https://archive.is/FnJNp

Some delicious brainworms relating to wunderweapons circlejerking dipshits love to do.

USAF Eagle pilot tells why a gun-only F-15 would win an aerial engagement against a fully armed Su-27 Flanker

Yes you correctly read that. Some dipshit pilot actually thinks he'd totally win a one-on-one battle with a peashooter against someone with fucking missiles.

The F-15 Eagle

The F-15 Eagle is an all-weather fighter designed to gain and maintain air supremacy. As the first US fighter with engine thrust greater than its basic weight, the F-15 can accelerate while in a vertical climb. In fact, the Eagle can climb 50,000 feet in less than 60 seconds.

The relatively low aircraft weight, compared to wing area, made the Eagle not just fast, but also highly maneuverable, creating a near perfect platform for air-to-air combat.

Which is why it got retired in favor of more shit planes.

F-15 Eagle Vs Su-27 Flanker

How would a gun-only F-15C Eagle cope against a fully armed Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker? ‘I’m going to assume the F-15C is gun-only and the [Su-27] Flanker has a combat load-out, perhaps minus a couple missiles he expended BVR. Also, assuming the F-15 has internal and expendable countermeasures onboard, both electronic and IR (perhaps BOL-IR and MJU-10),’ Marcus Cade, former F-15 Eagle pilot with the US Air Force (USAF), explains on Quora.

THATS RIGHT! ANOTHER DOGSHIT OPINION FROM QUORA!

‘The F-15 is in a tough spot, no doubt, and he can’t separate against a Flanker. His only option is to fight until he kills the Flanker or a wingman shows up and saves the day.

YOU JUST READ IT CORRECTLY! NO, AN F-15 EAGLE WOULD FUCKING STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE IF ITS DOWN TO IT'S GUNS AND ITS BEING CHASED BY A JET ARMED TO THE TEETH

‘Step 1 – see that yellow button with the black stripes I’ve circled? It reads “Emer Jett.” The Eagle Driver hits that button. If he’s out of missiles, the pylons and launchers under the wings are just weighing him down and creating drag. The Emer Jett button will blow every cart on the airplane, leaving the mighty-mighty Eagle a lean, clean, gun-killing machine. The Flanker won’t know what hit him: first, he’ll see sh*t falling off the Eagle and wonder if there’s combat damage or an ejection about to happen.

Translation: push button to hopefully make it easier to dodge missiles that are hunting it down faster than it flies.

The F-15 Eagle is NEVER doomed

‘Then, as the Eagle driver defends against IR missiles and min-ranges radar missiles, the Flanker will realize he’s losing the fight. “How is this possible?” he asks himself as he trades in all his smash to pull the Eagle in front of his 3/9 as he attempts one last Archer that the Eagle flares off. And now he’s jinking in front of the best air-to-air gun platform ever fielded, flown by a single-mission pilot who is a PhD at finishing this particular fight.

You can viscerally feel this dude just cranking his hog to this top gun level wet dream he's conjuring up

‘As the 20mm HEI rounds start pounding thru his speed-brake and wreaking carnage inside his jet, it’s up to him. Does he bow to the inevitable and eject, or does he stick it out until the Eagle-driver walks the pipper up to the canopy and watches the RATR pop up just as the plexiglass shatters and the Flanker-driver’s last sight is his heart being blown out of his chest and splattering across the instrument panel (I borrowed that particular visual).

It is literally more likely for the f-15 pilot to shit himself mid-flight than it is for him to score a dog fighter style kill on another jet.

Gun Only F-15 Eagle Vs fully armed Su-27 Flanker

He continues;

Oh no

‘I’ve flown this profile many times. While I was at Langley, each squadron would keep a couple jets “demo clean” to support the demo team during airshow season. The clean jets would be assigned to Red air, since they didn’t have a captive AIM-9 to allow full-up blue-air training. They also had a fuel disadvantage of 4–8K pounds. So, we’d fly the card and give blue-air the training they needed … and be lethal as F if we got in amongst them. More often, we’d die like we were meant to and Blue air would bingo out and RTB.

Screams "millennium challenge" forced handicap to me

‘Then we’d BFM or ACM amongst ourselves, to get some training with any fuel we had left. Trust me, a clean Eagle is enormously more maneuverable than a 1- or 2-bag Eagle, and surprisingly more maneuverable than a jet w/ no external tanks, but pylons and missiles on board. It’s a hot knife thru butter for the few minutes until fuel runs out. I wouldn’t walk into this no-missile scenario willingly … but the Flanker driver would have only a short window to get his kill before he was looking over his shoulder and hoping his life-insurance was paid up.’

From my understanding of aerial combat, actual engagements would always occur miles away, waaaaaayyyyyyyy out of eyesight, with modern "dogfighting" taking place closer but still far away as hell. Not even including the fact you would rarely be flying alone if you're in contested airspace.

F-15 Eagle Vs Su-27: Respecting the Flanker family

Cade concludes;

Please make it stop

‘Don’t mistake confidence for arrogance. Air superiority was my job for quite a while, and I was on the receiving end of the information stream provided by a very well-resourced intelligence community. I understand and respect many threat platforms’ strengths (esp. the Su-27 family), and have been part of a community that worked hard to find and exploit their weaknesses.

Okay dude. Totally not arrogant

‘I have flown the MiG-29, and flown against many modern weapons systems operated by various nations. I’ve seen my team rolled up by MiGs fighting in their own back yard after we made just one or two early mistakes. I’ve debriefed at length (occasionally ad nauseam) to understand why a mission failed, or why we took losses in an otherwise successful mission … and how to do better next time. Arrogant tacticians lose. You can only learn to win by beginning with humility and being open to learning (and re-learning) lessons. The end product of that process may come across as arrogance … but it’s actually a very hard-earned confidence.’

Translation: we've been rolled by our allies who were using older commercial versions of Soviet tech and we think we'd win now after getting our asses kicked.