Of all the Russian fighters you can see by "who's left" and "who's being
built & refurbished" to get a feel as to which ones really made it with
pilots and maintainers. The MiG-21 / F-7 Fishbed / Mongol Series are
still in limited production in China and still have a few modernization
programs going on the two most noted perhaps are the Russian MiG-2000
and Romanian-Israeli upgrade Program. The Chinese have many new variants
of the F-7 and all of them now have modern avionics and can carry all
kinds of Western and Eastern weapons - but in essence they are all still
MiG-21's, handle the same way and are all range limited on a modern
scale.

Of all the attack birds the Su-22 Fitter H/G da da seems to have become
the THUD of the east and is still liked by pilots in former Communist
countries such as Poland that actually upgraded them. It had lots of
power, carries a lot, stable as hell in bombing, adapts to all kinds of
junk, handles well and maintains good. Not a digital cockpit but it was
one of the best before the MiG-29 came out.

The Floggers / Fencers / Fitters and what have you have all been
replaced by the Sukhoi Su-27 family and for a while the MiG-29 had
trouble but now it is steaming ahead.

I would not rely on army manuals for anything aviation wise - there is
such a volume of open source material available in books stores and on
the web you can find just about anything you need, anything dated before
2000 isn't worth the paper its on - my opinion





wrote in message
ups.com...
In a follow-up, FAS noted that there are errors in the guide
concerning the
dimensions of US aircraft. Not only was the recognition guide
needlessly
restricted, but that restriction may have prevented it from being
accurate.

D

These were not only errors, I think. It seems they have a lot of
problem with telling the difference between some members of Fittter
family - ancient Su-7B and swing-wing Su-17/Su-20/Su-22 (I saw a photo
of the latter together with photos of the former). Also Sea King
drawings went twicence with the actual Sea King, but repeated for
French Super Frelon heavy helicopter. No wonder - it's just a U.S.
Army manual...

Best regards,
Jacek