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Chalnoth said:
Nexus said:
US fighters are too fragile, they are high tech toys, unlike Russian fighters, which are much more robust. Well, they have to be robust.
Interesting link, but the F-22 is not done yet. It has multiple redundancies in its computer, and the software is far from finished. I'd be highly surprised if it ever required an in-flight reboot once the aircraft finally shipped (Somehow I don't think it would go over very well with pilots in the middle of a fight...).
Most likely if one system reboots, its backup system takes over critical tasks during flight. Check out some of the comments in the slashdot thread.
But my comment about the robustness was meant overally, not about the electrical systems.
From what I've heard every morning the personal of an airbase in the US must search for small objects on the runway that could get into the air intakes of the F-16 before it could start. Russian fighters can start on almost any runway, doesn't matter how messy it is, because they have big grills on the air intakes that takes care of such objects.
Several years ago I saw a video of a SU-27 which had to land on the fuel tanks beneath the fuselage because the gear was broken. The sparks flew when the metal touched the ground, but it landed succesfully, without fire. The airplane was repairable afterwards. That convinced me that the SU-27 is a flying tank.
It is simply a different approach in plane design. Americans build their fighters like high precision, high tech machines, which are more fragile and need lots of maintenance, Russians still more like tanks which have to work in a worst case scenary with minimal requirements.
BTW, it is really bad that the SU-27 caused the death of ~60 innocent people today at an airshow in the Ukraine.
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