Good video, came out awhile back on DEW line. Created a big fuss in India. Actually, IMO the guy was pretty complimentary of Indian pilots, noted how much progress they had made and they were very good now with their jets and weapon systems compared just to a few years back. Also what got lost was how safe Indians flew, my understanding of Red Flag is some countries were never invited back because they were so dangerous, that is what I heard thru the grapevine.
Anyways, back to the Cobra. I agree with most of the regulars here and not with the armchair pilots. It is a nice display at the last MAKS, great airman ship but not sure it does a whole lot for you in real combat. That Sukoi is probably on half fuel, no central line tank, no missiles. Yeah, that's real representative of a combat load. I have seen demos with at least fake missiles and stuff but this demo didn't even have the dummy missiles, it was clean. As someone noted, how do we know that SU was stock? How much was the FCS changed? How many safeties were removed? Were the engines tweeked? What about the FADEC? More importantly, what happens when you fly with missiles? Does it depart in all kinds of directions?
Not sure you could do the same with an F16 or F18. Maybe if you took an SH and tweeked the engines a bit, relaxed FCS and such, you might get close. But then again, how representative would that be of a stock USN Super Hornet?
Last but not least, the guy flying the demo is a test pilot, not your regular Russian pilot that gets how many hours a year these days? 80?90?100? By the way, I am not trying to be derogatory to my Russain friends, I am pretty sure your average USAF/USN and Euro pilot that get 150 hours or more would have a hard time doing this kind of display safely also. More than likely, they wouldn't do a great job, would make mistakes and soil their pants or create a nice crater on the runway.