Pilotasso wrote:
Danimal wrote:
The F-16 does have lower wing loading, bleeding off less energy in high G turns, lower aspect ratio for quicker roll rates and a better thrust to weight ratio. The F/A-18 does have a slightly more capable radar package (until the APG-68 version 10) but despite all this they have nearly identical real world performance, especially if we're talking about super hornets and CJ's. However, speaking from experience, my unit's F-16CJ's consistently owned spanish F/A-18C's. Although I would most likely chalk that up for more experienced pilots plus we had JHMCS and they didn't. So realistically I'd say that the battle would go back and fourth with no clear cut winner.
Several things I would like to point out here. First of all, the plane that has higher wing loading is the F-16 not the Hornet. The Hornet radar is not only slightly superior, it is considerably superior. If your talking about APG-65 VS APG-68V9 then the difference is not too much but if your going to include the APG-70 then I have to completely disagree that they are on par.
Spanish F-18's are A MLU's not C's.
My country also trains frequently with Spains F-18's, and among Pilots in my country, they too find that the F-18's fall somewhat behind but only due to worse piloting on the part of the spanish drivers. As far as perfomance goes I have never heard anything bad so far. Infact our pilots say that their kit is better than ours (F-16 MLU). The recent aquisition of helmet mouted sights and (yet unspecified) IR targeting pods has narrowed the gap, but it does give the edge in a knife fight. It will be interesting to see what will happen when they meet again.
Good post. Frisian flag 2012 exercises in Holland Finnish airforces gets 100 kills and 6 loses against Eurofighter ( Germany, UK), Polish new F-16 and older F-16 planes ( Norway, Belgium) and Gripen ( Swedish) of course we dont know what were the rules in that exercises, but still its a amazing numbers...Finnish fighters probably could use their own data link?
