That's a very impressive display, that thing sure can move, but it reminds me of the USAF 50th anniversary show at Fairford some years ago, where I watched an F-16 and an Su-27 Flanker trying to outdo one another in tight turning circles. They made about the same radius turns (maybe the Flanker was a little bit tighter, but not much in it). They turned at about the same rate too, but the Flanker was doing it without afterburners whereas the F-16 was on full 'burner to sustain the rate.
Which of course means it would have lost the dogfight in a stalemate when it simply dropped out of the sky after about six minutes of 'burner followed by an embarrassing silence as it ran out of JP4. Moves like that don't really prove anything over an airfield, where they can land on fumes after p*ssing all their fuel away doing showboat stuff like that which is tactically meaningless for the most part.
Far more impressive is the supercruise and radar detection capability of the Raptor. Pulling tight turns is all very well, but it generally means that you've gone defensive and cocked things up after the merge. Still, the Fleet Air Arm proved that funky vectored thrust moves can help you win a dogfight, so if the Raptor can do that stuff without blowing all its fuel away, it could be useful. But I'd like to see it do it with weapons and mission fuel on board, which it clearly has not got when performing at an airshow!
Incidentally, Top Gun is the biggest repressed closet homosexual movie on the planet, please god not another one!
And using the Northrop's as MiGs just gets funnier every time you watch it. Hot Shots is more technically accurate.
:D Chock
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