Candid words from a top gun instructor, who now commands roughly half the airborne striking force that the US Navy has over the Pacific. More than that, these are words of any American pilot who’s heard all the Sukhoi stories. Captain Hal Murdock, commodore at Lemoore Naval Air Station, California, is a Tomcat ace who now spends his time effecting the foundations for the next generation of American naval aviation, a.k.a. the F-35 Lightning-II.
To be honest, I’m yet to find a US pilot (and most defence correspondents have met a whole bu
nch in the last three years) who wouldn’t give something really valuable to get behind the stick of a Su-30MKI. The young US Navy lieutenant Matthew “Bloody” Stoll, who flew me in an F/A-18F Super Hornet in February last year at Yelahanka, said, “Hook me up with a Flanker ride, and I’ll get you another F/A-18 flight!”
Anyway, during the briefind we got from Captain Murdock at the Lemoore base, the discussion inevitable shifted to a comparison between the Super Hornet and the Su-30MKI. You can always trust a real pilot to be honest about his gear, and stuff used by his purported adversaries. For starters, he was candidly and unambigiously clear that if a Super Hornet and Su-30MKI went head to head, one on one, it would be an incredibly good fight.
One thing he said outright — it would be imperative for the Super Hornet to keep the engagement BVR to keep its advantages peaked. The Super Hornet, he said, would be able to paint the MKI with its AESA minutes before the reverse could happen, giving it precious minutes to act. Secondly, in a BVR engagement, the electronic warfare environment made possible by the Super Hornet’s integrated EW systems are “far superior to anything known to exist on the best Russian fighters”. But, he said, you allow the Su-30 to get into a close-combat engagement with the Super Hornet, and “it’s gonna be a very different story, I’m afraid.”
For starters, the Super Hornet will be almost hopelessly outmanouvered by the MKI, Murdock says. “We’ve seen these fellas at air shows. It ain’t funny. That thing can swing.” Even the Super Hornet’s turbo nose-down feature (something pilots love) wont allow it to dodge. And probably most importanty, Murdock indicates that in any engagement, if the Super Hornet doesn’t make its kill quickly, it’s going to almost ruin the odds of winning. The Su-30 has immensely more endurance and survivability in the air than a Super Hornet, and by the simple virtue of being able to stay in the air longer, has a critical one-up.
This is why Queenie Arror is called dumb head.
He actually buys the story that in BVR Flanker can’t defend itself. Actually, a BVR is better to defend than WVR.
No BVR can be fought beyond range of 40-60 kms (in future may be). Beyond that the kill ratio is pathetic.
What can f-18 do after it detects a MKI? Where is the weapon to down aMKI at say 100 kms?
MKI PESA will detect hornet precious few secs late but, at BVR, thats hardly an advantage.
At WVR it will be a massacre.
Qunnie, you should be writing kid porn.
Ok insults apart, what fella above said is correct, basically if the Hornet and MKI both have AWACs, then the Hornet loses its marginal advantage too. Basically both sides have similar AAMs as well. And while the Hornet has good EW, it still relies on jammers not superior to what the MKI has in its Israeli Elta 8222.
Folks – what are the kill probabilities for BVR vs WVR? I would not be surprised if the difference is *very* large.
However – I assume that waiting *minutes* before “seeing” your enemy is nothing to be sneezed at – AWACS or not.
thanks for sharing! Its really interesting to know what they think!
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However – I assume that waiting *minutes* before “seeing” your enemy is nothing to be sneezed at – AWACS or not.
it is useful, but frankly, all it shows is that the f/a-18 e/f has much lower rcs than the flanker. assuming an equal radar on both (malaysians said so) and a 1 mtr sq rcs on the hornet and a 5 sq mtr on the flanker (ram treated), the hornet crew gets around 5 minutes of detection advantage at around 1000 km/hr speed. but if both sides have awacs, the hornets with e2c and flankers with phalcon, that advantage disappears. and it comes down to weapons and ew and tactics, all of which have so many variables that its hard to tell the outcome. the pilot is right in that the hornet has an excellent ew suite and a towed jammer and will have amraam d in future (much better than r77), but the mki too has an elta 8222 with drfm and if it gets a combo of longer ranged astras and r-172’s, then all bets are off. i would actually go for the flankers. the super hornets problem is it combines state of the art avionics with a very poor aerodynamically speaking, airframe. otherwise, it would be a world beater.