s?

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Inconel
I don't believe so, or at least I've never heard about Russian F-16s. Iran
still flies some old F-14s though.

The USAF seems to be pretty strict about not allowing more modern fighters to
end up in private hands. There are a number of F-86s, F-104s, F-5s and I
believe one F-4 Phantom still flying around the US in the hands of private
collectors and air museums but nothing newer like F-14s, F-15s, F-16s or
F-18s.

Edit: While I've never heard of any F-16s in Russia I'm sure the Russians have
had plenty of time inspecting and probably even flying F-16s, it was a very
widely exported plane.

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knz
Does Russia have an equivalent of ITAR? If not, that could partly explain why
US aircraft are less commonly sold.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations)

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r00fus
I remember seeing a Su-27 do forward flips, backflips and cobra maneuvers
during the 2001 Paris air show.

It looked pretty damn sweet - was the best part of the show for me.

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Shivetya
I was fortunate that while serving in the USAF we had an alternate for the
Thunderbirds on our base. Watching him fly was a good reason to just sit on
the ball fields even in the hottest afternoons. One takeaway from a meet and
greet was it was real fun for him and all those cool moves are just that,
simply cool with little application outside of stunt flying.

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velodrome
Don't forget the Aggressor squadron. They play a similar role (tactics,
strategy) but with different equipment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggressor_squadron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggressor_squadron)

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partycoder
The dogfighting scenario is pretty much extinct.

The F-16 is sort of old by now, except the drone version, which is reportedly
for use as a training target.

Probably it's a drone F-16 against a Su-27?

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LoSboccacc
nah. as sensor packages and missile technology advances, so do
countermeasures, while the good ole bullet is harder to fool.

"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter proponents’ riposte has been that the AIM-120
is a 100% reliable and 100% kill probability missile, so each F-35 carrying
four AIM-120’s will account for four Sukhois or MiGs. This is a dangerously
naive assumption. Operationally, the AIM-120 has achieved 10 BVR kills from 17
shots – a Pk or “kill probability” of 0.59 (59 percent) against benign or
“dumb” targets. The AIM-120 has been tested in over 200 test firings, with a
reliability of about 85 percent, so statistically speaking, about one of those
four AIM-120s will be a dud." > [http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-
NOTAM-070109-1.html](http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-070109-1.html)

also, once the 6-10 aa missiles you carry are spent, if you aren't faster than
the enemy you cannot just disappear.

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nonbel
>'Operationally, the AIM-120 has achieved 10 BVR kills from 17 shots – a Pk or
“kill probability” of 0.59 (59 percent) against benign or “dumb” targets.'

Fyi, frequencies are not probabilities. That was one of the points that, as he
neared the end of his life, lead Ronald Fisher to say that mass confusion over
stats would be the downfall of the next set of nations:

"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young
men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and
with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century,
of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical
profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to
which they could impede every sort of national effort." Fisher, R N (1958).
"The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274.
[http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf](http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf)

Here is another good paper from him on that:
[http://www.phil.vt.edu/dmayo/PhilStatistics/Triad/Fisher%201...](http://www.phil.vt.edu/dmayo/PhilStatistics/Triad/Fisher%201955.pdf)

Chapter 9 here also covers it from a different perspective:
[http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html](http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html)

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LoSboccacc
ikr, but there is no much more operational data beyond that. also, not my
quote, and the point was just that at some point you need a fallback weapon

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nonbel
I had never seen evidence of the "guided missiles" part of Fisher's prediction
before. In medicine it is obvious...so maybe I am just not familiar, is there
mass confusion in weapons research too?

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LoSboccacc
don't know about missiles but if we include rocket science in general there is
plenty literature on how they cheated statistics to get the shuttle going
[https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roge...](https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-
commission/Appendix-F.txt)

