How evenly matched are the two aircraft?
They’re both 4th generation airframes that have been upgraded over the years into 4.5 gen, which means there’s a lot of different variants, or blocks, floating around.
So without knowing anything more, these are likely comparable airframes, but it really depends on when they were each produced.
straight from wikipedia
All F-16 aircraft supplied by Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium will be the F-16AM (single-seat) / F-16BM (twin-seat) Block 15 Mid-Life Update (MLU) variants. These variants are analogous to the F-16C/D Block 30/50/52.
Actually…the frames are mostly aluminum and titanium… I’ll see myself out… gotta watch more drone videos. No, I’m not getting one. I just want to know what way to awkwardly curl and twist for a dignified last 5 seconds of fame for when AI takes over the sky.
If this is one from a few weeks ago (presuming so based on “first”), this was a fight between the Su-35 versus three F-16s and a Patriot radar. The version I heard is that the Su-35 targeted one of the F-16s and got taken out by another.
Very rarely in modern air-to-air combat is anything a comparable match. The F-16 is more maneuverable than the Su-35, but the Su-35 is generally more advanced. The numbers and the Patriot likely gave Ukraine the advantage, but then so did the ongoing collapse of Russia’s air defense network.
It was basically an ambush by the Ukrainians. One F16 was the bait. And two additional F16s were flying low to the ground and came up to fire once the Su-35 took the bait. And one of the two managed to hit it. With additional help from the patriot radar.
From what I understand the SU is bigger, has more range, and can top out a little faster than the f-16. It also has thrust vectoring so it can maneuver pretty well in a dogfight.
The f-16 is cheaper to run and more reliable, and since it’s smaller and lighter it’s hard to spot and can still maneuver with the best of them.
Fighters don’t dogfight anymore, they lob a2a missiles at each other from beyond visual range.
keep in mind that missiles have to spend their energy maneuvering just like jets do. so an agile aircraft with a well-trained pilot has a pretty fair chance of evading any single missile shot at it.
Missiles can pull g forces that would kill a human.
and yet, many fighter pilots since they were invented around the end of WW2 have managed to dodge them. missiles don’t chase their targets, they don’t have the fuel to. they use something called proportional navigation to aim for where they believe their target will be in order to make their apparent movement disappear. a sidewinder, for example, has 15 seconds of fuel. after that, it’s a glider. if the pilot doesn’t feel like dying that particular day, and they dodge at the right time, the missile misses and lacks the speed to catch the jet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_navigation
if you want examples of how pilots use aggressive maneuvers to evade missiles, there are plenty of videos on YouTube about the subject, including some from Desert Storm that feature the F-16. or head over to the War Thunder forums, there’s plenty of nerds there who would love to spend days leaking classified military documents and info-dumping on you.
The missiles are smaller, faster, and don’t have to keep a human alive inside.
the missiles have as little as 5 seconds of fuel, make most of their attack run as gliders, and lack brains to do more than programmatically guess at where their target will decide to be. they aren’t intelligent, and don’t understand physics.
I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told the other person. while getting shot at is a life and death situation, a well-trained pilot in an agile aircraft might dodge missiles even without chaff and flares, using nothing but the skin of their teeth and their many hours of training on how proportional navigation works.
I think the confusion is that the techniques employed are to tire the missile out, not dodge them. It is possible to dodge in some cases, but, this is due to limitations in missile’s radar (and/or energy) far more than the fighter outmaneuvering something that can do 20g turns at mach 7. Thus, the maneuverability metric that originally brought on this entire conversation is not nearly as beneficial as described as they don’t need to turn on a dime, just in the right direction at the right time.
And yet wing tipping and aerial gunners in prop planes are back.
Tbh, all aerial combat should be done in open cockpit biplanes with the pilots shooting revolvers at one another. It’s supposed to be all elegant and shit like jousting in the sky, so let’s get some treaties done and live as the lord intended.
I grew up outside NYC in the 80’s and every summer my parents took me & my brother upstate to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome where they still fly vintage aircraft from the WWI era. Looking at that website it looks like they still put on their “WWI Dog Fight Spectacular” show, which is something that still makes me smile.
Damn, now i gotta fire up Aces over Europe again.
Oh for sure that’s mainly obsolete, I’m just stating the main differences that I’ve read about them.
F-16s did have a cannon. Don’t know if that was removed in later blocks.
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As @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world said, if it’s the same incident, then it was the Su-35 being lured into a trap.
There really wasn’t a dogfight.
RFU released a video about this on July 13th, with a transcript if you don’t feel like watching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-35
- Empty weight: 19,000 kg (41,888 lb) [263]
- Gross weight: 25,300 kg (55,777 lb) with 50% internal fuel
- Max takeoff weight: 34,500 kg (76,059 lb)
- Fuel capacity: 11,500 kg (25,400 lb) internal
- Powerplant: 2 × Saturn AL-41F1S afterburning turbofan engines, 86.3 kN (19,400 lbf) thrust each dry, 137.3 kN (30,900 lbf) with afterburner, 142.2 kN (32,000 lbf) in emergency power
Performance
- Maximum speed: 2,400 km/h (1,490 mph, 1,290 kn) at altitude
- Maximum speed: Mach 2.25
- 1,400 km/h (870 mph; 760 kn), Mach 1.13 at sea level
- Cruise speed: 1,170 km/h (730 mph, 630 kn) / Mach 1.1+ supercruise at medium altitude[264]
- Range: 3,600 km (2,200 mi, 1,900 nmi) at altitude
- 1,580 km (982 mi) at sea level
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon
- Empty weight: 18,900 lb (8,573 kg)
- Gross weight: 26,500 lb (12,020 kg)
- Max takeoff weight: 42,300 lb (19,187 kg)
- Fuel capacity: 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg) internal
- Powerplant: 1 × General Electric F110-GE-129 for Block 50 aircraft , 17,155 lbf (76.31 kN) thrust dry, 29,500 lbf (131 kN) with afterburner
(1 × Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-229 for Block 52 aircraft, 17,800 lbf (79 kN) thrust dry and 29,160 lbf (129.7 kN) with afterburner.)
Performance
- Maximum speed: Mach 2.05, 1,176 kn (1,353 mph; 2,178 km/h) at 40,000 feet, clean[80]
- Mach 1.2, 800 kn (921 mph; 1,482 km/h) at sea level[80]
- Cruise speed: 504 kn (580 mph, 933 km/h)
- Combat range: 295 nmi (339 mi, 546 km) on a hi-lo-hi mission with 4 × 1,000 lb (454 kg) bombs
- Ferry range: 2,277 nmi (2,620 mi, 4,217 km) with three drop tanks
YES!
This title read as if Dan Caine was flying the Su-35
