We went to Laage, Germany in the mid-90's and flew against the Mig-29's there. The helmet mounted sight in combination with the AA-11 Archer is a formidable combination. It's not all the helmet mounted sight, the AA-11 was a much better IR missile than our Aim-9M sidewinders we were using at the time. The AA-11 had a much higher off boresight capability than we had so they could slave the seeker head to us using the helmet mounted sight long before we could get our sidewinders on them. The AA-11 also had a much shorter arming distance after it came off the rail than we did so their minimum engagement distance was closer. The Mig had a very good thrust to weight ratio also, it's turning performance was very similar to fighting an F-16 in that regard. In a BFM
engagement the Mig had an advantage against us mainly because of the AA-11 missile.
Everything else about it was junk. The workmanship on the airplane looks like the russians were drunk when they built it. The germans had a hard time keeping them running. The avionics were probably equivalent to what we had in the 70's, the radar was junk and our jammer was very effective against it. A fighter is just a moving platform for a radar, 95% of the ability of the aircraft is housed in the radar. People like to talk ACM/BFM because they watched Top Gun too many times and it's sexy, but the reality is you radar work is where you make your money. A Mig-29 should never make it to the merge against a section of F/A-18's, F-15's, or F-16's, that's the reality.
The main reason some non-hornet guys bag on the hornet is because we don't carry much gas. The navy lives and dies around it's deck cycle time on the carrier and the hornets messed that up because they couldn't stay airborne as long as the others. Things had to be rearranged when the hornet came along and it pissed off all the old school guys. The Mig is twice as bad on gas as the hornet ever was, they carry very little gas. Part of that is by design, the Mig-29 was conceived as a point defense fighter and at the height of the cold war they didn't want their pilots defecting with them. One fix for that was to not give them enough gas get to the west.
Good summary. I did the same set with us in VAQ-209 and VMFA-321 and found the same things (and the beer and sausages rock over there. The evenings with the Germans crews were epic
)
Most excellent summation indeed. BUt.. Definitively count me as one of those old hornet Haters and not just the deck cycle issue because of the gas. We also had to build an entirely new air defense of the Strike Group Architecture because of the Hornet's short legs, a radar that was
at the time very susceptible to 60s era SPS 141 repeater jammer used by the Soviets, no IFF (NCTR SUCKED) and until AAMRAM not so good BVR. With the Tomcat (which BTW in the A+, B & D models could easily handle just about anybody out there) We could extend the "Chainsaw" Air Defense way past 600 miles, way past. Nope and I'm not even a fighter guy, but the way ahead should have been the Tomcat 2000. Lastly, when the Tomcat boys finally sucked it up and became a bomber, it proved to be a formidable platform, if for no other reason than an extra pair of eyes at the merge, and longer loiter times in the CAS role in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Hornet and their follow ons have hamstrung carrier aviation but I'll take it over that POS 35 anyday.
