Su 27 versus Tomcats and Vipers

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TheBatman

Banned Member
Consider this cold war scenario. Its the 80's and tensions have been mounting near the 38th Parallel. The Soviet government has promised support the the North Korean regime. The South Korean government turns towards NATO for help.

While patrolling near the 38th Parallel one morning,a formation of 4 Tomcats & 4 Vipers come across a formation of 8 SU-27. The Tomcats each have 6 Phoenix Missiles and the Vipers their usual load of short range missiles. We shall assume the Vipers still do not have BVR capabilities. One of the SU-27 fires an R-77. Whats the outcome.
 

King Wally

Active Member
Welcome to the forum Batman, you may want to consider your topic after reading this thread

http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/air-force-aviation/why-vs-platform-discussions-unproductive-13165/

Also a quick look at the forum rules would be a good start
http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/rules.php

To clarify your question, are you in the process of writing a piece of fiction and looking for a possible accurate chain of events for your story line by chance? Or are you just posting a conversation starter? To be completely honest with you the nature of air warfare expands well beyond pure platforms and any hypothetical answer would vary dramatically depending on a massive range of factors you may not have clarified here.
 

ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
Consider this cold war scenario. Its the 80's and tensions have been mounting near the 38th Parallel. The Soviet government has promised support the the North Korean regime. The South Korean government turns towards NATO for help.

While patrolling near the 38th Parallel one morning,a formation of 4 Tomcats & 4 Vipers come across a formation of 8 SU-27. The Tomcats each have 6 Phoenix Missiles and the Vipers their usual load of short range missiles. We shall assume the Vipers still do not have BVR capabilities. One of the SU-27 fires an R-77. Whats the outcome.
Welcome to the forum. I strongly suggest reading the Forum Rules. Secondly you really need to read Why "this vs that" platform discussions are unproductive which will explain why your post is not acceptable. Finally the instructional post Air Power 101 for New Members will explain the basics regarding airpower and how we assess and discuss it. If you follow these guidelines you will not upset the Moderators. This is a professionally run forum so the standards are set high.
 

TheBatman

Banned Member
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
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Consider this cold war scenario. Its the 80's and tensions have been mounting near the 38th Parallel. The Soviet government has promised support the the North Korean regime. The South Korean government turns towards NATO for help.

While patrolling near the 38th Parallel one morning,a formation of 4 Tomcats & 4 Vipers come across a formation of 8 SU-27. The Tomcats each have 6 Phoenix Missiles and the Vipers their usual load of short range missiles. We shall assume the Vipers still do not have BVR capabilities. One of the SU-27 fires an R-77. Whats the outcome.
Dear all.
I have a medical background and consider myself a scientist. While many might consider the A v/s B as being childish, it actually provides a great opportunity to learn and identify weaknesses. That is how applied scientists work; through problem based learning.The SU 27 is a great plane and has been proved to be more capable than the western Air superiority fighters in simulations. I do understand that military personels are the ones who are mostly active on this forum, but then again it is truly the scientists who materialize these war machines into reality. It is truly the scientists that adapt these war machines to the constant evolutions of their potential enemies such as SU 27 and SU 30 (do not forget COPE India). The way we constantly think of these improvements is through potential case scenarios.
You can sit around and speak about the latest news and military affairs, but not acknowledging the flaws in your aircrafts by not referring to potential case scenarios might some day take you by surprise. That nasty "surprise" already happened in the vietnam war (when dogfighting was thought to be obsolete) and it seems that it may happen again with the "mighty" F 35 ( I will never bet on an F35 in a WVR dogfight with an SU-27). That said I shall respect your rules and will never start any A v/s B conversation again, but thanks for letting me express my opinion at least.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
To All,

Observing Forum Rules is mandatory from the first post onwards. It is not an optional extra.


To TheBatman,

Reading before posting would inform your posts. Let us share three pointers on why reading will greatly improve the quality of your posts.

(1) COPE India, a discussion on dissimilar air combat training with the Su-30MKI from 14 years ago, has been debunked. There is nothing scientific with your dated approach that is not based on current facts.

(2) By the way, the North does not operate any Su-27/30s (please fact check your posts, they operate MiG-29s). Only Iranians fly Tomcats, today. Your information is so dated, you are not capable of keeping up-to-date with air power developments/doctrine or demonstrating any understanding of geo-political developments in the Korean Peninsula.

(3) If you don't mind, let us point out that by 2012, the S. Koreans alone operate 60 F-15Ks and are in the process of upgrading 134 KF-16C/D Block 52 aircraft from 2015 onwards. The S. Koreans also have a tertiary Air Force that operates AWACS (Peace Eye program) and have the capability to detect, track and engage airborne targets that is a golden mile ahead of the North. Supported by the USAF, the South will never fight the North on equal terms. No matter how good the radar in the nose cone of a fighter is, the AWAC's radar is bigger and can see further. Control of the air is a systems event, and clearly explained in the links already provided by other members and here.​

Take at look at other comments in the linked threads, such as these four prior posts by gf0012-aust and RobWilliams selected below, on:

(i) air warfare being a systems level event; and

(ii) why we don't like the unrealistic 8v8 Korean air combat scenario you are proposing (i.e. the unrealistic scenario you propose that has no basis in reality and is not reflective of actual capability).​

Unlike Cope India, tertiary air forces train for large force employment exercises, like Red Flag. Red Flag exercises, held at the Nellis Air Force Base since 1975, are realistic large scale aerial war games. The purpose is to give pilots an opportunity to practice and refine their skills for combat. This includes the use of "enemy" hardware and live ammunition for bombing exercises within the Nellis complex. At Red Flag, there are two teams, the good guys (Blue Team) and the aggressors (Red Team). Typically, there is over 70 aircraft at each Red Flag exercise. And Red Flag is not some basic 1v1 or 8v8 exercise of the Red Team vs the Blue Team.

I'd love to see the source as it directly contradicts what we know of actual commentary by people who've done the tech evaluation at a Red Hat level

In fact, I'm inclined to say it's a questionable source.

We've seen the commentary on Mig29's and we know for a fact that they were never as capable as claimed.
and not to put too fine a point on it - but when people start waxing lyrical about a platforms performance and don't factor in the systems issues, then I am immediately and highly skeptical.....
No, we've just seen dozens of fanboys all over the internet who love those kinds of threads and it turns into such a petty sh*t-slinging mess that it's not worth the grief when everyone from the ignorant commenting on performance of systems with which they have no real knowledge while claiming it to be definitive to the chest thumping nationalists who would swear blind a certain country *always* has the best technology come in and give their opinion on a scale so lacking in depth that it effectively reads like "I like this one, this one is red, i like red".

How we prefer to do this kind of thing is with a scenario in depth, for example, with Brazil's F-X2 fighter program there were naturally elements of comparison. But because it wasn't as basic as X v Y between the competitors it became comparisons both including the performance of the aircraft as well as ToT, pricing (which IS important) and enduring costs, threat perception, aircraft uses, air doctrine, weapon inventory, current air fleet and the integration of said aircraft into the fleet and a whole host of other topics.

Talking "It goes this far with this number of bombs/missiles" as the depth of the argument is worthless, look on Wiki for that kind of information. We're fans of genuine discussion with actual merit in the discussion* rather than - effectively - playing top trumps with internet stats.

As an aside, the popular 1 v 1 dogfight comparison plenty of people froth at the mouth at to discuss regularly reads as the biggest pile of BS i've ever read never including any sort of discussion based in reality about what would actually happen.
When the premise of the discussion is "which one is best" it has zero worth, what exactly is 'best'?

  • Different aircraft with different uses are key, a country may not be looking for an A2A fighter but more of a bomb truck, so the bomb truck is best for that country
  • Vice versa, a country might want an A2A platform, so the one better at air superiority would be 'better'
  • Finances, a country might have X requirement which would be 'best' solved by Y aircraft but if it can't fund that aircraft or keep them flying in any acceptable condition then a cheaper version would be 'best'.
  • A country might want strong transfer of technology so if a fighter does not include that in the sale, it would not be 'best'
  • What do they plan on doing with the fighter? Planning for a regional competitor, NATO mission involvement, multirole capabiilities, they all have different things which would be 'best'.
  • Missile inventory, fighter X already has another customer who has integrated a significant proportion of your missile inventory and future inventory, from a financial standpoint that could e a component considered as 'best'.

No scenario, no worth. There is no 'best' if there's nothing to base it around otherwise it'd be like comparing an offroad truck with a sports car, each one is best depending on the scenario and what you want to do with it.

a 1 v 1 scenario is so constrained that it's not a viable situation in real life.
If you can't even read pinned posts linked for you to read, you are not suited to be a member of DT.

Thread closed.
 
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Preceptor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Just to reinforce the point for new members and would-be members. DefenceTalk is for discussion which falls within the forum rules. Instructions from members of the Mod Team are NOT optional. Opening a thread to initiate a discussion which violates the forum rules, then ignoring the advise of existing members who point that out, then backchatting a Mod who closes a thread which violates the rules, are all not how one stays on Defencetalk. Creating a new ID to get around the removal is also not conducive to keeping the Mod team nice, happy, and friendly with you.
-Preceptor
 
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