Fulcrum vs Flanker

Does anyone know of a good comparison of the early Fulcrum and Flanker - performance, avionics (weapons too but mostly the same), and ideally cost too, in the AA role? I am hoping something early post Cold War (e.g. Luftwaffe) but not on the internet might exist...!

I have a student looking at hi-lo mixes and all that can be found online is wild claims and dubious graphs rather than real data or an official study.

That is a tricky question. The USSR struggled to do realistic cost comparisons due to the centrally planned economy and I seem to recall Sukhoi claiming Su-27 was only 15% more expensive than the MiG-29 in a 1989/90 article in an interview in Military Technology magazine. This seems unlikely in retrospect.

In terms of early Su-27 and MiG-29:

In avionics, the radars were roughly equal technically, but the larger antenna on the Su-27 translated to a greater range (100km vs 70km). The Su-27 was supposed to get a much more advanced radar than MiG-29 but technical failures resulted in adoption of components from the less-advanced MiG-29 radar. MiG-29 was initially supposed to get an improved version of the MiG-23's Sapfir-23 radar, but later on got a more advanced radar, so they kind of met in the middle a bit.

The Su-27 had a superior IRST primarily due to improved cooling, giving longer range.

The Su-27 had the TKS-2 and Spectr-1 datalink, which allowed Su-27s to perform group actions and exchange target information. The MiG-29 just had a standard Biriyuza datalink receiver for receiving data from GCI control.

The Su-27 had the Sorbtsiya ECM suite in external wingtip pods, which was the most capable ECM system the USSR could field, though it took a while to operationalise. The MiG-29 (9.12) had no ECM capability, while the humpback 9.13 added an internal Gardeniya jammer of questionable utility.

The Su-27 was supposed to get a two-colour HUD and large circular CRT, then a three-colour CRT, but in the interests of standardisation, cost and speed adopted the lower-cost, lighter monochrome HUD and CRTs from the MiG-29.

The RWR on each was identical (SPO-15 Beryoza).

In terms of weapons the gun was identical, the Su-27 could carry 10 AAMs including 6 medium-range R-27 missiles, with the MiG-29 only carrying 6 AAMs including 2 R-27 medium-range missiles.

Initially, the Su-27 was supposed to use R-33 AAMs from the MiG-31, but this required the advanced radar with electronic scanning which was abandoned. The enlarged R-27E missile was developed instead to exploit the extra range of the Su-27's radar.

Sukhoi's view of the origin of the high/low mix is that they 'won' the PFI competition fairly against a poor conventional Mikoyan design, then Mikoyan management came back (1971) with a scaled-down copy of Sukhoi's layout and touting a 'high/low mix' idea supported by several research establishments (NIIAS, TsNII-30). Mikoyan claim they already had the lightweight 'integral' layout on the go but didn't show it initially as it wasn't responsive to PFI. The competition was split to lightweight (LPFI) and heavy (TPFI) requirements in 1972 after the US LWF competition was initiated (Mikoyan always had more political clout). Note that the MiG-29 was finally approved in 1974, when the US changed their minds to buy the LWF/ACF as F-16.

It is typically thought that the USSR followed the US lead on high/low mix, but in fact they were pretty much contemporary.

Paul,

Thanks for that, very useful. It's not really a high-low mix as much as a low medium and high medium.

Costs were always a long shot!

Any data on performance anywhere, in particular turn rates with realistic loads (missiles look draggy for both) and real radius etc?

Not sure how much cost info Indian government agencies publish, but they do operate both the MiG-29 and a Flanker variant (Su-30MKI) and would perhaps be the administration most accountable to its people among the group of countries with these two in their inventory. What's more, any documents would likely be in English language.

Perhaps a worthwhile line of research?

EDIT: Regarding performance info, there are partial flight manuals for both the Su-27SK and the basic MiG-29 9.12 available online, including some graphs (in Russian though) - Google ought to turn up sources*. Same for the AL-31F (Su-27 engine).

* If not, I have all three on my HD - I'm sure we'll be able find a way to get them to you.

Thanks. Did not know how reliable those flight manuals were. If they are genuine then they are useful.

just out of curiosity , has anyone ever questioned the validity of any Western flight manual on the net ? Now that would lead to a question of why a flight manual of Russian origin should be "lying" ?

Mikoyan always had more political clout

Click to expand...

It only recently dawned on me that Stalin pal Anastas Mikoyan was actually the brother of Artem Mikoyan, the avionist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastas_Mikoyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artem_Mikoyan