USAF pilot on SU-30MKI

[Crimmsy]

For the airpower enthusiasts out there, here's a blog post with a couple youtube videos of an American F-15 driver discussing some observations of the Indian AF's Su-30MKI's at Red Flag this year.

Link

If you have any interest in tactical aircraft at all, you must watch these two videos. Learn details about the Cope India fiasco, problems with Russian fighter jet engines, how the F-15 can defeat the Su-30MKI's vectored thrust, and why the Indians apparently won't be asking for more 1 v 1 dogfights with the USAF.

 

[CougarKing]

Here's a related article from Flight International....  

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/11/06/318506/video-us-red-flag-pilot-candidly-assesses-su-30mkis-limits-rafales-dirty-tricks.html

US Red Flag pilot candidly assesses Su-30MKI’s limits, Rafale’s dirty tricks
By Stephen Trimble

US Air Force pilots flying Boeing F-15s “dominated” and “amazed” Indian Air Force Sukhoi Su-30MKI pilots in a recent exercise, but still expect that legacy F-15s and Lockheed Martin F-16s will swiftly lose their competitive edge to the Russian export fighters.

Those remarks came in an explicitly candid assessment by an unidentified USAF pilot posted on 4 November on the YouTube online video sharing service. “Now what I’m scared of is Congress is going to hear that and go – ‘Great, we don’t need to buy any more airplanes. No, no, no, no,'” the pilot tells an audience that includes retired air force leaders.

He adds that “it’s only a matter of time” before the IAF Su-30 pilots learn how to overcome the manoeuvre used so successfully against them at the international Red Flag exercise.

The F-15 pilots used their simulated combat experience against the thrust vectoring capability of the Lockheed Martin F-22 to exploit a vulnerability of the Su-30 in a hard turn, the pilot said.“So we start to pull in on him, and then all of a sudden you start to see the [Su-30’s aft-] end kick down and he starts doing vectored thrust,” the pilot says.

“But now he starts falling out of the sky. He’s falling out of the sky so fast that you don’t even have to go up,” the pilot adds. “You just have to pull back on the stick a little bit, pull the throttle, go to guns and come in and drill his brains out.” Even so, the professionalism and skill of the IAF pilots at Red Flag gained the respect of the USAF pilots.

However, French Air Force pilots, who deployed to the same event with the Dassault Rafale fighter, apparently engaged in non-friendly activities.“They never really came to any merges,” the pilot explains.

“What they were really doing was, they had all their sensors on sniffing and seeing how our radars worked. And that’s really all they were doing out here. They came out here and they watched the whole flight, with their newest airplane and their newest electronic receiving units, and sucked up all the ‘trons in the air.”

The pilot also says the IAF’s MiG-21 Bison aircraft, modified with Israeli radar, active radar missiles and electronic jammers, are nearly “invisible” to the F-15 and F-16’s current mechanically-scanned arrays, allowing the Indian pilots to sneak past the USAF radar screen and engage the F-15s and F-16s in dogfights.

“The MiG-21 had the ability to get in the scissors with you at 110kts at 60 degrees nose high and go from 10,000 to 20,000 feet,” he said.

The Su-30MKI deployment to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, for the exercise was complicated by the low-reliability of the Russian made engines, the pilot adds.

“One of the things the Indians were very disappointed in, was when they FOD’d an engine out, the Russians make them send the engine back to Russia, and then they’ll send them a new one,” the pilot says. “So, not the perfect situation for them being here in the United States with those engines.”

The pilot did not identify himself in the videos, but there were several clues to his status. He wore a fighter pilot’s G-suit, and he referred to a patch on his shoulder that indicated he was a member of the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis AFB. He also referred to Nellis as “here”, indicting this was the location where his lecture took place.

Related blog:

The DEW Line blog: USAF pilot describes IAF Su-30MKI performance at Red Flag-08

   

 

[FoverF]

...USAF pilot who makes a number of telling errors, and does a very poor job of building credibility with me ...

ex, Flankers do not use Tumanski engines (rather Saturn-Lyulka, IIRC), MiG-21 Bison does not use an Israeli radar (Phazotron Kopyo), his critique of the IAF babying their engines does not seem to appreciate that they were operating on an extended several-weeks-long deployment, at the end of a VERY long logistical tail.

The following is a post from Bharat Rakshak (Consortium of Indian Defence Websites), claiming to be sourced from an IAF member at Red Flag, which de-spins/contradicts many of the remarks made in the video:

On Ex Red Flag-the You Tube video- The other side of the Coin!!
Posted by: *** ***
Date: Wed Nov 5, 2008 11:51 pm ((PST))

These are comments by a friend of mine-one of our top grade professional youngsters, and a participant in the recently concluded Red Flag Ex in Nellis AFB.

1. No 1vs1s were flown during the Flag,nor did they engage in Thrust Vectoring(TV) then.IvIs were flown during the sorties in Mountain Home AFB and that too on the first day only! In none of these ex were the Su ever shot down or become vulnerable(This can of course be checked on the ACMI Pod films/casettes).

2.The data rates of turn and TV with regard to the Su is grossly out- the ones on the F-22 may be closer to the truth!! The figures for the Su are very much more than that referred to in the video!!

3.The Radar of the F-22 is superior to the Su presently!

4.Fratricide by our side did take place, more due to not being networked-it occurred when the AWACS was not available(u/s) and a very poor standard of controlling by USAF controllers( terminology and accent).This was mentioned in the debrief.Surprisingly, Fratricide was present for the F-15C as well as other allied A/C. Considering that they were better networked( Link-16,IFF-Mode 4 etc), while we had nothing,it should be a matter of concern for them and not us!!

5.FOD-Take-Off separation-was 30" at Mountain Home but extended to 1min and known to all participants before the start of the Ex!!

6.Incidentally,Mission achievement ratio was higher than 90%, whereas the mission success rates were significantly lower for the USAF, inspite of us op some 20000 kms away!!

I make no guarantees as to the author's identity or their points' validity, but I wasn't terribly convinced by the guy in the video either.