"US Air Force F-16 Spotted In A Mock Dogfight With..." Topic

…A Russian SU-27 Fighter Above Area 51.

"These are the amazing scenes which show a Russian-built fighter jet taking on a US Air Force F-16 in a mock dogfight – in what could be a sign that America is preparing for the possibility of war with Moscow.

The images were captured by air traffic controller Phil Drake in the skies above Area 51 in Nevada, one of the world's most secret military bases, on the day Donald Trump was elected President.

According to Drake, the aircraft in the photographs are a single seater Sukhoi Su-27P and America's veteran F-16.

He was visiting the desert surrounding Area 51 on November 8, the day of the Presidential election. He hoped to see some fast jets involved in a training mission…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Good practice for combat with the Russians, Chinese, or other countries owning those beautiful Sukhois.

I wonder if we've managed to actually procure some from other countries yet?

There are a few countries reasonably friendly to us, and my guess is their leadership wants their pilots to get some aerial combat time too, vs. US jets.

I almost posted this article yesterday, but was so offput by the 'does this mean war?' hysteria of the original article that I opted not to.

The US has done dis-similar air combat training since the Korean War. This isn't news. The fact that this guy got these pictures is news, but the conspiracy theory aspects of the article are offensive at a time in the world where relations are at best nervous.

OR…
Has a real shooting war actually started and we haven't been told yet because we already lost?

Moo-Ha-Ha.

Well if it is over Area 51 … it could be Aliens … [Sorry I could not resist …]

TGerritsen, hits it, this is normal (not routine, actually semi-advanced, but not abnormal) military training that has been picked up to drive click-bait articles.

It's irresponsible and does drive conspiracy theories.

Legion… dude!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

IIRC, the US Army has had Mi24 Hinds in service for close to 20 years down in Louisiana, wouldn't surprise me if someone "acquired" some Su27s (maybe from Poland or one of the other former-WARPAC-now-NATO nations).

USAF bought 2 from Belarus and a contractor bought 2 Ukrainian SU-27's for aggressor training…….

Don't forget the Shenyang J-11……

Perhaps a rip in the fabric of time and geospatial location, resulting in a conflict over NV, when the Russian pilot thought he was flying a normal patrol sortie over the Baltics, or Ukraine.

At Area 51, when playing with new-fangled, alien tech, weird things are bound to happen, when you don't know what the results are when you push buttons randomly on a control panel.

Yep, the J-11s are just a different name for Russian Sukhois.

Would love to see them at an air show.

Thanks for the details, Gaz.

The US Flankers are older models without any of the funky upgrades like thrust vectoring engines or avionics and combat systems.

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J-11 are licence produced SU-27s.

The J-11B variant has is upgraded using Chinese systems. J-15 is a Chinese Su-33 Flanker knock off with upgraded avionics and J-16 is a Su-30MKK Flanker knock off.

Interesting thing about Chinese Sukhois is that they're creating an EW specific model – the J-16D (think EA-18G Growler).

Chinese are also acquiring a regiment (24 aircraft) of Su-35s which is the most advanced Flanker in existence.

No doubt they'll copy all the tech from these – indeed they originally wanted just a handful for this purpose but the Russians wouldn't accept a smaller buy.

Whoop-de-do, DACT with ex-WarPac airframes. The Daily Fail lives up (down?) to its name.

My understanding is they wanted those primarily for their engines, since they're newer models, so they can steal the tech and copy them, for installation in their J-20s, and other jets.

That's why the Russians wouldn't accept a smaller order, since they know that's what is going on.

Yeah, the engines the Chinese are building just flat suck, even compared to Russian engines. Utterly craptastic Time Between Overhauls. US engines are designed for ~1500-3500 hours TBO (though the actual measurement is power cycles, and dogfights eat power cycles in a hurry), Russian engines run maybe 500 hours TBO, and the Chinese engines run about 50 hours TBO.

So while a US engine will get rebuild about every 4 years, a Russian engine will need to be rebuilt every year, and a Chinese engine needs to be rebuilt monthly.

WHEN China finally figures out QC/QA, that's when I will worry. But that takes a pretty massive cultural shift, and Chinese culture is so entrenched that even after the Mongols/Manchu invaded, the Mongols adopted Chinese culture!