Quote:
Originally Posted by Vespers War
I was reading a bit on the MiG-29, particularly impressions from NATO pilots when they got to fly East German examples after reunification, and the consensus seems to be "great knife-fighter, but good luck surviving to get there." In any of its Soviet-era configurations, it's a very head-down aircraft due to a lack of automation and the need to manually configure switches and knobs, and it's intended to be guided to a target by ground control. Its radar only has something like a 43 mile range.
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Check out this article about Israeli pilots test flying Polish MiG-29s against their own IAF aircraft in the 1990s. The Israelis quoted in the piece were really impressed, at the time.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...m-test-program
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vespers War
Both the Slovakian and Polish Fulcrums should be more pilot-friendly, since they received upgrades with NATO-compliant electronics that more heads-up. Slovakia has 9 upgraded single-seat aircraft and 2 twin-seat (originally they had 10 single-seat, but one crashed during a training exercise). Some are apparently in fairly rough shape, and IIRC only 4 were still active immediately before they were retired last year. I believe Poland upgraded 16 aircraft. Neither received any sort of Western weapons integration as far as I know, so they're still going to need Aphid, Adder, or Archer missiles for air-to-air combat, and Slovakia was out of those by the time they retired their aircraft.
Ukraine does have some upgraded MiG-29, the MiG-29MU1 and MiG-29MU2. The MU1 has electronics upgrades, extending the radar range to ~60 miles, adding GPS to the navigation, and using a NATO-standard radio, while the single MU2 also integrates precision air-to-ground weapons (a bit questionable IMO since the Fulcrum has a pretty pathetic payload of 4 tonnes, slightly more than half an F-16's payload). I don't know how many were upgraded to MU1 standard, and there's just the lone MU2 (which has been serving in an air defense role because they need that more than a bomb truck).
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One of the pieces I read suggested that the Ukrainians might need to pull the more advanced western avionics from the Polish and Slovakian MiGs because their own Fulcrums still use older, less capable Soviet-era avionics.
On the other hand, as the Ukrainians have been able to mount HAARM missiles on their own MiG-29s successfully, how difficult would it be for them to mod their Fulcrums in order to use AIM-9 Sidewinders and/or other Western AAMs? AMRAAM would be a game-changer for the Ukrainians, but the US has stated that it is not in the cards (citing concerns re escalation and advanced Western active radar homing AAMs falling into Russian hands).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Heffe
Regarding the nuclear saber-rattling, Russia seemed to back off of that track a while ago as the international community, and particularly China, seemed displeased by the constant threats of nuclear war. Given Putin's need for China's support, especially now, I don't think he can risk pissing off Xi by making empty threats about nukes. I suppose we'll see though. Definitely agreed that we'll see more missile strikes on civvies though.  |
I hope Xi can talk some sense into Putin, but that's like the Wolf advising the Fox to take it easy on the henhouse.
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