F-15 Strike Eagles Over Saudi Arabia: Then And Now

[MigBuster 2,863]

Richard Crandall started his Air Force flying career in the F-111 Aardvark, but found himself in the cockpit of the mighty F-15E Strike Eagle, the service’s newest jet, during Operation Desert Storm. Although F-15C/D Eagles were already a staple in the Royal Saudi Air Force by the time Desert Storm kicked off, the Strike Eagle would eventually find its way into the Kingdom’s aerial arsenal in the form of the F-15S. 

 

 

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4381/f-15-strike-eagles-over-saudi-arabia-then-and-now

[TeargasHorse 287]

"As for its large visual signature, real fighter pilots aren’t afraid of being seen: We kill you as we spit in your face" (The War Zone, 2016). Take that, Boelcke!

[ShrikeHawk 384]

Great article with lots of great info. The differences of force multipliers like GPS make the capabilities of yesteryear in essentially the same plane seem like like sticks and stones compared to now.

[Toryu 156]

 

"As for its large visual signature, real fighter pilots aren’t afraid of being seen: We kill you as we spit in your face" (The War Zone, 2016). Take that, Boelcke!

 

 

Yeah, let him fight against a MiG-21 and ask him again about his thoughts.

[+streakeagle 865]

Yeah, let him fight against a MiG-21 and ask him again about his thoughts.

Are there any MiG-21 pilots who have ever painted an F-15 kill on their aircraft? Sometimes size gives you things to make up for your ease of being spotted. The F-15's kill record would indicate the trade-off was the right one if you can afford the price tag.

[Toryu 156]

 

Are there any MiG-21 pilots who have ever painted an F-15 kill on their aircraft?

 

Relevance? I'd bet a lot that some Eagle-drivers had their asses handed in Constant Peg.

[MigBuster 2,863]

No betting required, some F-15 pilots were humbled in that project, but not sure how many F-15s they had painted on them.

[JediMaster 451]

Relevance? I'd bet a lot that some Eagle-drivers had their asses handed in Constant Peg.

Sure, but training like that is deliberately stacked into worst-case scenarios to give them something to work against.

 

In every combat meeting of F-15s and MiG-21s, the F-15s have won. Syria 1982 is the primary example of course, but the fact is that as time has passed the 21s have been largely replaced by later generations so the odds of a 21 and a 15 squaring off today have never been lower.

 

You can always create a situation where the older plane will win, but the real question is how likely is that to happen?

[Toryu 156]

That's not the point.

 

The MiG-21 was hailed in several evaluations for virtually being invisible (mind you: that was during the time, when engine-smoke was still politically correct), while larger american fighters would be at disadvantage, was they always stuck out. The F-15 is one large-a$$ bird (I could spot an airliner-sized 'target' at 40NM+ at high altitude* - an F-15 could be seen easily from 15NM, depending on the aspect and environmental conditions).

 

You can substitute "MiG-21" for any other small-sized fighter of today.

 

____

* Yes, the contrail gave it away, but you could distinctly see a discrete dot in front of that contrail.

[MigBuster 2,863]

In this case the accounts were 1v1 BFM and yes the F-15 pilots were trying but making mistakes......which happen in combat as well I suppose.

[+streakeagle 865]

If the MiG-21 is so hard to beat, why did F-4s average 2:1 or better kill ratios against them while being heavy smokers with crappy missiles? In 1972, with better training and missiles, the Navy was getting 6:1 or better kill records with hard wing F-4Js against MiG-17s that turned better and were just as hard to spot as MiG-21s. Why would the Su-27 be built at all if small size were the key to air superiority? I love the MiG-21. In some ways, it was the forerunner of the F-16, at least for WVR dogfight performance. But pilots could not see out of the cockpit. They were very short range and meant to be pure interceptors. When used for dog fighting, they ran out of fuel.

 

The guys at groom lake liked beating teen fighters, but could only win if:

1) they were allowed to fly in a way that allowed them to get WVR undetected.

2) they flew in a way to have enough fuel to fight.

3) the opposition didn't have experience against the type, which affected their ability to spot the MiG-21 and exploit its weaknesses.

[MigBuster 2,863]

They did a lot of 1v1 DACT set ups during Constant Peg as well..........the F-16XL got its A handed to it by a MiG-2F-13 when they took it there.....although the XL they took was even more underpowered than F-14A.........though not the case for the F-16A:

 

Quote from a pilot in Red Eagles "The only aircraft that was more-or-less unbeatable against the MiG-21 was the F-16A"

 

Aircraft size is a factor when the MK 1 eyeball is the primary sensor.......it doesn't make something invisible or invincible but definitely made things harder. 

 

Quote Red Eagles

"The biggest problem everyone had was seeing it, finding it and tracking it Peck said". I remember being behind it in gun tracking situations and thinking there's nothing to this thing. all I can see is the wing. Trying to acquire the MiG-21 visually was a learning experience in itself"

 

In AIMVAL / ACEVAL where F-14As had to visually ID the F-5s (with TCS)  they could do it about about 5 miles head on IIRC and fire an AIM-7 first...unfortunately long before end game an AIM-9 was coming back into their face from the F-5 and both died 

 

Could the Soviets have built a single engine aircraft with the same range, performance and loadout of the Su-27? (The trade off was a larger visual and radar cross section).

 

There was a lot to it ......the Arab MiG series gives a lot of experienced accounts and I actually think the DCS MiG-21bis module gives a good appreciation of why it was so difficult to fly overall let alone dogfight. The 21F-13 had a lot more issues than the bis being the first but it was typically more maneuverable according to just about every nation that flew them.

 

For the the majority of Vietnam getting in close was a formality for the VPAF due to non existent radar coverage and you could argue rightly their small size with far less smokey engine. The primary interceptor mission of MiG-21s was nearly always to hit the strikers or get them to jettison their payload......then typically run for it (which is when several got tagged) without staying to dogfight. And apart from the MiG-21-F13 of which they had few, the MiG-21MF didn't show up till what 72 (?).....the majority of the VPAF 21s were saddled with the R-3S as their only weapon which they would expend into US formations with the level of success you expect from an AIM-9B copy. They never had R-3R ( AIM-9C comparable?) or anything that could compare to what the USN had with the AIM-9D let alone the AIM-9G.

[Toryu 156]

 

If the MiG-21 is so hard to beat, why did F-4s average 2:1 or better kill ratios against them while being heavy smokers with crappy missiles? In 1972, with better training and missiles, the Navy was getting 6:1 or better kill records with hard wing F-4Js against MiG-17s that turned better and were just as hard to spot as MiG-21s. Why would the Su-27 be built at all if small size were the key to air superiority? I love the MiG-21. In some ways, it was the forerunner of the F-16, at least for WVR dogfight performance. But pilots could not see out of the cockpit. They were very short range and meant to be pure interceptors. When used for dog fighting, they ran out of fuel.

 

How much specific training in fighting F-4s did the MiG-drivers have? You know, like training against an actual F-4 that wouldn't actually shoot if you fucked up. Just like Have Donut and the other secret programs on the US-side. Had the other side benefitted from the same training, the exchange-ratio would not have looked good for the US. 

 

The Su-27 was designed as an interceptor for the PVO, not as an air-superiority-fighter. The initial T-10 prototype sucked pretty bad.

 

The F-104 was the fore-runner of the F-16. It was designed for air-superiority, based on experience from Korea. Just like the F-16 was after Vietnam.

 

 

The guys at groom lake liked beating teen fighters, but could only win if:

1) they were allowed to fly in a way that allowed them to get WVR undetected.

2) they flew in a way to have enough fuel to fight.

3) the opposition didn't have experience against the type, which affected their ability to spot the MiG-21 and exploit its weaknesses.

 

Yeah. So pretty much everything that needs to come into place to make the initial quote count.

 

=========

 

 

Could the Soviets have built a single engine aircraft with the same range, performance and loadout of the Su-27? (The trade off was a larger visual and radar cross section).

 

 

Pretty hard to say. The Su-27 isn't a wonder-bird at all, it's pretty even with the F-15 and F-14 (with F110 engines) and it's characteristics are down to how much internal fuel it has left.

Carrying 9t of fuel is impressive, until somebody forces you into a fight with 7t of that fuel left. You can't throw some of it away to get more maneuverability, when you might need it.

 

Given the times, few designs went for single-engine configurations - none actually, if you leave all tactical birds out.

In a way, single-engine probably didn't make much sense for the mission: You needed a lot of reliability with all that taiga below you and simplicity wouldn't give you any benefit either, like it does in tactical birds.

[+streakeagle 865]

I don't understand the argument at this point. The MiG-21's combat record is far from good. It only performed reasonably well when given very specific environments where the enemy had ROE and/or leadership issues that crippled the opfor's aircraft. Whenever it fought in environments where the enemy had no such restrictions, it was decimated... even by large, smokey F-4s and/or F-15s. Even in the best case, using radar and speed to ambush loaded F-4s with inexperienced pilots, it never did better than 1:2 overall. That fact that it couldn't be spotted head-on at ranges longer than 2nm was extremely annoying, but it was only when it performed precision ground controlled hit and run attacks from the blind 6 at Mach+ speeds where its size wasn't a factor that it excelled. 

 

What cannot be denied is that the MiG-21 was the most produced supersonic fighter jet and still serves after all of these years. But despite costing far more, F-4 Phantoms were produced in quite substantial numbers and are still serving, too.

 

If I had to fly one against the other in combat tomorrow, I would easily take the latest Turkish or Greek F-4s over any variant of MiG-21 still serving. Despite its size and smoke, the F-4 had the advantage then and still does.

Edited August 13, 2016 by streakeagle

[Toryu 156]

You're missing the point completely.

 

The initial argument is that braggiing about "wanting to be seen" is BS and no fighter pilot in his right mind would say (well, maybe) or believe that.

 

The argument you managed to bring up is that nobody has ever fought well in a MiG-21, because it was never flown in a way that would benefit it's ACM strenghts.

When it was flown by Navy (or israeli) aircrew in different evaluation-programmes (for some reason, the Air Force's pilots seemed to be less willing to fly the aircraft aggressively), the aircraft performed extremely well. Somewhat like Luftwaffe MiG-29, when flown outside of training ROEs, where they're supposed to simulate bad guys and are bound by "you have to suck"-tactics.

 

The average vietnamese pilot was underwhelmingly trained in ACM (much like the average Air Force pilot at that time). In contrast to US pilots, though, vietnamese pilots were not only hampered by their own strict ROEs, but they also had no leadership with air-battle experience. Russian advisers proved to be worthless (as shown in Israel), so the tactics taught by them were bound to suck as well. The Russians only began to think about ACM in the 80s, when they built up some aggressor-squadrons to train against. Unlike western aggressor-squadrons, they didn't have any idea about the western approach, but focussed on ACM and BFM only (hence their surprise that NATO would basicly shut-down and go into weekend-mode on friday 1pm).

 

Part of the overwhelming success of Top Gun is that the other side completely lacked a training-programme that equalized the pilot-training factor. Writers like to forget that fact.