How the MiG-15 grounded the U.S. bomber fleet in Korea (2013)
airspacemag.com
airspacemag.com
I didn't have the energy to dispute it then, but this piece does a pretty good job. The MiG 15 was very much comparable to the Sabre, and the MiG 17 and MiG 21 were better than the F-100, F-105 and the F-104 (ha!)[1].
It was only when the F-4 became available that the US could match the MiG-21 (which was one of the reasons that the Israelis mostly flew Mirages until the mid-1970s).
[1] eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter#Ind...
Mig-15,17, and 19s were giving F-4's a run for their money in Vietnam until Phantom pilots quit trying to turn with the smaller Migs and just used their giant J79 engines w/ afterburner to fight vertically. I believe the Phantoms always had the advantage but it was obscene to lose a 2 crew multirole state of the art fighter like an f-4 for every one or two outdated Mig-15s that were shot down.
The Mig-21 was a point defense interceptor intended to zoom up to altitude quickly and intercept US bombers. It was a reasonable fighter because it's wing. Delta wings don't have a sharp stall angle like other types of wings, they just start piling on drag as the angle of attack increases. The closest US fighter is terms of design is probably the f-104, but the Mig-21 was really in the same class performance wise as the f-4.
The Mig-29, SU-27 and on are solid first class fighters and probably have the edge on the F-16 and F-15.
> The Mig-29, SU-27 and on are solid first class fighters and probably have the edge on the F-16 and F-15.
As a pure dog fighting aircraft possibly but as an air intercept fighter I think the F15 (with the except of the F22 and the EF2000) is still the thing to beat.
In doing so they created the best air intercept fighter of it's generation and a design that is still considered premier-tier, the US consider it obsolete because it lacks stealth but not every country has fully adopted the stealth mantra (the Russians never really did or possibly didn't have the manufacturing capability).
It will be interesting to see if they continue it's development, there where nominal plans for new variant called the Silent Eagle which adopted some radar reduction measures and upgraded it's electronics to state of the art, I think once you except stealth that we are at a point with fighters where the airframe is secondary to the avionics and weapons, they all have the capability to kill the pilot from G forces so maneuverability isn't really an issue anymore.
It's interesting to see what the Indians have done with their Mig-21 upgrade program, with modern avionics and weapons it's reputedly as potent as a middle-bloc F16 which considering that's a 60 year old air frame design is incredible.
You're saying this should read "... but it is actual characteristics ..."?
[1] http://theaviationist.com/2014/08/18/the-story-of-a-legendar...
Today, there is one aicraft/missile in service with roughly comparable performance to the F14/Phoenix -- the Eurofighter Typhoon II when equipped with the (similar range to Phoenix) Meteor missile. This isn't an accident. One of the major purchasers for Typhoon is the UK, satirically renamed "Airstrip One" by George Orwell in 1984; because it's basically an unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of Western Europe, and in event of a conflict with Russia it'd be a major NATO logistical resupply target for the aforementioned TU-23Ms and Tu-160s. The Typhoon II was delayed into the 21st century but basically it started as a cold war solution to the exact same problem as the F14, minus the cats and traps.
Not just a purchaser of the EF, we co-built it with the Germans/Italians as part of a consortium.
The bad thing is that the high AoA turn is based on upper portion of the wing generating shitload of high energy vortexes. This "energy bleed" slows you down and limits the number of consecutive turns you can do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_lift
F16 has relatively small wings to carefully match the wings lift with the engines power surplus. The result is very high sustained turn rate.
These days it's more about missiles, radars, stealth and increasingly infrared search and track.
On the missiles, stealth etc comment, I think you're right. I think beyond visual range (BVR) fighting got a false start in Vietnam. At the time BVR was used in the context of shooting sparrows at Soviet bombers in a nuclear scenario. ie. A bunch of non maneuvering planes on the radar that were clearly Soviet bombers and were not friendly or civilian air traffic.
The F-4 was initially very bad at this role because BVR missiles sucked initially and sometimes just dropped off the wing without firing, they had no cannon, and often a visual confirmation was required to take a shot (I believe). That soured the BVR taste for many people.
Newer technology allows a more realistic BVR fight even when worrying about friendly and civilian air traffic.
BVR missiles might become the thing or not. If stealth goes far enough, close encounters with airplanes might become unavoidable. This would be incredibly expensive with modern off bore IR missiles. You would essentially always have 1/1 kill ratios, no matter what side you are on. The golden age of BVR missile might have been the 90's. A decade with very little air combat.
On the other hand if BVR is the thing (maybe with sophisticated IR tracking, I don't know.) Then fighter plane is just overly expensive launch platform. Drones and long range SAMs should take over. You might even reach a point where stealth stops mattering, because you just try to saturate airspace with hordes of very cheap drones carrying relatively expensive missiles.
Then there is missile killing lasers. But you could end up with similar results with turreted "metal storm" auto cannon. Lots of the lasers apparent superiority comes from sophisticated kill chain. Detect, recognize, track, aim an boom. Only certain type of "boom" is result of using a laser. Kinetic shell adds only one step of calculating ballistics, which these days is easiest one in the bunch. If this happens, air combat would turn into a contest of long range gunnery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15#Vietna...
Where the US nearly always had the advantage was in logistics, build quality, electronics and to some extent early but definitely later AWACS.
That and US strategy left much more of the authority on the pilot in the cockpit where soviet doctrine was directed ground control intercepts, this made a difference.
Also US pilots got more airtime then pretty much any other airforce (except possibly the Isreali's iirc) so training was a factor as well.
Against all that the soviets had lots of everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_variants_of_Soviet_mili...
F-86 Sabre:
http://airvectors.net/avf86.html
MIG-15:
Just as well; cost five times as much as a B-29 per flying hour and even with the jet boost could barely clear 40,000 ft. Sabre pilots often reported MiG-15s well above them, near 50,000 ft, so I doubt they'd have had much difficulty tackling the Peacemakers.