Lot of hater-aid in a few posts here. The russians have fielded some very competent airframes. Their lacking has been original ideas since stealing our plan is so much easier and the advanced avionics that make things like the F-22 a game changer. Nor is their airforce obsolete. It of course suffers from lack of money and flight time, but rest assured, you give them a chance to kill Germans and those planes will be in the air. I don't think there are a lot of pilots in our air services that would be chomping at the bit to go up against good units of MiG-29s or SU-27s. They'd do it and fare okay, but probably not a one-sided turkey shoot like flying against Saddam's air farce was.
Just great. French suburbs surrounding their air shows are quaking in fear.
I know it's a joke, but our airshow suburb attack record isn't stellar, anyone remember the tail falling off the F-117 a few years back? The Blue Angels lose someone every few years too, sometimes at great pains to fly it into the ground to avoid ejecting and having a jet end up in the 'burbs. Military flying is a tough business. Heck, sometimes commercial is, the French bombed themselves with the Concorde a few years back also.
I think the telling thing is that this aircraft is being developed jointly with India, a player that actually has some money to dump into the project. Next up cue the asian arms race, China will have to steal some tech too.
