have no fear, The F/A-22 can do some cosmic things. The super hi aoa manuever is awesome, but not as relevant in the combat scenario as it used to be 10 years ago.

High Off boresight weapons have negated the advantage of having this performance capability.

Directed energy weapons (lasers) are off the drawing boards now. Think terminator!

The Su-35 has tremendous performance & I would love to fly it, but if I was going into combat I would rather be in uncle sams' fighters!

 

The Raptor has thrust vectoring just like the Super Flanker so it would have the capability to perform some pretty dramatic high alpha maneuvers as well should they choose to enable that in the flight control system.

As far as I know the SU-35 can't perform the Cobra with a weapons load, which would mean that it's only useful in a guns fight. After executing the move you're dead in the water (coming out of the move at around 140kts), not to mention that you present a massive cross section to anyone who's following you. Since your opponent will probably be at corner velocity with a lot more energy than you you'd better make sure you don't miss.

Close air combat is all about energy management, you wouldn't give up that much energy unless it was a last resort, which if you're all out of missiles and you're not behind your opponent it probably is.

 

Way cool.

 

The Russians do have good planes, but the problem is who will buy them? Not the the cash strapped russian government. Its such a waste of talent for it not to go anywhere. I remember hearing a month or so ago about the Russian Navys Flagship. The high ranking admiral of the fleet or ship said she was going to blow up very soon (her nuclear reactor) he then later retracted his comments under pressure and said it was a mistake or something.

 

The 35 was designed towards the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union still had money. It would have given the Soviets a 5-10 year window of air superiority until the F-22 was introduced to replace the aging FA18, F15, and F16 - all of which are/were outclassed by the 35. The F22 does negate most of the 35s advantages, as others pointed out.

Cool video, except for the editor's fascination with cutting to people taking pictures of the plane.

 

Heh yeah, nice vid. Interesting plane. Of course, they'll blow that ruskiy thing out of the sky before Ivan even knows he's been launched on. It's all about Stealth

 

from what i saw on the discovery channel, the naval version of the SU-35 can take off from the aircraft carrier without using the catapult due to its powerful engines and excellent aerodynamics.

not many countries in the world buy russian airplanes for some political reason, i guess. the indian air force is a customer. vietnam also bought a few.