F-15 Vs Su-27 - Undoubtedly, the two most dangerous fighters of the Cold War were the American F-15C Eagle and the Soviet Su-27, code-named "Flanker". Who would have the advantage in a dogfight? We ask former USAF F-15 pilot Paul Woodford. "The Su-27 Flanker emerged as a threat that the USAF F-15 community had to take seriously in the late 1980s when a significant number of aircraft entered service." During my first two F-15 flights (Soesterberg AB NL in 1978-1982, Elmendorf AFB AK in 1982-1985) we trained against MiG-21 and -23 aircraft. When I finished the Joint Staff tour and returned to flying the Eagles in 1989, the MiG-29s and Su-27s were the main threat and we were seriously training against them.
If you look at the published data on the F-15, Su-27 and their armament, it is immediately clear that the Flanker and Eagle were equal in terms of performance and armament capabilities. However, we - eagle drivers - were sure that we would win the battle. This was based on our knowledge of the number of hours of training the flanking pilots had compared to ours. When I started flying the F-15 again at Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan, we trained almost exclusively against out-of-sight forward firing; i.e. Su-27 Flanker and MiG-29 Fulcrum, although their number, at least in our area of operation, was small. If we could beat planes similar to our capabilities, we thought we could beat anyone. We didn't know how good the Su-27's radar was. Ours was damn good and we had to assume theirs was too. Our air-to-air weapons, the AIM-7M Sparrow and AIM-9M Sidewinder, matched the Su-27 AA-10 Alamo and AA-11 Archer on paper. The advantage of the Su-27 over us was the Long Range Infrared Search and Tracking (IRST) system.
F-15 Vs Su-27
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Mikoyan Mig 29
No one would bet a bank on something I'm about to share with you. We had to assume that the ship and its missiles were at least as good as ours, and so we trained. But there were a few things most of us felt, even though we rarely shared those thoughts.
Published performance specs and numbers are always the best, especially for radar target acquisition and missile range. The probability of killing our sparrows was about 50%. The pk for the Alamo was probably similar. The short-range heat seekers were different: the AIM-9M's Pk was almost 100%, and we had no reason to believe that the Archer was inferior. We knew that the actual performance of our own planes and missiles was slightly lower than claimed, and probably theirs as well. But whatever the numbers, we probably still had a tie. The biggest difference was the training. We flew an average of three times a week, training hard against the threat of how good we are. Back then, we knew from the information that Russian pilots fly and train much less. Tacticians from the Combat Weapons School at Nellis AFB, Nevada, have been working hard on how to defeat a BVR as capable as ours, specifically how the F-15 and its missiles can defeat the Su-27 and its missiles. They then developed a secret technique called the f-pole manoeuvre. Essentially, we would enter combat high, fast, and as close to the threat as possible (giving our AIM-7s the greatest range possible), take off at the maximum optimal range, and immediately enter sharp turns right into the constraints of the radar gimbal. Our sparrows were in the air, flying straight to the target for the shortest possible distance. Their missiles, if fired at the same distance, would have to travel farther to reach us. A properly executed F pole maneuver might even make it harder for their IRST systems to find and track us, but I can't confirm that. We had a lot of faith in this technique and practiced it religiously, believing it would make a major difference in a fight.
In other words, we thought we were ready for them. We were better dressed. We were just starting to field the AIM-120 AMRAAM when I left Kadena for another job and never flew it. I think it gave us a huge advantage for about a year until the villains caught up with us. Same as AIM-9X and today's enemy equivalent. And of course, today everyone knows about the F-pole maneuver and it can be assumed that foreign air forces train their fighter pilots in this technique. I don't have much opportunity to talk to current USAF fighter pilots these days, but I bet their level of confidence that they can defeat enemy threats is no different than ours. — Paul "Skid" Woodford Read - Cold War Eagle Driver: F-15 Pilot Reveals It All Here Follow Paul's aviation adventures on his blog here
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F 15 Versus Flanker: An Eagle Pilot's View
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