164
submitted 3 months ago by Billy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/world@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

I was going to say the same thing. Maybe these are the especially shitty jets that are even shittier than their normal shitty jets?

[-] saltesc@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

SU-35s are legemdarily good like their older SU-27 brothers. They're arguably the best Gen 4 aircraft in the world now. In general,.Soviet and Russian aircraft have been very formidable.

What you're confusing "shittier" with is after Sukhoi hand the aircraft over to the Russian military. At which point poor selection and training hop in, strapped with janky or old weaponry, given orders by notoriously bad tacticians. And suddenly your fancy "Gen 4.5" aircraft is getting downed by anything with a half modern missile in the tube.

Toe-to-toe it'll be Israel's F-16s—which will need modern configs—that will present a challenge. Certainly not the F-15s. But the real contender will be SAMs which I imagine are the latest fancy American ones.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Israel has 36 F-35s. You can argue about the cost efficiency of the design if you want, but the actual result will be a bunch of dead SU-35s, not a fight between roughly equivalent Gen 4 fighters.

Also, just saying, the American Generation 4.5 was the F-18, not the F-16. The F-16s were originally designed in 1976 (and America didn't sell the F-18s to everyone, while the F-16 is still arguably America's main fighter export)

The Super Hornets in particular are noted for being an actual 4.5 frame, sharing a lot of design features that would come to distinguish genuine Gen 5 fighters.

Only Australia and Kuwait, for some reason, were allowed to buy those sexy beasts.

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

The F-16s and F-15s have 4.5 versions though. They aren't stuck in the 1970's anymore than the F-18 Super is stuck in the 1990's.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 6 points 3 months ago

Fair enough! There's no getting around the fact that the Hornets can load up a lot more ordinance and has better avionics just from being a bigger frame with more thrust, but the F-16s do have a baseline speed and maneuvering advantage.

[-] Jaytreeman@kbin.social 2 points 3 months ago

The issue with Israel isn't the quality of their weapons and munitions. It's the quantity.
This article explains how they don't have many fighter pilots
Israel has something like 35000 people in it's air force. That's a tiny air force. Most of those people are going to be in some type of support role. The article talks about the most elite squadron being only 40 people. Losing one person is arguably a bigger loss than the plane. After all, doesn't matter if you have a plane if no one can fly it

[-] Vikthor@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Israel has something like 35000 people in it’s air force. That’s a tiny air force.

That's very relative. While it may seem tiny from US or Chinese POV it's more than the whole militaries of many European nations even twice as big as Israel.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Oh, that's interesting, I didn't know that, but those 40 would be the guys flying the 36 F-35s, you know? They're just not going to lose that many of them to SU-35S.

And they can protest the Palestinian genocide, because Hamas doesnt have an air force, but if Iran starts sending in bombing missions they'll be in the air.

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

You ... Uh ... Don't think Israel's F-15's are up to the task?

Well… yes and no. Anything made in Russia over the last 2 years likely has electronics that are rather suspect. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some of those new flankers Iran is getting have some repurposed Whirlpool dishwasher chips squirreled away in there somewhere.

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
164 points (96.1% liked)

World News

38147 readers
3021 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS