Originally posted by Innominate
The purpose ISN'T to be maneuvering at 100ias.
Lets assume the jet can maintain a 20 degree angle of attack without losing control. Next, off-boresight missiles giving you about a 60 degree arc to target in. That means you can shoot at a target 80 degrees off your nose. Add thrust vectoring and that 20 degree AoA can be expanded drasticly. You don't have to flip around backwards and blow all of your speed for thrust vectoring to mean a kill. Even a very small increase in max AoA can mean a kill against what would normally be a more maneuverable aircraft.
Think of it as a way to get your nose a bit further up in a turn for just long enough to get the shot off. The low speed tricks you see them doing have no place in air combat, but they demonstrate a capability which does.
From a tactical perspective, the main thing the thrust vectoring and canards give the SU is better turn performance but, for the most part, there is little tactical utility in the ability to point the nose at this slow of a speed ("post-stall" maneuvering) being demonstrated here so Innominate is partially right. But, he's also partially wrong. The point to a high off-axis seeker capability is that you don't have to point at the target to launch. I don't know the numbers on the AIM-9X but in the late 80's we experimented with an advanced IR seeker that had 120deg FOV (240 total). This seeker wasn't continued because our aircraft were already more capable than the competition and it was deemed to be unnecessary by the powers that be. Combined with a HMS you could shoot behind your wingline. With fire then aquire systems, thrust vectoring and HMS you could do even more than this 80's system.
Also, you can't pull high AOA at high speed, at least not without blacking out or ripping the wings off so by definition the SU's capability is more about low-speed maneuverability and it's value is debatable with the advanced missiles (AA and SAM) out there. During all the training I've done, in any multi-bogey environment if you drop anchor to turn with an adversary you're dead meat I don't care in what direction your nose is pointing.
Oh..I should add though....that's one hell of an airshow.
Mace
